Inclusion and diversity at the workplace have increasingly become top priorities for most organizations. It is now imperative for organizations to be more intentional and follow a thoughtful approach to help them grow and succeed. These factors also play a crucial role in improving the well-being of employees and overall business productivity.
Diverse workplace training can help companies and their teams to adopt effective strategies for creating an inclusive workplace culture. Here are three ways your organization can train your diverse workforce in a way that acknowledges and meets their various needs.
1. Make Your Content Accessible for Differently-Abled Worker
Consider these statistics:
- 61 million (26%) adults in the United States live with a disability
- 53 million are adults of working age
- 9.3 million (17.5%) of those adults are in the workforce
- 62% of all employees with a disability have an invisible disability
An invisible disability means that you may not be aware of all of the differing abilities in your workplace. You can address this by making your training accessible for everyone. It is possible to deliver vibrant, content-rich e-learning training courses that are engaging for both your typically-abled and differently able workers. Employ strategies such as closed captioning for the hearing impaired, audio descriptions of images for the visually impaired and incorporate assistive technologies for those with physical and dexterity limitations. Also, try to utilize formatting strategies and clear navigation options for those with learning disabilities.
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 e-learning 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,gamification
- Reading/Writing- Branching scenarios
3. Promote Diversity via E-Learning Characterization
Many e-learning designers include characters in serious games, interactive courses, quizzes, and more. To promote diversity in the workplace, create diverse e-learning characters. Include characters of varying genders, races, and ages in your e-learning stories and games. Individuals with disabilities should also be represented in online learning characterization. When learners can’t see themselves represented in the content, it sends a message that training is only beneficial to a certain type of person, making the experience disengaging or even discriminatory. Building diversity into your e-learning shows your learners that everyone has the opportunity to grow and succeed. 4. Create an E-Learning 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 e-learning course that tackles diversity and inclusion.
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.
Remember that design drives accessibility. The ultimate goal is to enable a diverse range of people to access your content and to use it comfortably and effectively. By making your e-learning content accessible, relatable, and inclusive to each of your employees, everyone benefits.
