Workshop on Promoting Diversity and Embracing Inclusiveness

Synopsis
Diversity has taken on a new importance in the 21st C workplace, which is filled with diverse employees from various cultures, age groups, professions, races, ethnicities, genders, religions, and political affiliations, and so on. Diverse people communicate, behave, interact, do things differently, and in certain ways. These could result in misunderstanding, stereotyping, and even conflict in the workplace.

With diversity come great opportunities. For instance, research shows that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 % more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. However, fully benefiting from a diverse workforce demand removing barriers, stereotypes, and creating a more inclusive workplace. 

The workshop aims at increasing the awareness of employees, supervisors, and managers about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and how it’s very crucial for individual, team, and organizational success. It also increases their abilities to contribute their share in promoting diversity and embracing inclusiveness by understanding what diversity is all about, and how they can help create a more diverse world at work and marketplace. They will be empowered to develop skills such as communicating effectively, listening actively, and employing effective questioning techniques that allow them to get along with diverse people successfully. 

Tentative Workshop Objectives
The main goal of this workshop is to empower participants with the necessary strategies, processes, and tools so that they may promote diversity and embrace inclusiveness and in turn master getting along with others. Below are the specific objectives of the workshop (While the objectives can be modified to meet the particular needs of your team, below is a common starting point). The workshop is designed to:

  • Define terms and review the history of diversity
  • Help understand the meanings of stereotypes and biases, how they develop, and the reasons for one’s own perspectives
  • Provide strategies to remove barriers that discourage diversity in the workplace, and in the social community
  • Instill the importance of active listening to receive messages in a diverse population
  • Equip participants to learn effective questioning techniques to communicate with strength
  • Demonstrate the similarities and differences between the two main cultural divides in the world
  • Improve the cultural competency of participants
  • Equip participants to prevent discrimination and comply with legal obligations
  • Provide insights to reduce prejudice and better manage diversity in culture, race, ethnicity, gender, generation, sexual orientation, and so on.
  • Show how to respond to personal complaints, and developing a support system to manage the resolution process
  • Explain on how to record a complaint, analyze the situation, and take appropriate resolution actions

PROJECT SCOPE
The workshop on Promoting Diversity and Embracing Inclusiveness is a very dynamic and interactive workshop. It’s filled with great insights, interesting and relevant stories that allow participants to quickly appreciate similarities and differences among major cultures in the world, and in turn improve their ability to work with people from diverse ethnicities, age and gender groups, races, and religions. The workshop introduces participants to their own unconscious biases and preferences, and their effects as they communicate, relate and work with diverse people. It also empowers your managers, supervisors, and employees to promote diversity, and embrace inclusion in the workplace, and therefore, master getting along with diverse people. We have up-to-date and well-designed Workshop Manuals, Facilitator’s Guide, Icebreakers, Activities, PowerPoint Slides, and offer Certificate of Completion to all attendees upon completing the program successfully. However, if it’s necessary, we’ll be happy to work with you and customize our materials to make them relevant to your situation, meet the needs of your people, and align with your organization’s corporate culture.

PROPOSED APPROACH
This workshop is participants-centered. The facilitator doesn’t lecture. The workshop employs adult learning principles. It begins by asking participants to share their expectations from the workshop. These expectations will be checked at the end of the workshop to see if participants’ expectations are met. Once the facilitator provides background information and a story or two for each section, he then asks a series of questions that allow participants to reflect, dig deep, and through the process learn from within as they respond to the probing questions. Participants will also engage in one-on-one, small, and large group discussions to learn from other fellow participants. There will be quizzes, and assignments to evaluate learning. At the end of the workshop, each participant will be given an opportunity to recognize one thing they learned, and one immediate action they take because they attended this workshop.

TYPICAL WORKSHOP AGENDA (may be modified to meet specific team needs)
AM:

  • Welcome / review objectives / expectations
  • Game to make the discussion on diversity impactful
  • Processing the experience of participants and drawing lessons from the above game
  • Definitions of terms, and a brief history of diversity
  • Large group discussion on culture shock
  • Explanation plus large group discussion about the two main global cultural divides in the world using three parameters

PM:

  • Large group interactive discussion about the levels of diversity using a model
  • Continued discussion in pairs on the above topic
  • Briefing and small group discussion on levels of tolerances
  • Discussion on handling complaints
  • Summary and assignment

Expected Outputs/Deliverables
The major deliverables expected from this workshop are as follows:

  • A one-day customized workshop
  • PowerPoint Slides
  • Participants Manuals
  • Scheduled small and large group discussions
  • Customized activities
  • Customized role plays
  • Evaluation Form

Introducing Success PATHWAYS
Success Pathways provides interactive and dynamic organizational and leadership development workshops that add values to our customers from diverse industries. Our goal is to support our clients in creating a productive workplace that allows them to experience increased morale, harmony, teamwork, innovation, creativity, teamwork, and in turn high performance. One of the key benefits of working with Success Pathways is that we customize each of our workshops to align with our clients’ needs, provide case studies, and activities, games, and/or role plays that are very relevant to our clients’ industries. No two workshops on the same theme are ever the same. We believe that you are unique and deserve a unique experience. We also take extra measures to customize each workshop and make it appropriate and timely to address your specific organizational challenges. We endeavor to offer workshops that are dynamic and engaging that simplify the learning process and also make the whole experience educational and fun at the same time.

Some of our happy clients

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH),
  • A Critical Path,
  • General Services Administration (GSA),
  • Per Scholas,
  • US Department of Agriculture (USDA),
  • Everis,
  • Westat,
  • Fuji Film,
  • US Forest Services,
  • CI International,
  • National Cancer Institute,
  • ICATT Consulting,
  • WindWalker,
  • Public Schools,
  • SkillPath and National Seminars, and so on.

Notes:

We also have other workshops you may be interested. Below are the links that provide you the Synopsis and Learning Objectives of the available workshops:

If you would like to check out our Soft Skills Development Program for your supervisors and managers, read the proposal by clicking here. This program is based on the recently published book entitled ‘Soft Skills That Make or Break Your Success: 12 soft skills to master self, get along with, and lead others successfully’.

Please note that Success Pathways uses experienced consultant trainers. Based on your industry, the profile of participants, and your request, we can assign the right fit trainer.