A diverse workforce provides a multitude of benefits to any organization. Better decision-making abilities among staff, increased innovation, heightened employee performance, and increased profits are just a few benefits.1
Whether you are intentionally creating a diverse workforce or your staff is becoming more diverse organically, you must be prepared to train your employees in a way that is effective and supports your company’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. According to a McKinsey study2, companies with diverse executive boards enjoy significantly higher earnings and returns on equity. Public companies with diverse executive boards in U.S. have a 95% higher return on equity than those without diverse boards. Fortunately, you don’t have to overhaul your corporate training program to do this. A few simple tips will help.
Promote and Train a Diverse Workforce with These 4 Tips
Here are a few ways to train a diverse workforce with an learning management system:
1. Offer multilingual courses
To accommodate diverse staff, it’s critical to offer eLearning courses in a variety of languages. The easiest way to do this is to choose an online learning platform that gives customers the option of adding language customization onto their eLearning solution. This feature allows learners to choose their preferred language from a drop-down list. eLearning language customization will become increasingly important as organizations become more and more diverse.
Related blog: 3 Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Online Training Courses with an LMS
2. Create training that appeals to a variety of learning styles
Employees have unique learning styles. That’s why one-size-fits-all training is often not the best choice. For example, some people are primarily visual learners. Others are auditory learners or kinesthetic (“hands-on”) learners, and others have a combined learning style. By including training mediums that appeal to people with different learning preferences, you can train a diverse workforce without designing individual eLearning programs for each learning style. For example, try to include as many of the following training elements to your online learning courses as possible:
- Visual -- Images, infographics, and videos
- Auditory -- Recorded lectures, spoken text
- Kinesthetic -- Interactive lessons, games, and scenarios
Also, when creating eLearning for a diverse workforce, remember that all learners are social learners. With that in mind, fully utilize your online learning platform’s social learning tools.
3. Promote diversity via eLearning characterization
Many eLearning designers include characters in serious games, interactive courses, quizzes, and more. To promote diversity in the workplace, create diverse eLearning characters. Include characters of varying genders, races, and ages in your eLearning stories and games. Individuals with disabilities should also be represented in online learning characterization. This will help all learners feel more engaged in training and will promote inclusion.
4. Create an eLearning course on diversity and inclusion
Facilitating diversity in the workplace will benefit your company in many ways. To promote a diverse and inclusive workplace, and effectively train a diverse staff, create an eLearning course that tackles diversity and inclusion. Variations of this course could be added to each employee’s learning path.
A diversity and inclusion course can be altered slightly to apply to different groups, including managers and supervisors, executives, customer service reps, and general employees. Elements that could be included in this type of course include unconscious bias training, overcoming language barriers, sensitivity to other cultures, and disability awareness.
Related blog: 3 Benefits of a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) for Employee Training
Intentionally Create a Diverse Workforce
In addition to learning how to train a diverse workforce, consider actively creating one. One of the first steps you could take toward this is assembling an inclusion council. SHRM quoted Jennifer Brown, author of Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change: “Ideally, councils should be involved in goal-setting around hiring, retaining and advancing a diverse workforce and in addressing any employee engagement problems among underrepresented employee groups.”3 Additionally, the inclusion council could work alongside your L&D team to create diverse training.
Interested in learning how to increase the overall accessibility of your training program? Read our blog “3 Ways to Make eLearning More Accessible for All Employees” or contact TOPYX to request a personalized LMS demo today.
References:
1. https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/diversity-in-the-workplace-benefits-and-challenges/
2. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/is-there-a-payoff-from-top-team-diversity
3. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0418/pages/6-steps-for-building-an-inclusive-workplace.aspx
