7.5. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Training and development functions differ due to the impact of their educational institutions. In the United States, training supports individual skill building and competency enhancement, enabling Americans to take control of their work environment and their future. Diversity training focuses mainly on issues related to the internal and external dimensions of diversity, that is, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and enhanced communication. Such programs build the competency of an employee base and are primarily seen as enhancing motivation—and competency for individual employees.

Global training and global diversity expand on this foundation. In the developing economies of China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia and in regions of Latin American and Eastern Europe, corporate-sponsored training is a business requirement that assures a company that its employees have basic skills. Training is a survival need within those economies. Many of the educational institutions in developing nations are restricted to certain economic or social classes, so employees do not have easy access to education and training. A large percentage of employees cannot purchase those educational benefits on their own and want companies to provide them. While people in the United States will talk of disproportionate access to "good" education, many in the developing nations experience disproportionate access to any education.

7.5.1. Training Across Cultures

Many if not all of the following considerations for global diversity training apply to cross-cultural and cross-national training. In corporate training within national boundaries, the issue is the degree to which training conforms to the nationally preferred corporate style, with appropriate adjustments for the subcultural values of minority groups. Training in the United States is in English, without considering those whose preferred language is Spanish, Cantonese, or Urdu. The burden is on the person who speaks English as a second language to master the dominant culture's language. This is not as true in global companies that wish to respect diversity. "Suitcased" programs—designed, developed, and initially conducted for one specific country and culture and assumed to be transportable to anywhere in the worldwide corporate system—create a disservice to global training. However, because of limited time, staff, and funds, they will continue to be developed. Trainers and instructors supporting global diversity should ask the following questions:

  • What aspects of this program's objectives, goals, activities, and processes are ethnocentric and need adjustment to provide greater service to the targeted international audience?

  • Can I conduct this program in the designated language? If so, why is this so? If not, what needs to be done to change the process?

  • Is my preferred communication style effective in this environment or among the people in the training group? How will I have to adjust that style to be more effective? Is it easily adjustable, or do we need to redesign?

  • How does the targeted group look at training and its own involvement in the training process? Will members be interactive? Reactive? Nonactive? What is my role as trainer, teacher, and coach?

  • What terms, concepts, and ideas need to be simplified, redefined, or contextualized in order to be most effective?

  • What environmental and cultural context exists in the training location that would make the concepts and process ineffective? What can be done to address this incompatibility?

As we continue examining global diversity training, keep in mind your general orientation to training, as many of the things discussed have an application to domestic training with persons who are of different cultural backgrounds.

7.5.2. Training Department as Strategic Diversity Change Agent

Training and learning/development functions need to reflect on their responses to the concepts of globalization and inclusiveness. There is an increasing requirement to support inclusivity of opposing thoughts, divergent behaviors, and dissimilar styles of trainees. This can be in marked distinction to centralized training policies. Training departments also need to become the center point for the collection, analysis, and exchange of vital corporate intelligence, which supports the concepts of the Global Diversity Capability Cycle. Today's market can move beyond traditional educational and professional roles of classic training departments to the creation of agents who will gather, sort, and reintroduce globally diverse workplace intelligence. Diversity training has been aligned with EEO in the United States and current EU legislation as a protection from discrimination. It has not yet become a core part of a corporate strategy that promotes individual and systemic inclusiveness.

What can training departments do to help a company make the most of global diversity? Training departments have the methodology, skills, and systems to engage adult learners. They retain the expertise needed to identify national and civilizational workplace information, cross-reference it, align it with the corporation's goals, and communicate it in the workplace. This is in marked distinction to the interpersonal, intragroup, or intergroup communication models of many domestic diversity efforts. This more expansive macro view of diversity training requires a classic training department to shift away from a longstanding position as a provider of diversity "training" and its economical but limited "off-the-shelf" programs. Training departments can become business units with centers of diversity learning and divergent cultural methods, creating tools for global exchanges of intellectual capital. Domestic diversity efforts have enhanced the visual diversity of people who work in our national factories and who sit at the training tables. Training has also increased employees' ability to communicate effectively with each other. The next step is to recognize international diversity of thought, behavior, and style as a core part of global diversity research and education. Thoughtfully constructed, culturally executed, and inclusively designed programs can accomplish that goal.

Technology supports are essential for finding best practices and designing, developing, and evaluating training products. Protocols and training designs need to be rewritten for the topics that are traditionally taught in domestic locations. The following exercise illustrates the design changes that might help a traditional corporate training event incorporate strategic global diversity.

As an individual, a member of a team, or a member of a department, review the "Global Diversity Perspectives in Training Design" listings. Consider where your company has been successful and where there is room for improvement. Which items reflect your company's success in creating greater inclusivity and global diversity?

7.5.3. Suggestions for Using the "Global Diversity Perspectives in Training Design" Listings

Objectives

  • To increase the potential of all training to support global diversity

  • To expand global diversity perspectives in specific traditional training modules

  • To identity which current training programs need to be redesigned to include a global diversity design

Intended Audience

  • Training and development professionals, managers, and HR professionals involved in training and development policy and implementations

Global Diversity Perspectives in Training Design

Directions: The following sampling illustrates the design changes that might help a traditional corporate training event engage with strategic global diversity. As a quick review, check as many boxes as possible in the following document reflecting your company's success in creating greater inclusivity and global diversity. As an individual, a member of a team, or a member of a department, review the following list. Consider where your company has been successful, and where there is room for improvement.

