Me neither, and if so, I imagine I’d be kicked out pretty quick.
That was good. Thanks for sharing.
I remember at one where this white woman presenting said part of her background was African and when questioned why later, said that since humans first came from African, she was part African.
Same here. IME, they’ve always been timed suspiciously soon after discrimination lawsuits, settlements, or auditor reports.
One of the good things about the economic downturn in 2008 was the elimination of of all the chirpy HR waste of time seminars. There was a brief standard sexual harassment video we watched during the first couple of days of onboarding.
My department is pretty isolated from the rest of the floor and, for some employees, they’d better be grateful for that. Leading up to and after the Trump win, the level of inappropriate commentary reached a fever point. But, the average age of the Trumpers is at least 50, so no diversity training is going to do any good.
I went through sexual harassment training once and it was a huge waste of time. I was angry that an unproven accusation could potentially harm a supervisor so easily. I think the reason college protesters always want more sensitivity training is that such programs are job creators for ethnic studies students who have no actual productive skills and waste their college years navel gazing.
Isn’t it more likely that college students, especially at good colleges, see more education as the answer to everything? Most of these students have spent their entire lives in school and haven’t yet discovered life in the corporate world.
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I’ve never been in one. Just like anything, I imagine that some of them are wastes of time while others are useful. I think just being able to learn the prevailing wisdom of proper workplace etiquette has the potential to be educational, given the fact that we all have different notions of etiquette in general.
For instance, I believe that people should be addressed by their formal name unless they let everyone know to call by them a nickname. No matter how long and foreign-sounding a name is, you should not shorten it or come up with a nickname without the permission of the name-bearer. I believe it is disrespectful to do otherwise, especially if the name-bearer is in a position of authority. But not everyone shares this belief. They believe that nicknames are a way of maintaining informality and expressing friendship. I don’t think there is anything wrong about giving people a moderated forum to talk about this kind of social pet peeve and others. You gotta wonder about the reasonableness of someone who continues to nickname his coworkers after having people explain why they are bothered by this kind of activity.
Oh, man. When I first moved to Indiana, I decided to go by Rebecca, because I thought Hoosiers might not deal with “Rivkah” well. I found out that 1 out of five Hoosiers calls you “Becky” without asking if that is actually what you go by, when your name is Rebecca. I hate the name “Becky.” I switched back to Rivkah ASAP.
Besides the sexual harassment classes, the only sensitivity training we’ve had were those classes that say there are four types of people and each kind reacts differently. A very basic, ‘not everyone is exactly like you’ kind of class.
What the four types are is different, depending on the program. There’s always the Director and the Socializer. Other titles can be Thinker, Conciliator, Creative, etc. The basics seem to be you’re either introverted or extroverted (or forceful/not forceful), and either fixated on people or fixated on things/processes.
I’d say the main value is for the few people who had never before considered that other people might be motivated by things that don’t motivate them.
Most are a waste of time and money, I agree. I remember the sexual harrassment training I once had to attend many years ago where all my male coworkers were made to feel like closet rapists. It was like if they hadn’t raped anyone, it meant they just haven’t gotten around to it yet. So offensive.
On the other hand, I had a cultural diversity class once that was actually pretty good. They broke us up into two groups with different cultures and each team was not informed about the other’s culture.
One group had to develop their “culture” that was based on relationships and family. The social rule was never to ask a direct question and you always had to ask about family for ten minutes or so before discussing any other topic. If you offended someone you were shunned.
The other group had a very direct “culture” and leaned heavily on a money/token trade system. If someone liked you or what you were saying or doing, they’d hand you a coin. You could trade coins for products or services or favors. If you had a lot of coins, you had status in the society. If you offended someone you were yelled at.
After giving us about 30 minutes to get used to our societies, they mixed us up. It was interesting how much conflict that caused and how difficult it was to figure out what the other culture’s rules were just by mixing. Lots of shunning and yelling and hurt feelings.
By nature, I’m an introverted nerd. By background, I’m a nice Catholic boy whose parents were big on manners. So, it has NEVER been my way to talk trash, to engage in sexual innuendo or risque banter at work.
That said, at every place I’ve ever worked, there have been men who DID so. Did I stand up to them and tell them to stop? No, because the women they chose to harass seemed genuinely to LOVE it!
There are SOME men who can say crude, disgusting things and get away with it. Women who would DEFINITELY slap me and report me to HR if I said anything out of line would laugh heartily at trash talk from SOME other males.
Now, if and when men DID make a nuisance of themselves, I’d rather the boss just call them on the carpet, and either chew them out or fire them. Why put ME through a seminar when I already have plenty or real work to do?
At my company we are required to take a CBT annually that deals with professional conduct (which includes the areas of sexual harassment and cultural sensitivity). As already stated, no one learns anything new, but corporate gets to check that off their list of to-dos in avoiding lawsuits.
They also have a number of networking groups set-up for employees based on race, background, LGBT status, Vet status, etc. Of course there is not one of these groups for people like me, but “everyone is invited” to participate. Right.
My big question about all this stuff is there a shred of evidence it actually works?
Sexual and racial harassment are clearly awful things that still happen fairly regularly in many companies.
But is there any evidence at all that spending billions of dollars (both directly on the materials themselves and the cost of the time spent taking them) has done anything at all to stop anyone from being harrassed?
I realize the rate of harassment (per-capita) may well have decreased since they were first introduced, but I’d argue that is because western society has become slightly less racist and sexist in that time, not that they had any effect.
Has anyone shown a causal relationship between sensitivity training of any kind, and an actual reduction in harassment?
I had a partner that had an affair with an associate. We all had to take sexual harassment training which basically amounted to “don’t hit on the employees no matter how receptive they seem. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you shitheads”
I also recall some diversity training, which frankly seemed like a lesson in “diversity” buzzwords and how/when to use them.
I don’t think companies that do this really care if it is effective; all they care about is avoiding costly lawsuits. If they can show that the everyone took the training, and some dimwit still harassed someone, then the company is off the hook and the consequences are born solely by the dimwit.
The best part of the sensitivity training I took was that it gave me a lot of new insults and trash talk that I could use to annoy my co-workers:D
The other thing that I got from it was “Don’t be a jerk” as others had mentioned.
The other thing that I noticed from the sensitivity training is that among these “supposed disadvantaged groups”, they were the most insensitive to each other within the group.
What I am getting at is if is I called a black person a “Nigger”, even in joking matter, it would not be taken very well. However is one black person called another black person a “nigger”, again in joking matter, it would a lot more acceptable.
Part II, which I couldn’t find before.
Oh…did she get facepalmed out?
That is a remarkably misleading article, at least where it describes the findings of that study. The study showed that diversity training did not increase the number of minorities in management. It said nothing about the general impact of diversity training in the workplace.
My company makes everyone complete the same silly “training” programs every year. Sexual harassment, workplace violence, conflicts of interest, HIPAA. It’s exactly the same corporate training program every single year, with even the same quiz attached to each. I just printed and filed away the answers from the first time and break it out when that time of year rolls back around.
I get nothing out of any of them. It all pretty much boils down to common sense and “don’t be a jerk.” And there’s actually not any real reason I have to take the HIPAA training aside from the company insisting everyone take it; my job does not involve handling anyone’s medical records, ever.
It’s really just a checkbox for HR and the legal department.