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Diversity Training Doesn?t Work

Today?s Washington Post reports on a new study confirming what many people already suspected, conventional wisdom, or at least practice, to the contrary notwithstanding.

Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions, according to an analysis that turns decades of conventional wisdom, government policy and court rulings on their head.

A comprehensive review of 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. workplaces found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. The number of black, female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top positions fell by 12 percent. Similar effects were seen for Latinos and Asians.

The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs ? often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in discrimination lawsuits ? were the problem....

?When attendance is voluntary, diversity training is followed by an increase in managerial diversity,? said Alexandra Kalev, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, who led the research. ?Most employers, however, force their managers and workers to go through training, and this is the least effective option in terms of increasing diversity. . . . Forcing people to go through training creates a backlash against diversity.?

American businesses spend between $200 million and $300 million a year on diversity training. It would seem that money could spent on programs a good deal more useful, such as scholarship programs, recruitment, etc.

But wait. If mandatory diversity training creates ?a backlash against diversity,? I wonder if mandatory diversity itself ? of the sort that universities and other organizations routinely impose on themselves ? also creates a backlash against diversity and, even more ominous, against the ?diverse? beneficiaries of this racial beneficence.

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 20, 2008 (boomark / email).