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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is so important and relevant to modern organisations that some have entire job functions dedicated to it. In the simplest terms, DEI is all about making sure that everyone feels welcomed, supported and included. This can take many different forms, from inclusive policies to Employee Resource Groups.
So, where does L&D fit into all of this?
L&D teams can play a pivotal role in their organisations’ DEI efforts – and in this blog, we’ll break down exactly what that looks like.
The first question you need to ask is this: Why is your organisation looking to implement these DEI initiatives? By connecting to the reasoning behind DEI, you’ll then be able to figure out how your steps tie into the wider organisational strategy.
Your first and primary goal with any DEI-related initiative should be to create a workplace where people from all backgrounds feel included, welcomed and celebrated. DEI is about driving meaningful change, and giving everyone the chance they deserve. The eventual goal should be to reach a point where the entire lifecycle of an employee is fair and equal, and our workforce represents a true cross-section of society.
At an organisational level, it’s easy to see the fringe benefits of implementing DEI. Along with driving meaningful change, cultivating a diverse workforce undeniably gives your organisation a competitive advantage through bringing together a wide range of perspectives. A report from McKinsey and Company found that diverse companies are far more likely to outperform their peers, with gender-diverse companies outperforming by 25%, and ethnically-diverse companies by 36%.
DEI is also important to job seekers. In a poll conducted by SurveyMonkey, 79% of candidates said they found it important to work for a company who hires from a diverse range of backgrounds. That research is hardly surprising – if an organisation is prioritising inclusivity, it follows that they would be prioritising other important factors like fair pay, autonomy and employee support.
Now onto our all-important question: What exactly is the role of Learning & Development teams within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? While it shouldn’t fall solely on L&D’s shoulders to spearhead and facilitate these initiatives, you undeniably have a role to play. Here’s how we see L&D figuring into the picture, and questions you can ask yourself as a jumping off point:
Learning environments fall squarely within L&D’s purview. More importantly, L&D is responsible for creating learning environments in which everybody feels considered and empowered to do their best work. The question, then, should be: How can we in L&D design and deliver training programmes that are accessible and inclusive for each and every employee?
Another element of DEI that L&D can be held responsible for is cultural awareness training. After connecting to the organisation’s goals around DEI, L&D teams can then begin to design cultural competency training that aligns with those goals. Ask yourself: How can we design cultural awareness training that is aligned to organisational goals, and helps foster awareness amongst employees?
L&D plays a huge role in ensuring that learning content is accessible to a diverse range of learning needs and preferences – especially for Neurodiverse learners.
There are so many things to take into consideration when designing training for Neurodiverse learners, such as the most accessible colours to use, the way information is organised, and the most readable font in which to display it.
We’ve written an entire blog about making learning suitable for Neurodiverse learners, in which we break down the many factors to consider when making your training as accessible as possible. You can use these practical tips as a jumping off point, along with the question: Is my training accessible to everyone, no matter their background, needs or preferences?
The concept of “unconscious bias” is something that DEI efforts actively work to undo. There’s also an overlap in the venn diagram between L&D and DEI, because part of learning is untraining our own unconscious biases in order to retain new and important information. Effective learning is based on facts, not just “what’s always been done”, your own preferences, or the arbitrary rules that are woven into the fabric of our society.
L&D can play a role in recognising and mitigating this, ensuring that bias doesn’t creep into the learning content you design and curate. Ask yourself: Is my own unconscious bias influencing this learning content? How can I avoid this?
So, how does L&D go about fulfilling their role within DEI initiatives?
There are a few practical steps you can take towards effectively marrying DEI and L&D for a well-rounded strategy.
You won’t know how to create accessible learning content if you don’t yet fully understand your people’s needs. There are a few ways to create an effective feedback loop that truly tells you how your workforce feels:
Before the learning takes place, carry out a needs assessment by collecting opinions from the entire workforce. This can be collected through surveys, interviews or focus groups, and concern a variety of needs from skill gaps to learning preferences. Once you’ve gathered this crucial data, you can analyse your findings and use them to move forward. Figure out what to prioritise: Which needs are the most critical? How do they align with business goals?
You could also roll out learning programmes to a select few “Very Important Colleagues” like Thrive customer Westmorland Family. This allows you to test the waters and gather feedback from the people who know your day-to-day operations best (and therefore how learning slots into them), to fine-tune these programmes before launching to the wider organisation.
Another strategy takes place after the learning has already been rolled out: The straightforward mechanism of follow-up surveys and questionnaires. These have the benefit of anonymity, meaning that colleagues may feel more empowered and comfortable to share their honest, unvarnished thoughts.
Finally, your Learning Management System’s analytics features will tell the story that your learners might not be willing to. If your LMS is equipped with this functionality, you’ll have a bird’s-eye-view of learner behaviour which will allow you to clearly see when they’re using the platform, how long for, and which pieces of content resonate the most.
This follows on from our last point, but part of DEI and accessibility is the idea of personalisation. If learning content is not customised to your employees’ individual needs, it is not inclusive. Based on the needs assessments that you’ve already carried out, you can begin the process of tailoring learning to individual users – and this needn’t be a long and drawn-out process.
LMS’s with built-in skills and goals functionality can create personalised learning pathways based on your employees’ skill gaps, taking them through a linear journey that helps them reach their professional goals.
In order for your learning content to be as effective and up-to-date as possible, you’ll need to keep your finger on the pulse. The wider DEI landscape is always changing, so ensure that you’re following the latest news and updates before factoring these into your own learning content.
Tip! If you’re partnered with an off-the-shelf learning content provider like Thrive Content, they’ll make it their priority to always stay abreast of all the latest learning trends and changes for you. They can then make recommendations based on these updates, and how they factor into your own organisational goals.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is so important and relevant to modern organisations that some have entire job functions dedicated to it. In the simplest terms, DEI is all about making sure that everyone feels welcomed, supported and included. This can take many different forms, from inclusive policies to Employee Resource Groups.
