Diversity training

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My workplace is undergoing mandatory diversity training over the next couple of months. It looks like we’re going to take evaluations, get phone apps, and other incidental prizes for participating.

I’m a white male, and I know their intentions are good, but I can’t help but think I continually have to answer for 400 years of original sin. I used to work for white male-dominated employers, then wound up in more diverse environments, including the EPA. I’m certainly the minority here, but I suffer no ill consequences. Nowadays I do have to rethink before I say anything that might be construed wrongly, and it gets exhausting. I just go by the Golden Rule and treat others like I want to be treated. I’ve only gotten called into the principal’s office once in the past 5 years for language, so I’m doing pretty good.

We have a new branch in Kuala Lumpur, and the vice president of my division is flying down there to conduct the workshop. What I find funny is that a white woman is going to tell Asians how to be diverse.

2

Sounds like you’ll benefit from the training, if it’s done well.

3

I understand what you are saying but the reminder never really hurts unless you have something to feel guilty for.

Have patience. The company can’t test everyone to see who needs the training or who doesn’t. But they are held responsible for discrimination or harrassment that may happen in their name or under their roof. They are trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. That’s good governance. Take the training.

4

Is it only the white males who have to participate in this training?

I’m not sure I understand what’s funny (or even ironic) about that. Is the company policy supposed to be different there? Or do you think that by virtue of being “Asians” they’re already diverse, couldn’t possibly have any problems?

5

Sigh… I knew this would get pushback, but I went ahead anyway. I already established this was mandatory to all employees. I wasn’t trying to imply anything about Asians, just that they’re being lectured on diversity by an authority figure who’s not of their racial identity. At the very least, it could be socially awkward. I know I’d be concerned that I’d come across as condescending and hypocritical if I were in her place.

6

It’s a company policy. It seems like a good idea to me to have a consistent message delivered to all offices, even if that means flying someone out to Malaysia. Having sat through many sessions of not-so-carefully organized diversity training myself, I think the consistency that comes with having a VP fly out to do it will only be a positive.

For my part—and this may surprise you given how we’ve started off this thread—I think most Asian countries could learn quite a bit about diversity from the US. As bad as we are, my experiences in various parts of Asia as well as Europe has led me to believe that a large part of the reason the world sees us as having significant issues dealing with racial, religious, and ethnic diversity is because we actually have, and interact with, large numbers of racial, religious, and ethnic minorities. Just because you live in a relatively homogenous society (and I am aware that Kuala Lumpur is equal parts Chinese and Malay, with a sizable Indian population rounding out to 90+% of the population all told) doesn’t mean you’re not racist. Some peoples fool themselves into thinking that because they shut their minority populations out from having a voice, whether intentionally or not, that their minority populations must be perfectly at ease with their current situation, and suffer no discrimination whatsoever. A lie isn’t any less a lie just because no one in hearing can speak the truth.

7

Show of hands - how many folk have attended diversity training “done well”? :dubious:

8

Still confused by this. Do you require having the lecture delivered by someone who has the same racial identity as you? If the answer is no, then why would it be different for the folks in the Kuala Lumpur office?

9

And done correctly, diversity training isn’t being lectured to by an authority figure.

10

I have attended diversity training. Also safety in the workplace training, sexual harassment training, what to do if there is an active shooter incident in my building, what constitutes insider trading, information security, probably other stuff I have forgotten about.

If it’s mandatory, I sit thru the webinar and do the quiz at the end until I get a passing grade. If they want me to sit in a circle and share my feelings, I don’t do stuff like that at work.

If you get a prize for filling out a survey, just pick the middle option on everything and don’t do any comments. Make sure it’s anonymous first. If it’s not, well, they can keep their phone app or coupon or whatever.

IME it means exactly what it usually means when corporate comes up with a bright idea - they are trying to head off lawsuits, generate good publicity, or HR is trying to justify its existence.

Diversity is our strength, people are our most important resource, the company cares about your wellness. OK, that’s good - can I go back to work now? The sprint ends on Friday and there aren’t any hours allotted for talking about our feelings.

Regards,
Shodan

11

Diversity training is one of those things which is great in theory but lousy in practice. Mostly since it’s implemented and overseen by people whose main intention is to cover their and the organisations derrières.

