There is clear evidence that shows the positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a couple of days, with many studies suggesting it instead activates bias and causes a backlash. So why do so many companies continue on this path?
The origins provide context
Diversity training first emerged in the mid-1960s with the introduction of equal employment laws and affirmative action. Conducting these trainings were enough to safeguard companies against employee discrimination lawsuits. Focused on applying psychology to racism, they coached managers on individual social and emotional skills to address racial conflict. Many trainings today are built on the same core platform – celebrating diversity detached from historical and systemic structures of power and discrimination.
The research
Sociology professors Dr. Frank Dobbin and Dr. Kalev’s research is one of almost a thousand studies dating back to before World War II, examining whether bias can be “trained away.” They track managerial diversity as the key indicator of progress. Their data came from:
- Annual EEO1 reports: government reports which contain data on managerial composition
- Survey data: used to understand training program characteristics and content
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: unemployment and industry composition data was used to normalize and account for variances
They studied 805 companies over 30 years.
The findings of their study
1. Diversity trainings, without accountability measures, elicit a backlash and result in negative effects on Black, Asian, and Hispanic employees.
Regardless of whether the diversity training was conducted for managers or the entire company, the graphs below illustrate the generally negative effects on Black, Asian, and Hispanic men and women. They decrease representation of these groups in management in the years following the training.
* Note that the numerical values in the above and following graphs are log-odd coefficients from OLS regression. Log-odds are a way of expressing the probability of a sample belonging to the positive class (in this case, white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian men and women in management).
A significant positive coefficient indicates that a group’s share of management jobs increases in the years following the new training program. A significant negative coefficient indicates that the group loses.
The study controls for various factors believed to affect managerial diversity. More information and standard errors for each data point are visible in the original report.
2. With accountability measures, some of those negative effects are reduced or reversed.
In this study, there are two factors that activate accountability through evaluation apprehension. One is the presence of a local or in-house diversity manager, and the other is the presence of a federal contractor, subjecting the employer to Department of Labor oversight. Even without actual compliance reviews or evaluations, a decision-maker’s belief that federal regulators or diversity managers may scrutinize their decisions is enough to mitigate some of the backlash seen without accountability.
3. Mandatory manager training causes broad backlash across the board, and voluntary manager training has almost the opposite effect.
Training that is mandatory and remedial in messaging elicits anger, resistance, and animosity. On the other hand, making the training voluntary does the exact opposite – it can help managers internalize these diversity efforts and champion them. This data shows the importance of the perceived source of motivation – read more about this in finding #4.
4. Legal curriculum in the training causes broad backlash by managers. In fact, they hired more white men in retaliation.
External threats don’t win converts. Curriculum attempting to prevent bias by highlighting potential legal repercussions commonly caused backlash. Dobbin and Kalev’s data shows that diversity improves most when the motivation is internal versus external. Legal reasons for diversity is seen as external pressure, which managers resist and retaliate against, whereas a collective business goal represents an internal motivation for the organization.
5. Accountability measures moderated the negative effects caused by legal curriculum in the training.
What does it all mean?
- Without accountability, diversity training elicits backlash. Even with accountability measures in place, diversity training appears to make little impact in promoting diversity in management positions.
- Where the motivation comes from is important – if the push is perceived to be from an external source (in this study it was the threat of legal consequences), managers retaliate and hire more white men into managerial positions.
- Voluntary manager training creates a sense of autonomy and choice, creating behavioral change that is internalized and sustainable, whereas mandatory training elicits retaliation.
What you can do instead
- Always measure the impact of your DEI initiatives so that you are not flying blind.
- Only then can you:
- Establish and clearly share your business motivations and and goals around pushing DEI with all leaders in your organization
- Create diversity champions by making training voluntary
- Implement accountability measures. Social accountability is a great way to do this at organizations that claim to value transparency – make change metrics like inclusion over time, promotion rate equity, and managerial diversity accessible, broken down by each department.
- Other strategies are shown to be more effective than diversity training – let’s chat about them (reach me at angela.lee@progressary.com or through this form)