Cultural Competency-Diversity Certificate Series

Business Imperative of Diversity

Changing Customer Base:

For companies to remain competitive in the global economy, the composition of their workforce must reflect the changing customer market populations. Together, minorities and women contribute to more than $1.5 trillion annually to the U.S. economy. Companies with a diverse workforce are better able to market their products and services to an increasingly diverse market population.

Enhance Financial Performance:

Several studies have demonstrated that effective diversity programs are linked to the company’s financial performance.

Reduced Turnover:

Anecdotal evidence from companies shows that attention to diversity can lead to reduced turnover.

Improved Productivity:

Anecdotal information from several companies – including Intl, DuPont, General Motors, Inland Steel and Pitney Bowes – shows that a more diverse and team-based workforce helps generate new ideas and increase revenues.

Increase Job Satisfaction and Employee Morale:

The Families & Work Institute’s “1197 National Study of the Changing Workforce” reports that, when looking at a range of issues including equal opportunities for advancement, lack of discrimination, and respect, “employees in supportive workplace environments are the most satisfied with their jobs,” and “employees whose workplaces are supportive and responsive to their individual needs are the most loyal.”

Decreased Vulnerability to Legal Challenges:

Companies that have established diversity programs and management systems to address and resolve potential discrimination and harassment issues are less vulnerable to lawsuits and multimillion-dollar penalties.

Enhanced Reputation:

A company’s ability to be known as a great place to work with an open and inclusive environment can enhance its reputation in the marketplace. The development of several new media recognition list including Fortune magazine’s “50 Best Companies in America for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics,” and Working Women Magazine’s “25 Companies for Female Executive” have helped focus positive attention on corporate diversity practices.

Learning outcomes

Develop a basic awareness of their own cultural heritage

1. Explore some manifestation and effects of prejudice and discrimination

2. Demonstrate interactive skills such as listening, empathy, consideration, engaging in a dialogue

3. Appreciate positive aspects of cultural diversity

4. Respond in a constructive manner to differing views, backgrounds, practices and cultures.

Diversity Awareness Training

This workshop is designed to teach the benefits of managing and valuing diversity and the misconceptions about it in the workplace. The workshop is highly interactive and participants will engage in active dialogue.

Program Goals:

• To provide an understanding of prejudice and discrimination and the harms they inflict upon individuals and society.
• To recognize our own and others’ biases and to take personal responsibility for combating prejudice and discrimination.
• To challenge the stereotypes and biases which inhibit intergroup understanding.
• To encourage participants to take steps to create a work environment, which is more receptive to differences.

Are We Talking the Same Language? Cross Cultural Communication Skills

Many people come to diversity workshops thinking that they are nothing more than “sensitivity” sessions. It is important that they know, therefore, that while diversity work does involve some sensitivity training, it is also designed to help participants gain both knowledge and skills that are necessary to work more effectively in a multicultural organization.

At the end of the workshop, participants will have:

• Heightened awareness of both their personal cultural lenses and the impact of those lenses on “target” individuals.
• Increased sense of their own cultural identity.
• Expanded knowledge of issues of power in cultural dynamics.
• Improved understanding of how misunderstandings can occur in cross-cultural communication and strategies to avoid them.
• Knowledge of and practice in an effective strategy for interrupting culturally inappropriate/offensive remarks, (i.e., standing up for one’s own cultural groups and being an effective ally to others).
• A personal action plan for both continued learning and continued skill development in diversity issues.

The way we communicate varies widely between, and even within, cultures. This workshop is designed to look at fundamental patterns. Participants will attain an appreciation of these differences and acknowledgement that they are real. PREREQUISITE: Diversity Awareness Training.

Adding Class to the Mix

This daylong session is designed to explore the issues of socio-economic class status and how they overlap and intertwine with issues of color, ethnicity, and the social construction of race. Participants will have an opportunity to engage in several exercises to explore these issues and discuss how to use them back on their own workplace. They will also receive copies of the exercise designs, as well as a bibliography of references and resources.

Participants will engage in exercises to explore these issues and will discuss how to use the information in their organizations.

Race: The Power of an Illusion

This program is the acclaimed three-part series that questions the very idea of race as biological. But it also asks, if race isn’t biological, what is it? Where did the idea come from? How did it take such a grip over our minds? How does race still matter, shaping life chances and opportunities? This session will screen clips from the series and demonstrate how to use the video/DVD, its companion webs site at www. pbs.org/Race, and other resources to help students confront their myths and assumptions. This approach explores how race “lives” not in our bodies but in our institutions that quietly and often invisibly channel resources, power and wealth disproportionately to the “unmarked” race, white people.

This workshop will challenge one of our most fundamental beliefs that race is a biological construct. Participants will gain an understanding of the biological vs. social construct of race and why race is still an issue in our country.

Gender Issues

This workshop will help participants understand that men and women are taught to behave and communicate differently. Participants will learn some of the “Invisible Rules” each culture uses to define appropriate adult behavior and learn to improve communication between genders.

Objectives:

• Understand that women and men behave and communicate differently because they are raised in two different cultures
• See how gender cultures can clash in the context of leader/subordinate and team communications
• Learn how to improve team communication between men and women instead of placing blame on either gender.