When It Comes to Online DEI Training, Quality Matters

In 2023, you're likely not wondering whether your organization should complete diversity training to strengthen your team's capacity for equity and inclusion. The more likely question is: how will you complete it? 

If your search has led you to consider online trainings, you might have some questions, especially if your company is new to the world of online training. And if you're new to both diversity training and engaging in trainings online in general, it might feel overwhelming to sort through all of the information at your fingertips. 

So let's simplify things a bit!

Do online DEI trainings work?

Let's start here: yes, absolutely. While much has been said over the years about why DEIB trainings don't work, there is (as always) a story behind the story. Ultimately, pushback around DEIB work doesn't so much answer the question "does DEI training work?" as much as it answers "does DEI training work well when something is missing?"

In fact, training that "teach[es] people to manage their biases, change their behavior, and track their progress" works well, even in the long-term, to measure genuine organizational change. (Notice that this article is pulled, intentionally so, from the Harvard Business Review: the same organization which above questions whether DEI training works at all.)

We can take a couple important takeaways here.

First, and perhaps most obviously, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Could we say that all medicine does not work for headaches? Well... yes, if one is taking an anti-allergen medication for headaches that have nothing to do with allergies, then one is unlikely to see progress. In the same way, if one is sitting through a DEI training that is designed to lecture, rather than to engage, then it's unlikely we'll see powerful behavioral change... but it is not accurate to say that all DEIB trainings don't work.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, we can see from these findings that the type of training matters greatly. It matters whether the training is engaging, and whether it's built by subject-matter-experts. 

All of this can be hard enough to determine from an in-person training. How can you possibly know whether an online DEIB training can deliver all this? Here are three things to look for as you retain an online DEIB training service provider.

Psychological Safety

Any online DEIB training should prioritize creating psychological safety among its participants; that is, the ability to engage completely with the learning, without feeling judged or shamed. Because DEIB training requires participants to engage in behavioral change if organizations are to see results, such as lowered workplace DEIB challenges, we must allow space for this growth to happen at the speed that works best for learners.

Trust

Similarly, online DEIB training participants must be able to feel a sense of trust with each other, who they must view as safe people around whom to learn a new way of being. (When you think about it that way, it's actually quite a tall order, isn't it!) They must also be able to feel a sense of trust with their instructor, who must be able to establish themselves quickly as a subject-matter expert in both DEIB work (of course) and (less intuitively) online learning; that is, they must believe that the instructor can create a sense of psychological safety, even if they might not use those exact words to describe it.

Empathy

Finally, any online DEIB training must be able to engender a sense of empathy, or of being able to share space with another and to fully see and understand them. How else, after all, could we create a foundation for trust and psychological safety in the first place?

Three important factors for online learning

As you move through the process of selecting a vendor for any online learning, it may be helpful to ask questions about how they prioritize the above factors. When specifically searching for an online DEIB trainer, I would recommend that you ask them, point-blank, how they create an environment of psychological safety, trust, and empathy in their trainings. (Ideally, they would share this information with you up-front during a discovery call.)

Good luck; we genuinely believe that prioritizing these factors in your search will make all the difference in your experience... and the Harvard Business Review agrees with us!

For more information about how BE MORE with Anu can help you achieve your organization's DEIB objectives, check us out here.