Valuing Diversity at the Workplace
Overview
There are certain obvious benefits that come from working with a team that have similar backgrounds, values that align and a method of doing things in a way that is similar and comfortable. That’s all great…UNTIL that team gets stuck in group think, misses opportunities and new ideas and doesn’t really understand its customers as well as it thought it did. This is where the value of Diversity comes in…
This 2 day workshop will give the attendees an insight into understanding and handling the strategic importance of Diversity in their workplaces. It will give them a number of easy-to-use tools in the office in order to make their companies benefit from the diverse workforce and contribute to its growth and productivity. This course aims to enable trainees to adopt a management style that encourages diversity.
Learning Outcomes
- Learn the value of diversity and inclusion and what it includes
- Understand different cultures and how to deal with barriers that prevent smooth collaboration
- Improve cross cultural awareness
- Gain a wide range of tools to ensure diversity is handled positively and creates more success for the business bottom line
- Understand fairness and equal opportunity
- Understand and value the strategic importance of diversity combined with inclusion
- Gain knowledge to identify and address inappropriate behaviour
- Learn how to avoid typical prejudices through relevant role plays, exercises and YouTube videos
- Get the ability to recognize and accept unconscious/conscious bias and deal with it correctly as well as the danger of stereotyping
- Gain insight into their own biases in order to perform better
- Easy but highly effective practical and professional techniques, tips and personal commitments to reduce bias, value diversity and build inclusion into the workplace
Methodology
- Interactive open-ended discussion and brainstorming within each topic
- Experiential activities ie role plays and simulations
- Individual and group exercises to confirm understanding of subject matter and usage of techniques
- Group Study of videos showing Unconscious Bias and Triggers ie “The Meeting” and “Folding arms”
- Factual Case Studies – with analysis and feedback
Course Outline
Day 1: Diversity and its concepts
- What is Diversity and why does it matter in the workplace?
- Defining the value and importance of diversity
- How Diversity in our modern world is MUCH more that just culture, race, age and gender
- Difference between Diversity and Inclusion
- The strategic importance of Inclusion with Diversity – “It’s not just a nice to have, it’s a need to have”
- Managing diversity and common diversity issues
- Employee relations
- Fairness and equal opportunity (Saudisation)
Cultural Awareness
- Understand different cultures, values and attitudes
- How we see “differences” and our “mental models”
- Cross cultural management skills – working together across cultures
- Developing cultural awareness
- Various triggers and how to recognize them
- Origination of our beliefs and values
- Benefits of Inclusion within diverse workforces (inc. factual research from McKinsey/Ernst & Young)
- Studies from Harvard Business Review articles and discussion
Day 2 Disrupting with Diversity
- The factors which interfere with diversity appreciation:
- Stereotypes
- Prejudice
- Discrimination
- Unconscious bias – what is this?
- How to recognise it? How to deal with it?
- What are Micro-behaviours?
- Non verbal communication – ie Body language – its contribution to Diversity and inclusion
- Creating a positive working environment
- How to empower your workforce via Inclusion
- How to recruit a “Diverse” workforce that will enable positive company growth
- Challenging unacceptable behavior
Diversity Appreciation
- Actions and Next Steps – developing diversity objectives and targets
- Guidelines on how to create a team spirit, diversity at the heart of teamwork
- Techniques to promote inclusion
- Take away “toolbox” to enable trainees to utilize knowledge on a daily basis