Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 9 from someone who has a much more complex and sophisticated engagement with differences," says Grange, so it's important to bring a training modality into the organization instead of one size fits all. "Too often, the same training is given to everyone in the same room, and people walk out of there, out of the room, with mixed kind of reactions. And some people get a lot out of it, [while] others get nothing out of it." It's also advisable to get a good sense of the leadership, he says. "A lot of leaders don't have the capacity to lead in an EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion] environment, so how are you going to prepare them to do that? Putting up a few posters around the workplace and having leaders send out tweets and the next hashtag — that is not leading." Effective change is also about inclusive design, says Baoween, as some industries are more traditional while others are more open and progressive, and some learners are from younger generations versus older generations. "When you design the training, you need to be aware of that. I call it inclusive design — meet people where they are." Plus, it's about tailored training, so training for a construction company will look different than that for a tech company, just because of the way Budworth. "This is a broader societal issue and our organizations are just reflections of our society. Even the most well-meaning and the most socially motivated organizations will still have problems and can always benefit [from making improvements].'" An organization should then think about what it hopes to achieve, says Budworth, and that can mean asking questions such as: "Were we hoping to see differences in how people are hired here?... Are we starting to see more diverse applications from different places, from different institutions, from different people? Who gets hired and who gets promoted?" It's so important to understand the motivation behind the training, says Grange. "Do you have systemic racism within the organization built into your policies, programs and practices?" he says. "You need to do some front-end work, substantive front-end work to really make it effective and to really make it stick for people. [Otherwise], it just comes across as performative." It's also recommended that employers assess their learners, he says. "If individuals are at a stage where they're not even curious about cultural differences, the training that you would give that individual is very different they work and the demographics and services, he says. "You want the training to really be relevant to the participants and their background." The experience of the facilitator is also important, says Baoween. "Some discussions are sensitive; some people raise interesting questions about defending the police or Black Lives Matter versus 'all lives matter.' And you need an experienced facilitator to be able to manage the conversation and make people have a really good discussion for constructive discussion versus a heated discussion that leads to resentment and anger and frustration." Measuring success Another important element to a success- ful anti-racism training is gauging its success. If, for example, your aim was to change the experience of people within the organization, that can be measured, says Budworth. "You can either survey or have focus groups... If you're in a large organization, you may even already have groups that have formed that that are intended to support different demographic groups. And you might ask them, over time: 'What are your impressions of this organization and how it supports you and how it serves you? What were you trying to accomplish? And did you do it?'" Another measure would be your processes, says Grange. "Are you hitting those benchmarks on the EDI benchmark that you've set for yourself, in terms of how you hire, where you look for new talent, what are you doing to build a pipeline internally?" he says. "And success is not necessarily going out to the shop floor and counting the number of dark brown faces you see on the floor. That's not what the success should be. Because you can have a lot of diversity with very little inclusion." CHRR "If it's applied in the wrong way, it could really lead to bad results, which, to be honest with you, is the common result." Wyle Baoween, HRx Technology

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