Category: diversity article

Diversity and inclusion training boosts businesses, by helping them prevent workplace problems caused by biases, prejudices and more. But to enjoy a successful outcome, you must ensure the training is effective. This means clarifying your goals, defining behavioral standards, empowering underrepresented groups, engaging all levels of the company, and so much more!

To avoid common pitfalls, here are 5 keys to implementing effective diversity training in the workplace.

Step 1: Be Clear About Goals

Diversity training is designed to create awareness of diversity issues, and foster cohesion in team environments. To be successful, your employees must have the proper tools to maximize their development and performance. Your company also needs to reduce legal exposure by preventing diversity-based discrimination in the workplace.

When you create a comprehensive DEI program, your employees learn skills to engage both respectfully and positively in the workplace. They also need to learn to reduce both discrimination and prejudice based on social factors (gender, ethnicity, age, race, sexual orientation, religion, physical and mental ability, socioeconomic status, etc.). Understanding these goals will help ensure your success.

Step 2: Make D&I Training Ongoing 

Too often, diversity training is a checkbox. It’s offered when when a newly hired employee is onboarded, but then quickly forgotten. Instead, your training should be ongoing and over time. This will make it a part of your employees’ daily work habits, as they constantly learn new skills for equity, inclusion and belonging.

Step 3: Customize D&I Training to Your Unique Organization

While there are overarching D&I principles that apply to every organization, your company is unique. Your workplace has challenges that apply specifically to you and your employees. To address these, you should look inward to assess the specific issues that your company is facing. Then, use your diversity and inclusion program to specifically address those.

Step 4: Use Integrated Multi-Facted Deployment

Diversity and inclusion training shouldn’t be a one-stop shop at the beginning of the year. Rather, integrate into your company culture by offering D&I learning in varied formats (online, software tools, facilitator training, routine communications, employee groups etc.). When you vary how you present the information to your employees, it’s much more appealing to the group.

Make Diversity and Inclusion a part of your workplace, 365, with a Diversity and Inclusion Calendar.

Step 5:  Include All Employee Levels

All employees — regardless of title or level within the company — will benefit from diversity training. Not only should all employees participate, it’s essential to engage senior-level executives to permeate DEIB throughout your culture. Diversity training often requires resources (i.e., money) that upper-level executives can provide. When you have their buy-in, you gain access to the financial means to shine the proper spotlight on these important issues.

Final Thoughts 
D&I training is essential to business success. But there are several factors that can ensure its success. Be clear on goals, and tailor your training to your company’s needs. Practicing these 5 keys will go a long way to ensuring your success!

Explore the Interfaith Calendar 2022 and find ways to incorporate diversity and interfaith events with our list of key religious holidays 2022

10 Landmark Films About LGBTQ+ Stories

The LGBTQ+ rights movement has often taken place on stage, in music and on screen, with many pivotal chapters and sea changes being ushered in or celebrated by watershed moments in the arts and entertainment. Film is a medium that has allowed for emotional storytelling and self-expression from a community that often felt silenced, and also a medium for broadening perspective and fostering acceptance in a society that hadn’t always been tolerant.

Although not a comprehensive list, here are 10 films that stand out for their cultural impact and legacy in LGBTQ+ storytelling and rights movement.

The Boys in the Band (1970)

One year after the 1969 Stonewall riots which proved a huge stepping stone in the gay rights movement, drama film The Boys in the Band was released. It is often considered the first genuine attempt by Hollywood to make a film for gay audiences that portrayed gay characters in an honest light, and is now considered a major milestone in queer cinema.

Carol (2015)

Ranked by the British Film Institute as the best LGBT film of all time, Carol is a period drama about a forbidden affair between two women in 1950’s New York. It received a ten-minute standing ovation after its screening at the Cannes Film Festival, but was notably excluded from nominations at that years Academy Awards, which many critics attributed to its overtly gay themes.

Milk (2008)

Milk is a biographical film that tells the story of politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who became the first openly gay person to hold office in the state of California, his career, and eventual assassination. The film was lauded by critics and brought a chapter of the gay rights movement to new levels of recognition and support. It went on to garner 8 Oscar nominations.

Moonlight (2016)

Moonlight tells the story of Chiron, a gay black man, through three chapters in his life. The drama received critical acclaim for its noteworthy for its immediate, arresting filmmaking and raw emotionality, and went on to win Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.

Philadelphia (1993)

Starring Tom Hanks in an Oscar-winning performance, Philadelphia is a legal drama film that is credited as one of the first major motion pictures to tackle homophobia and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Since the beginning of the crisis in the early 80’s, mainstream American culture had often downplayed or dismissed the extend of the pandemic. Its portrayal on the big screen was part of the tide turnings towards understanding, and away from homophobia and dehumanization.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, LGBTQ+ representation in film was often either campy films for niche audiences, or characters in mainstream films who were stereotypical or simply a punchline. This changed with Brokeback Mountain, a sprawling, deeply sincere film centered on the strained and secret love between two cowboys over two decades in the American West. It was met with acclaim, controversy, and censorship, became a benchmark in queer cinema, and is now considered a turning point for LGBTQ+ stories becoming mainstream.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

As described above, many gay films after the AIDS crisis and before Brokeback Mountain were often campy and niche, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t heartfelt, human and groundbreaking in their own right. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is an Australian comedy about two drag queens and a transgender woman who embark on a road trip after accepting an offer to perform a show at a casino. Priscilla was praised for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in a positive light and credited with elevating queer stories to the mainstream. It even starred Hugo Weaving in one of his earlier roles.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Call Me By Your Name, based on a book of the same name, tells the story of a teenager living with his family in 1980’s rural Italy who begins to form a connection with a graduate studen who comes to stay with his family over the summer. The film received praise for its cinematography as well as its nuanced navigation of identity, love, coming of age, and newborn desire.

Paris is Burning (1990)

A groundbreaking documentary chronicling the spirited, defiant ballroom culture of queer New York in the 1980s. Paris is Burning captured forms of dance, aesthetics and lingo that are hallmarks of queer history and influence pop culture today.

Love, Simon (2018)

A heartfelt, coming-of-age high school story. Teenager Simon struggles with his identity and how to express himself to the world around him, finding connection in unexpected places. Love, Simon was noted for portraying gay characters and relationships in an uplifting and romantic light, whereas many LGBTQ+ films have often focused on tragedy and alienation.