12

I have. Large multinational corporation did training on dealing with people in different cultures, the ‘how to conduct yourself’ part pointed out a lot of small things that can cause you to make a bad first impression, while the ‘how to design software’ part went over various things that go over badly in other cultures, and noted that cultural messages about red light is the reason the company switched from red to amber lights in computing equipment.

Done poorly it’s like any other training program where people doze through class and memorize some correct answers. But done correctly with people who aren’t dismissing it out of hand (like the OP appears to be) it can make working with people from different (foreign or minority) cultures go much, much more smoothly and cut down on the risk of harassment and discrimination complaints and lawsuits.

13

Considering the alternative, why is that automatically a bad thing? Bad behavior hurts everyone, lawsuits weaken the companies bottom line, so having people looking out for those things is kinda a good idea.

14

I think we all know that diversity training is more of a CYA thing for the employer than anything else.

However, it never fails to astound me how stupidly insensitive people can be. And that tells me that diversity training (or civility training, which is what my employer calls it) isn’t a total waste of time.

Several years ago, my boss’s mother died. His boss gave the secretary some money and instructions to go to the drug store down the street and pick out a condolecence card for all of us to sign. She came back with the most religiousy card she could find. We’re talking about full-on King James scripture on the front and a picture of Jesus inside. The uber boss told the secretary to take it back and get something more secular, since the card was supposed to be from everyone (and obviously “everyone” includes non-Christians). I suspect the intended recipient of the card, who was Christian, would have even been creeped out by it.

Well, the secretary was very upset over this. I found her in the breakroom cussing a blue streak (yes!) and talking about how the uber boss was in cahoots with Satan.

I kept my mouth shut and backed away before she could sense my heathen ways.

In a perfect world, this stupid-ass person wouldn’t need someone to point out the obvious. But we’re in a world with stupid-ass people who do and say stupid-ass shit. It’s easy to tell people to ignore it, especially when it’s just the secretary we’re talking about. But stupid-ass people sometimes become the boss. I wouldn’t want to work under someone who thinks having a modicum of sensitivity is a moral failing.

Diversity training lays out the expectations for a workplace. If someone repeatedly fails to meet those expectations, it means they are are a stupid ass and deserve to be fired.

15

I’m hoping your diversity training will cover this “I just go by the Golden Rule and treat others like I want to be treated.”

Treating others they way you want to be treated isn’t representative of diversity at all. The point of diversity training is to treat others they way they want and expect to be treated.

For example, my department has about 80-90 coworkers. We work 24/7/365 and have rules about weekend coverage. To make things easy, the scheduler just alternates weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) between several groups.

Then we hired someone who was devoutly religious and their religion required that they not work on Saturdays.

Well, we have lots of religious folks, primarily Christians of some stripe, who don’t mind working every other Sunday. But this person was different and had a different need. We were happy to know what this employee needed and it wasn’t too difficult for the scheduler to accommodate this employee’s needs/wants/desires. A few Christians grumbled a tiny bit about accommodating this employee but they have the same option- we can accommodate them too if they wish. They just don’t generally, with a rare exception, choose to use it.

In this case, we could have tried to enforce the alternating weekend rule under the guise of “fairness”, or treating everyone the same, or by treating the new employee the way “we” (primarily Christians) would want to be treated (by having Sundays off), but it really didn’t take much at all to make everyone happy.

16

We had another diversity issue pop up once regarding a newer employee and an annual hot dog potluck we throw for ourselves every year on the 4th of July.

The new employee was from another county and wan’t familiar with “hot dogs”. They were horrified. I guess every culture has embedded in it somewhere that “those people over there >>>> eat dogs!”

17

My job had diversity training a decade ago but it was so terribly done I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be diversity training until years later, it was just called “Coworker Appreciation” or something like that when first pitched.

The “training” was literally two hours of the presenter giving us stereotypes of various people’s and telling us why they weren’t true. She would play a YouTube video of random stuff like that “Evolution of Dance” video but precede it with the statement “Okay you see this white male about to dance, how well do you think he’s going to dance?” or a video of some Asian people at a tourist trap and saying “This Asian family is on vacation, what do you think they’re going to do first here?” It was literally the most random YouTube clips with preceding statements about what we expected to happen in the video followed by our expectations being either fulfilled or subverted. It was entirely informal surveys and then absolutely no follow-up before we watched another video. Then the presenter gave us some 10 minute lecture about how we should never judge people based on their covers.

