You can't train for diversity

Time reporter Lisa Takeuchi Cullen explains why Employee Diversity Training Doesn't Work

Some decades ago, the powers that be declared that employee diversity was a good thing, as desirable as double-digit profit margins. It's proving just as difficult to achieve. Companies try all sorts of things to attract and promote minorities and women. They hire organizational psychologists. They staff booths at diversity fairs. They host dim-sum brunches and salsa nights. The most popular--and expensive--approach is diversity training, or workshops to teach executives to embrace the benefits of a diverse staff. Too bad it doesn't work.

A groundbreaking new study by three sociologists.  ...Their analysis found no real change in the number of women and minority managers after companies began diversity training. That's right - none. Networking didn't do much, either. Mentorships did. Among the least common tactics, one - assigning a diversity point person or task force - has the best record of success. "Companies have spent millions of dollars a year on these programs without actually knowing, Are these efforts worth it?" Dobbin says. "In the case of diversity training, the answer is no."

The law is one reason that employers favor diversity training. In the wake of whopping settlements in race-discrimination suits against large companies, including Texaco and Coca-Cola, over the past decade, employers believe that having a program in place can show a judge that they are sincerely fighting prejudice. But this too is a myth, says Dobbin: "I don't know of a single case where courts gave credit for diversity training."

Social psychologists have many theories to explain why diversity training doesn't work as intended. Studies show that any training generates a backlash and that mandatory diversity training in particular may even activate a bias. Researchers also see evidence of "irresistible stereotypes," or biases so deeply ingrained that they simply can't be taught away in a one-day workshop.

The piece is based on a recent American Sociological Review  article by Alexandra Kalev of UC Berkeley, Frank Dobbin of Harvard, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota: Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies (PDF). This is a good example of policy-relevant empirical analysis. Here is the abstract:

Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity. Some programs are designed to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, others to moderate managerial bias through training and feedback, and still others to reduce the social isolation of women and minority workers. These approaches find support in academic theories of how organizations achieve goals, how stereotyping shapes hiring and promotion, and how networks influence careers.

This is the first systematic analysis of their efficacy. The analyses rely on federal data describing the workforces of 708 private sector establishments from 1971 to 2002, coupled with survey data on their employment practices. Efforts to moderate managerial bias through diversity training and diversity evaluations are least effective at increasing the share of white women, black women, and black men in management. Efforts to attack social isolation through mentoring and networking show modest effects. Efforts to establish responsibility for diversity lead to the broadest increases in managerial diversity.

Moreover, organizations that establish responsibility see better effects from diversity training and evaluations, networking, and mentoring. Employers subject to federal affirmative action edicts, who typically assign responsibility for compliance to a manager, also see stronger effects from some programs. This work lays the foundation for an institutional theory of the remediation of workplace inequality.

So organisational responsibilty and accountability make a difference; diversity training and evaluation don't. One wonders why the EEOC didn't examine these issues years ago...

Comments

[Arthur Eckart]

Using data of corporations that existed since at least 1971 would exclude a large number of new minority corporations (that may have grown faster). Also, needed controlling variables are missing and there seems to be a great deal of multicollinearity. It seems to be a rather ignorant, stereotypical, or narrow conclusion.

[Arthur Eckart]

Top executives want the best workers and tend to adhere to policy changes. Racism or sexism would put firms at competitive disadvantages, create lawsuits, lower sales, etc. which are costly. Of course, some companies are more active than others recruiting workers. However, I doubt many companies have meaningful quotas.

[Lord]

Considering most women weren't in the workforce earlier than that, it sounds more like hysterias and inertia than anything else. A comparison of declining and advancing industries might be fruitful.

[Ruth Raisfeld]

The popular press pieces criticizing diversity training on the basis of the Kalev-Dobbin-Kelly study is misleading and misconstrue the findings of that study. Of course diversity training alone won't make sustained change in an organization. Diversity training is but one step toward making effective sustained change in corporate culture that must start at the top of an organization and be supported throughout the organization. Like going on a diet and sticking to it, the message of diversity, inclusion and respect must be preached and practiced every day. The Kalev-Dobbin-Kelly study supports this by concluding that the most effective diversity programs emanate from a standing department or dedicated executive, not training alone.

[Lafayette]

RR: Like going on a diet and sticking to it, the message of diversity, inclusion and respect must be preached and practiced every day.

I liked the last bit … "practiced every day".

I would add that the moral standards of a company, however often espoused, depend more upon the behaviour of its management. A company can say whatever it wants, but management behaviour is quite another matter.

People will mimic generally their management when it comes to business ethics. Cultural diversity is often simply one more attribute of a company that gets mainly lip-service … until an issue blows up in management’s face. By then, of course, it’s too late, isn’t it …

If management does not practice what it preaches, this happens fairly regularly. Look at Exxon as the latest and gravest example of corporate ethics to have gone awry. The rot was from the top down.

[Arthur Eckart]

Lafayette, I looked up Exxon and didn't see anything racist or sexist. Where's the "rot?" Perhaps, you're not aware Exxon earned more profit (or created more capital) than any other corporation in the world and provides high paying jobs.

[Anon]

A company that provides translation services and cultural sensitivity training to other organizations is being accused of sex discrimination and racial insensitivity in its own ranks.

Nataly Kelly, 31, of Nashua, the former director of product development for NetworkOmni Multilingual Communications Inc., of Westlake Village, Calif., filed a sex discrimination and retaliation complaint with the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission yesterday.

To bolster her discrimination complaint with the state, Kelly included photos allegedly showing the company's top two human resources executives dressed up for the 2005 corporate Halloween party as a black pimp and a white prostitute. The "pimp," a white woman wearing blackface and sporting a fake gold tooth, won the prize for best costume, the complaint said.

Kelly said she had directed many of her complaints about discrimination to the two human resources executives. She said she did not attend the party and only learned of the women's costumes recently when someone gave her the photos.

One of the products she developed for NetworkOmni was a training program in "cultural competence" for clients, such as doctors and nurses, to help them deal sensitively and knowledgeably with people of various nationalities and ethnic groups.

"I was completely shocked, because here I worked to develop programs to combat exactly this type of thing," she said in a telephone interview yesterday.

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Nashua+woman+sues+sensitivity+firm&articleId=b2fcb1bc-a710-4718-82cd-6820d336da59

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

[Billy Vaughn, PhD]

Diversity training will fail when the trainer is not an expert. The problem is that too many people think they can conduct a diversity training because they believe themselves to be open-minded or born with the right skin color.

In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments. You have to balance resistance, prejudice, and down right lack of interest with getting an excellent performance review (i.e., You don't have any marginal for error). This requires specialized training that most people neglect to consider or deem important. But, more important for good training is the expertise needed to assess training needs beyond awareness and sensitivity in order to deliver high impact content.

These things, of course, are not controlled for in the study because the authors are clearly not diversity experts or thorough researchers. But, most people aren't concerned about the difficulty in developing the expertise when they can mindlessly vent their disagreement with the diversity training by pointing out data filled with methodological flaws.

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I think that It seems to be a rather ignorant, stereotypical, or narrow conclusion. In reality, diversity training is one of the most difficult job assignments

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