Creating better learning opportunities with a diversity lens
The most obvious solution to upping employee retention, then, is creating more effective training and development programs. However, I hear from business leaders every day who struggle to achieve their goals despite having elaborate programs in place. The main issue here is that many of these programs aren’t designed with the user, or the employee, in mind.
For example, while organizations and businesses are genuinely putting effort into getting more women in leadership and creating holistic career advancement programs for women employees, most of them aren’t able to achieve the program goals.
One of the reasons for the learning program’s failure is they aren’t designed by placing the user (women) top of mind to ensure success. Many organizations who make gender diversity a priority—by setting aspirational goals for the proportion of women in leadership roles, insisting on diverse slates of candidates for senior positions, and developing mentoring and training programs—are frustrated. They and their companies spend time, money, and good intentions on efforts to build a more robust pipeline of upwardly mobile women, and then not much happens.
According to research, it is found that ''second-generation” gender bias still present in organizations and in society disrupts the learning cycle
In this podcast, listen to Sarah McCann-Bartlett, Chief Executive Officer at Australian HR Institute (AHRI) in conversation with Yasmin Taj, Managing Editore, People Matters where she shares more about how organizations can create development programs aimed at promoting more diversity.
On the current state of Diversity & Inclusion, Sarah shares that in some ways, she feels that we really have made progress yet in other ways we still have some way to go. She further shares, “On the positive side definitely, our metrics have improved, we can measure the fact that our workplaces are more diverse. We can measure now where are we placed when it comes to advancing in the D&I efforts. For example, AHRI has diversity & inclusion metrics maturity model where organizations can measure how mature they are diverse they are from diversity maturity perspectives.”
“I feel that there is a lack of understanding about how diversity is driven in organizations. But she is positive. There is a glaring unconscious bias that exists that not only hampers D&I efforts but also overall employee experience,” shares Sarah.
One of the great takeaways of the discussion was when Sarah reflected upon how can we create capability-building programs in creating an equitable work culture.
Sarah commented, “Organizations have to pair capability building with mobility to create a range of opportunities.”
“The success mantra is giving opportunity and looking far into the future with a strategic & diversity lens.”
Listen to the full interview here: