Many organizations are conducting diversity and inclusion programs. In these efforts, training departments should be playing a major role in ensuring employees receive and apply this valuable training.
Given the importance of the topic, evaluation should not just be a standard exercise. In fact, you may want to do away with the normal 'Level 1' questions and focus on ensuring that recipients of the learning feel differently and will act differently.
Performitiv has been working with customers to suggest questions that can be incorporated into a diversity and inclusion evaluation. Below are three question categories and questions that might be helpful if you're delivering diversity and inclusion training:
Belonging: This training confirmed that I can be successful in this organization as my authentic self.
Self-Awareness: This training helped me reflect upon my own actions to positively contribute to a diverse and inclusive work culture.
Commitment: This training reinforced that the organization's leadership is committed to the values and concepts of diversity and inclusion.
The key to this evaluation is to ensure that one category evaluates and reinforces a sense of belonging and to understand if the training strengthened this sense or not. Next, the evaluation should measure self-awareness to understand if the employee is going to use this as an opportunity to reflect on their own action to make their workplace more inclusive. Finally, the evaluation should assess whether or not the learner believed the training reinforced a leadership commitment to diversity and inclusion.
In the end, diversity and inclusion training is important. Due to the serious nature of this training, training departments should not focus on a traditional 'Level 1' evaluation to evaluate content or the instructor but rather use this evaluation opportunity to truly understand if the training achieved important objectives like belonging, self-awareness and commitment. If the training is not doing these things it should be improved because it really matters to get this right.
If you are conducting diversity and inclusion training and need some support in evaluating it, contact us.
Thank you,
The Performitiv Team
