Creating an atmosphere of diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a common objective for today’s businesses. In the absence of achieving this, there can be unhealthy tensions among employees and between staff and management. All of which can lead to a loss of team productivity as well as challenges in recruiting and retaining workers.
Many organizations that have successfully built diverse and inclusive work environments have successfully incorporated diversity activities as part of an overall inclusion training program. While these valuable activities can be extremely effective in starting the diversity conversation, it is important to offer these activities in a climate of trust.
The Benefits of Workplace Diversity Training Activities
Diversity training activities help your staff to recognize and accept their differences and, ideally, learn from and embrace those differences. Today, it is the companies that thrive are the ones that are able to accomplish this.
Some of the benefits of diversity training activities can include:
Economic growth- The availability of human capital increases through diversity training in the workplace.
Decreased turnover – Effective diversity training helps create a more social and enjoyable work environment.
Increased Creativity and Innovation- Proper training facilitates a higher level of creativity and innovation by encouraging an open-minded workforce that considers challenges from multiple viewpoints.
Enhanced Understanding of Customers- Enhances your ability to understand your customers and create product and service offerings that meet their diverse needs.
Examples of Workplace Diversity Training Activities
Diversity and Inclusion activities can simple yet powerful methods to get employees talking and interacting with each other. Below are some examples of diversity training activities.
Spider Web
"Spider Web." Is an activity that has grown in popularity as it can help workers to see how they can connect through shared experiences. In this activity, employees form a circle and take turns sharing an embarrassing story about themselves from the past. This can be a great ice breaker activity that helps your workers see each other’s more human and vulnerable sides.
Diversity Bingo
In this activity, a bingo-type scorecard is given to each employee. Each square on the card consists of statements such as "a person who is fluent in multiple languages" or "a person who is Irish." Employees go through the workplace looking to get the signature of a co-worker to whom a statement applies. The group then discusses topics, such as initial views they had about each other that the game proved to be wrong.
Diversity Jeopardy
This activity seeks to demonstrate how much employees understand about an ethnic group or culture and the types of additional training the staff might benefit from in the future. The activity mimics the "Jeopardy" television game show and splits employees into two teams. The question categories feature diversity topics with each question offering a point value.
Utilizing eLearning To Support A Work Environment of Diversity And Inclusion
One of the most effective ways an organization can enhance diversity is through online training or ‘eLearning’. Through effective eLearning, your organization can provide powerful diversity training while striking a perfect balance between cost-effectiveness, topic requirements, and the ongoing development and support of a modern workforce.
Diversity training through eLearning can help address the many unique characteristics about employees and the manner in which they work together. This type of training can move a workforce into the realm of embracing differences among employees and considering the important inputs and perspectives all employees bring to the organization.
LMS Portals for Diversity Training
LMS Portals provides a cloud-based platform that allows your organization to launch and manage its own eLearning portal for diversity and other employee training programs. Our system allows for fast and easy development and delivery of eLearning courses and includes powerful tools for online communication, collaboration, measurement, and feedback.
Contact us to discuss running your Workplace Diversity Training
on your own branded portal. Get started for free!