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:
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- 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.
