Managing Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Objectives

• Understand the diverse backgrounds that make up the modern workforce.
• Learn to differentiate between stereotypes and equip oneself to fight bias.
• Reflect on own experiences, beliefs and attitudes and how this affects relations in the workplace.
• Explore strategies for accommodating diversity, overcoming personal biases.

Course Methodology

'The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes
is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.'
– Chimamanda Adichie

This course will take the form of an interactive workshop and use storytelling, videos, images and short case studies to encourage participants to share their experiences. We will build on that to address the identified challenges of diversity.

Stories of heritage, love, tradition, all make you richer – this is a simple truth that we live by on an individual level. Organizationally as well, stories about our diverse identities stand to benefit the workplace through their ability to make us identify with and relate to diverse situations, circumstances and scenarios.

Programme

Day 1

Introduction

Activity #1: Tell us a story about your first name

• Definitions and Concepts
• Intersectional Identities: Why do we need a different approach to inclusion and diversity?
• What is bias? Why Bias?
• Bias and stereotype
• The D-Word: Breaking the Taboo: “Difference Blind” Vs “Difference Smart”?

Activity # 2: The power of first impressions – We look, We stereotype, We form a bias

• First Impressions
• 5 people 5 stories: Short Video- Pictures
• Describe yourself, thinking about the categories of diversity. Compare yourself to the image in the category and decide if you are similar or different to the person or idea represented in that image.

Bias in the workplace:

• Where it all starts: Hire Differently

Activity #3: Job hunting story – Going through the process together

• Identify unconscious exclusion along the way.

Welcome to the Team: Manage Differently

• Stereotypes and bias in the workplace
• Unconscious bias / Unconscious privilege
• Performance:
  • Prove me wrong: potential vs accomplishment
  • Overestimation and underestimation of competence
  • Perception of successes, failures, mistakes
  • Credit attribution and competence: smart vs lucky
  • Impact from others / Impact from self
  • The problem of perception with affirmative action / quotas
  • Internalization of bias

Day 2

Gender in the Workplace

Activity #4: Ask yourself – What would it be like to be a woman at work? What is it like to be a woman at work?

• Women and leadership: Do we like women leaders?
  • Case study: Howard vs Heidi

•  Who whispers / Who screams, Who thinks / Who knows 

Parenthood in the workplace:

• You cannot have it all (?)
• Maternity bias

Culture:

• What is culture?
• Cultural intelligence or the “capability to function effectively across national, ethnic, and organizational cultures.”
• Business case for diversity
• What can we do about it?
• The importance of critical thinking:
  • Identifies bias;
  • Orients us toward the problem, issue, or situation that we are addressing;
  • Identifies the whole picture. Bring in other necessary factors;
  • Considers both the simplicity and complexity of its object;
  • Gets us the most nearly accurate view of reality. 

• Conclusion: How to take action?
• Individual and organizational actions