About $8 billion a year is spent on diversity trainings in the United States alone. Now, I tried very hard to find any evidence I could. […] Sadly enough, I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity. Now, that’s disappointing, discouraging, but maybe when we unpack it also understandable. The unpacking means that there’s a lot of research that has nothing to do with diversity or gender or biases but is more generally trying to understand how people think, and it has shown that it is actually very hard to change mind-sets.
Based on that evidence, maybe we shouldn’t be quite as shocked that diversity training doesn’t have the impact that we were hoping it could have. Because even though you and I might agree now that we will be inclusive tomorrow, it is hard to follow through on those virtuous intentions.
Author: Iris Bohnet
Source: McKinsey Quarterly
Subjects: Human Resources, Training & Development, Women in Business
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