So, where does L&D fit into all of this?
L&D teams can play a pivotal role in their organisations’ DEI efforts – and in this blog, we’ll break down exactly what that looks like.
The first question you need to ask is this: Why is your organisation looking to implement these DEI initiatives? By connecting to the reasoning behind DEI, you’ll then be able to figure out how your steps tie into the wider organisational strategy.
Your first and primary goal with any DEI-related initiative should be to create a workplace where people from all backgrounds feel included, welcomed and celebrated. DEI is about driving meaningful change, and giving everyone the chance they deserve. The eventual goal should be to reach a point where the entire lifecycle of an employee is fair and equal, and our workforce represents a true cross-section of society.
At an organisational level, it’s easy to see the fringe benefits of implementing DEI. Along with driving meaningful change, cultivating a diverse workforce undeniably gives your organisation a competitive advantage through bringing together a wide range of perspectives. A report from McKinsey and Company found that diverse companies are far more likely to outperform their peers, with gender-diverse companies outperforming by 25%, and ethnically-diverse companies by 36%.
DEI is also important to job seekers. In a poll conducted by SurveyMonkey, 79% of candidates said they found it important to work for a company who hires from a diverse range of backgrounds. That research is hardly surprising – if an organisation is prioritising inclusivity, it follows that they would be prioritising other important factors like fair pay, autonomy and employee support.
Now onto our all-important question: What exactly is the role of Learning & Development teams within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? While it shouldn’t fall solely on L&D’s shoulders to spearhead and facilitate these initiatives, you undeniably have a role to play. Here’s how we see L&D figuring into the picture, and questions you can ask yourself as a jumping off point:
Learning environments fall squarely within L&D’s purview. More importantly, L&D is responsible for creating learning environments in which everybody feels considered and empowered to do their best work. The question, then, should be: How can we in L&D design and deliver training programmes that are accessible and inclusive for each and every employee?
Another element of DEI that L&D can be held responsible for is cultural awareness training. After connecting to the organisation’s goals around DEI, L&D teams can then begin to design cultural competency training that aligns with those goals. Ask yourself: How can we design cultural awareness training that is aligned to organisational goals, and helps foster awareness amongst employees?
L&D plays a huge role in ensuring that learning content is accessible to a diverse range of learning needs and preferences – especially for Neurodiverse learners.
There are so many things to take into consideration when designing training for Neurodiverse learners, such as the most accessible colours to use, the way information is organised, and the most readable font in which to display it.
We’ve written an entire blog about making learning suitable for Neurodiverse learners, in which we break down the many factors to consider when making your training as accessible as possible. You can use these practical tips as a jumping off point, along with the question: Is my training accessible to everyone, no matter their background, needs or preferences?
The concept of “unconscious bias” is something that DEI efforts actively work to undo. There’s also an overlap in the venn diagram between L&D and DEI, because part of learning is untraining our own unconscious biases in order to retain new and important information. Effective learning is based on facts, not just “what’s always been done”, your own preferences, or the arbitrary rules that are woven into the fabric of our society.
L&D can play a role in recognising and mitigating this, ensuring that bias doesn’t creep into the learning content you design and curate. Ask yourself: Is my own unconscious bias influencing this learning content? How can I avoid this?
So, how does L&D go about fulfilling their role within DEI initiatives?
There are a few practical steps you can take towards effectively marrying DEI and L&D for a well-rounded strategy.
You won’t know how to create accessible learning content if you don’t yet fully understand your people’s needs. There are a few ways to create an effective feedback loop that truly tells you how your workforce feels:
Before the learning takes place, carry out a needs assessment by collecting opinions from the entire workforce. This can be collected through surveys, interviews or focus groups, and concern a variety of needs from skill gaps to learning preferences. Once you’ve gathered this crucial data, you can analyse your findings and use them to move forward. Figure out what to prioritise: Which needs are the most critical? How do they align with business goals?
You could also roll out learning programmes to a select few “Very Important Colleagues” like Thrive customer Westmorland Family. This allows you to test the waters and gather feedback from the people who know your day-to-day operations best (and therefore how learning slots into them), to fine-tune these programmes before launching to the wider organisation.
Another strategy takes place after the learning has already been rolled out: The straightforward mechanism of follow-up surveys and questionnaires. These have the benefit of anonymity, meaning that colleagues may feel more empowered and comfortable to share their honest, unvarnished thoughts.
Finally, your Learning Management System’s analytics features will tell the story that your learners might not be willing to. If your LMS is equipped with this functionality, you’ll have a bird’s-eye-view of learner behaviour which will allow you to clearly see when they’re using the platform, how long for, and which pieces of content resonate the most.
This follows on from our last point, but part of DEI and accessibility is the idea of personalisation. If learning content is not customised to your employees’ individual needs, it is not inclusive. Based on the needs assessments that you’ve already carried out, you can begin the process of tailoring learning to individual users – and this needn’t be a long and drawn-out process.
LMS’s with built-in skills and goals functionality can create personalised learning pathways based on your employees’ skill gaps, taking them through a linear journey that helps them reach their professional goals.
In order for your learning content to be as effective and up-to-date as possible, you’ll need to keep your finger on the pulse. The wider DEI landscape is always changing, so ensure that you’re following the latest news and updates before factoring these into your own learning content.
Tip! If you’re partnered with an off-the-shelf learning content provider like Thrive Content, they’ll make it their priority to always stay abreast of all the latest learning trends and changes for you. They can then make recommendations based on these updates, and how they factor into your own organisational goals.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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