By Mark Dorosz
VP of Compliance Learning, Interactive Services
Cultural identity is a key aspect within the workplace, and having a wide variety of identities represented matters to companies. Hiring a diverse workforce enriches the workplace experience for all staff, and allows for a wide variety of perspectives and viewpoints in the workplace.
However, diverse workplaces also create challenges when it comes to creating compliance training that appeals to a variety of diverse cultures and races. When developing and implementing a compliance training, it’s important to create a training that will appeal to and reach every employee present. Keep these ideas in mind for creating a learning space that’s safe for employees from all backgrounds:
- Use examples that relate to employees from various backgrounds. A good compliance training ensures everyone feels included in the presentation. When relating examples and giving employees written case studies, use employee names that come from a wide variety of nationalities and cultural backgrounds, as well as making sure men and women get represented equally. When using multimedia, choose visual media that incorporates employees from different races and cultures.
- Make an effort to call on employees equally. All of us have good intentions when it comes to treating employees equally, but research shows that unconscious internalized bias comes into play for educators of all backgrounds. Several studies have demonstrated that teachers are more likely to call on white, male students than women or minority students. Make a conscious, deliberate effort to equally involve employees who represent different backgrounds.
- Be aware of, and open to learning about, cultural differences. Cultures often have very different approaches to privacy, which can change how they view compliance. For example, employees from India often live in closer quarters in India, and need less privacy or personal space than American employees. Be open to learning from employees about their cultural traditions, and adapting the compliance material that’s sensitive diverse backgrounds.
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Mark Dorosz has written and spoken extensively on learning, compliance and ethics in forums such as CLO Magazine, Training Week and Compliance & Ethics Professional. For the past 15 years he has helped multi-nationals in the US, Europe and Asia build a culture of compliance through learning. In 2014, he won a Brandon Hall Gold Award for his work with Tiffany & Co. Mark is currently a VP of Compliance Learning with Interactive Services; he can be reached at mdorosz@interactiveservices.com or +1 (212) 376-5780.
Great advise. May I print and share with my Compliance Committee? Thanks.
Shirely, Feel free to print and share with your Compliance Committee!
Good points. Of course, we need to be careful about how we elicit the information mentioned in your third bullet point so that we don’t come across as biased or singling out the individuals who might have learning preferences based on culture-based traditions. It might be best to offer observations to the entire group that we are all born with different mental attributes, or grow up in different situations, that make it easier for us to learn in different ways. Open a discussion, leading with a personal example and then ask to hear from them the ways that may affect their optimal learning methods. If necessary, use “plants” such as asking one of more of your “lieutenants” to be ready to raise their honest personal learning method preferences and how they believe they may have originated to open the discussion. This may help to get the indispensable ownership of the participants.
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