Attract and Retain Top Talent with Diversity and Inclusion

Shifting demographics and increasing globalization, along with the advent of social media, are raising the stakes for organizational diversity and inclusion (D&I). The policies of a company relative to D&I are more transparent than ever. As the authors of the March 2014 Infoline, “Leveraging Diversity & Inclusion for a Global Economy,” point out, companies that embrace D&I are able to “attract, retain, and develop the best talent, casting a wider net for skilled employees.”

Training and development professionals who want to harness these new economic realities can do so by enhancing their own expertise around D&I. They can also further their organization’s D&I efforts by integrating those principles into their learning curriculum. Trainers can do so through the following:

• Be aware of one’s own biases. This helps you raise awareness of how D&I influences interpersonal relationships, business outcomes, and innovation.

• Align training with your organization’s D&I strategy. Encourage employees to reflect on what this means in terms of teamwork and personal actions.

• Use several learning methodologies. Emotional responses to D&I can be extremely strong. Using a range of methodologies to include such things as interactive case studies, instructor-led modules, e-learning, and forced choice and voting exercises to identify biases, can improve the odds of reaching employees with a variety of learning styles.

• Develop a plan around how learning will be reinforced and sustained over time.

• Embed D&I across the curricula, especially in leadership development efforts.

• Make the business case for D&I explicit.

The Infoline authors, Marjorie Derven, Ernest Gundling, and Pamela Leri, also emphasize that D&I efforts should be locally relevant and globally consistent. D&I initiatives should remain true to a company’s brand, yet not come across as irrelevant to local circumstances in countries far from their headquarters.

Learn more, including how to order “Leveraging Diversity & Inclusion for a Global Economy” at the ASTD Infoline website.