18

We did have a bit of a big ticket diversity issue a while back. I believe I posted about it here at the time.

Our new manager decided to begin our mandatory daily meetings with a prayer session. This was new. I’m not religious and privately took it to the director. I resented being forced to attend a religious service at work. I took it to the director who put a temporary hold on the prayer session while it went to legal for a review. The result was that since the meeting was mandatory, the prayer session could be included IF it were included at the end of the meeting and not the beginning (which would force all to attend a religious service), and IF the prayer session participation was optional, and IF those who attended were not given benefits for attending, and also IF those who did not attend were not retaliated against for non-attendance.

After the prayer sessions resumed, I would always sit near the door and quietly leave at the end of the meeting when the prayer session was announced. The prayer leaders were careful to say the session was voluntary for those who wished to participate. I never suffered any repercussions for non-attendance and lots of others often did not attend or attended semi-regularly. Having to leave always bugged me because I had previously used the end of the meeting to do some quick day planning and I resented being booted out 5 minutes earlier than necessary, but I’m just one of many there so got used to it. Things seemed to be working out OK for a while…

But then I started to hear complaints from some of those who did attend the prayer sessions I never really understood why they brought their complaints to me.

One complaint was from a gay team member who was upset that the prayer mentioned ‘God’s guiding the Supreme Court’ while the Court was considering gay marriage. Another complaint was about a prayer that mentioned Obama and yet another that mentioned Trump. There were other complaints that fell mostly into differences between Christian liberal v. Christian conservative traditions.

These complaints found they way back to the director who halted the prayer sessions while it went back to legal.

During the time the prayer sessions were suspended, I got a call at home from one of the self-styled “prayer warriors” asking for my support for the prayer sessions, knowing that I was a non-participant. I think this person thought support from a non-participant would carry a bit more weight somehow.

But I explained that I could not and would not support the prayer sessions because in the 15 years I had worked there I had never seen the kind of divisiveness among staff that I had seen since the prayer sessions had begun. I said that this was a problem that was clearly caused by the prayer sessions and that people were getting their feelings hurt at them. I said I thought that lay people who lead prayer sessions, especially sessions with a diverse audience, needed some training and guidance to ensure the prayers were inclusive and not exclusive, and I talked about some of the complaints I had heard from those who did participate.

The coworker that called me surprised me by saying that I had “given her something to think about.” I don’t find her all that introspective and honestly, she’s one of the biggest religious hypocrites I know.

But the sessions did eventually resume and they were much improved after the break. I never attend, but no one has complained to me in a very long time about the content of the sessions. They still occur but have been fading over time. There are only two employees left of the original “prayer warrior” group, so the only days there is a prayer session at the end of our mandatory meeting now is when one of these two employees are working that day. I can’t recall having to quietly leave the mandatory meeting due to the prayer session in about 2 years (or maybe more, now that I think about it).

I was glad it worked out for them but not considering the diversity of beliefs of the participants caused some hard feelings to bubble up among a group of folks who really had gotten along fine until the prayer sessions began.

19

The alternative should be “done properly”. If you are saying “not done at all”, then yes that would be better than “done poorly”. Since, in case of the last mentioned, it makes people vary of the whole concept.

Cross cultural communication pretty much requires sensitivity training. Everyone’s outlook is informed by their cultural framework. Explaining this why something perceived as neutral in culture might be seen as unprofessional in another really helps smooth things over.

Take eye contact. In some cultures not maintaining eye contact when talking is disrespectful and or sign of lack of interest . In others, it’s no big deal. Still others see maintaining continuous eye contact after the first few seconds is rude. If sensitivity training helps deal with these situations, it’s good.

But such stuff is too difficult. Instead a 2 hour lecture on “let’s all just get along” is substituted as if people were still in 4th grade.

20

Sometimes it blows my mind to what extent people need to be reminded that not everyone is like them. Once my old job (a law firm) conducted sexual harassment training. There were separate sessions for attorneys and non-attorneys.

One of the attorneys reported back about her session, which included a role-play involving a visibly pregnant woman applying for a job. Apparently another attorney (a nice but pretty damn clueless 60-something white guy) raised his hand and asked, “but why would a pregnant woman be applying for a job in the first place?” Ummm, perhaps she needs to support herself and the baby? And possibly other people, too? Just because your wife didn’t work while she was pregnant doesn’t mean everyone can, or even wants to live that way.