Includability Official Partner, Your D&I have launched on-demand diversity and inclusion workshops to allow users to learn at their own pace.
The new training materials allow individuals and companies to access workshops at convenient times for them and will involve completing video instruction segments, reference factsheets and questionnaires. Each lesson would take about an hour to complete and there are ten lessons in each workshop.
The consultancy, headed by diversity and inclusion (D&I) practitioner, Chris Allan, has initially launched two workshops, with plans to introduce a further three soon.
The workshops currently available include, ‘It’s Just Banter’ – an introduction to diversity and inclusion, according to Allan, in which inclusive language and protected characteristics in the workplace is discussed. He says it allows attendees to reflect on potentially harmful language they may have used in the workplace, similar to an in-person workshop.
The workshop explores instances where perhaps you've said something in the workplace where they have perhaps caused offence. Looking at that in the language workshop and the variations of banter, whether that is friendly banter, unintentional banter or malicious banter that can cause harm. ‘The Bigger Picture’ is the second workshop title in which unconscious bias is also discussed.
Your D&I aim to ‘pull no punches’ with this series of workshops as malicious language is still being used in workplaces on a daily basis. They say the workshops begin with using the strong language to give users a shock so they can identify it clearly if it is used in the workplace.
They say that the new on-demand workshops will not lose the interactive nature of a live presentation as users will have an email function to pose questions that may arise and encourage to be as engaging as they would be in a live workshop.
The on-demand service was designed with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in mind. The D&I specialists say most of the inquiries they receive are from the creative and digital industry who can be time poor because of the volume of work they do. They can also charge by the hour or by the day and therefore requiring them to give up hours to do a workshop can impact their salary and Your D&I are able to offer the on-demand service to these types of businesses as they can approach this workshop during the downtime during a break at the end of the day.
Speaking of the launch, Allan said,
“I’m really excited. We've done trials of the workshops so far and the feedback that we've had has been positive. We've heard a few people saying that they've been through unconscious bias training before, and this resonates differently. It makes them think about it differently and has been more of an impact based on previous unconscious bias training they have been through. The product rating and the feedback that we've had has been really positive.”
The idea of an on-demand service has been one the company has been working on since its inception in 2020. They say once all the on-demand workshops have been announced, Your D&I will be looking to launch a ‘DIY D&I kit’ in which businesses will be able to access several action plans that they will be able to self-implement over six-month periods with follow up support afterword.
“We are trying to create a D&I E-commerce platform for these types of businesses where time is of the essence,” added Allan.
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