Training TopicsSuggestions to Expand Global Diversity Perspectives in Training Design and Outcomes
Diversity Training

  • Identify and coordinate different national definitions of diversity and reconcile their unique meanings and their relationship to the corporate mission and vision

  • Utilize different national focused case studies that support diversity and identify overlaps, disconnects, and possible solutions applicable to the advancement of diversity within the company

  • Use an internationally diverse team to facilitate all training allowing for modeling and verbalizing of their diversity dissimilarity, especially in resolving issues such as team leadership, design, and presentation skills

Manager Skills Training

  • Expand the corporate leadership training requirements for all junior managers to include mastery of two different national leadership styles and three cross-civilizational styles for all corporate officers and demonstrate how those models collectively bring value to the corporation

  • Script all domestic training designs, regardless of country of origin, with multinational and cross-civilizational examples of diversity, demonstrating cultural inclusivity and transfer of global learning

  • Train managers in identifying a broad spectrum of diversity behaviors and style-switching techniques that reconcile the corporate model with various national models

  • Provide checklists of where, when, and how to switch style in different corporate settings, for example, team meetings, conversation with subordinates, presentations to senior management, and so forth

Performance Management Training

  • Train to identify and use different patterns of national and civilizational patterns of power, status, and privilege within the manager/subordinate relationship, highlighting how they affect performance and outcome and provide processes for reconciliation

  • Train and evaluate all supervisors in direct and indirect communication models and provide guidelines for the appropriate style switching

  • Provide guidelines on different national work orientations, ranges of cultural performance tolerance, and legal requirements for warnings and dismissals

Time Management Programs

  • Evaluate design bias to supporting a "work to live" or a "live to work" mentality and reconcile

  • Identify different national orientations to workplace efficiency, including the time frames for task accomplishments and collegial workplace interaction, and create process to discuss and reconcile different expectations related to corporate productivity

  • Provide guidelines for timing of cross-national, regional, and continental meetings, be they face-to-face, electronic, or telephony, and their consistency with the local parameters of social appropriateness of business time, home time, and personal time

Team Building

  • Identify and communicate the different styles of team development and leadership as legitimate within different national environments, including but not limited to autocratic, democratic, and interdependent self-directed styles

  • Provide global diversity profiles of national political, social, and corporate leaders, listing their specific competencies that supported their success with applications to leadership and the corporate mission and vision

Supervisor Training

  • Identify key employee motivators within varied cultures and script options for supervisors in motivating and directing subordinates in egalitarian, hierarchical, or interdependent environments as appropriate

  • Outline the appropriate cross-cultural feedback styles for different SSI profiles and reconcile with the corporation's preferred style



Time

  • 45 minutes

Materials

  • Copies of "Global Diversity Perspectives in Training Design"

Directions

  • Engage participants in a discussion on the connection between global diversity and training.

  • Review each training topic on the list and discuss how each of the suggested expansions broadens the concept of diversity.

  • Consider each topic and check whether your company has initiated the same or similar changes in your training design and delivery.

  • Form into groups and discuss your company's successes in implanting a training strategy that addresses global diversity.

Questions for Discussion/Consideration

  • What types of training programs are most conducive to including a global diversity perspective?

  • What types of training programs will make it difficult to include a global diversity perspective?

  • Which topic areas need to be addressed immediately to bring a global diversity perspective to your company?

Caveats, Considerations, and Variations

  • This exercise can be used by any trainer for a global diversity audit.

  • Be sure to create a good business case for global diversity as you begin to redesign your training and development programs. Design changes can be costly, and all changes should be clearly associated with benefit to the company.

7.5.4. Diversity-Inclusive Training Design

Designing for flexibility and inclusiveness illustrates a respect for diversity. Use the "Globalizing the Training Design Process" checklist to identify what you might change in order to make global diversity a subtext of all corporate training.

The questions on the checklist identify traditional stages within a standard training design. Check which aspects of these items exist within your current process. Consider those that you have not checked and explore how your design teams can reconcile these other perspective with your current state to enhance your ability to design, deliver, and evaluate training for your diverse employee base. Recognize that these statements represent extremes or polarities. Which box sounds more like your company? What can you do to reconcile it with the other box?

7.5.5. Suggestions for Using "Globalizing the Training Design Process"

Objectives

  • To identify how current designs and programs align with a specific diversity orientation

  • To approach program design from the position of a global diversity dilemma that needs to be reconciled

  • To identify which phase of the global design process needs to be addressed to increase the receptivity of global participants

Intended Audience

  • Training and development professionals, managers, and HR professionals involved in training and development policy and implementations

Time

  • 45 minutes

Materials

  • Copies of "Globalizing the Training Design Process"

Directions

  • Engage participants in a discussion on the eight phases of effective training design.

  • Explain that each phase has an internal design dilemma that needs to be reconciled to create a successful global diversity design. Tell participants to choose which aspect of each dilemma best expresses how your company currently functions and to place a check in the appropriate box.

  • Tell them to review and prioritize the eight phases in the order in which they need to be redesigned to be more inclusive of a global diversity perspective.

  • Have participants form small groups and discuss their responses and prioritization. Each group should identify three action items that will begin the process of creating inclusive global diversity designs.

  • Bring everyone together for a large group discussion.

Questions for Discussion/Consideration

  • What types of dilemmas are your design teams facing as you attempt to bring a global perspective into all training?

  • What specific phase of training design needs to be overhauled in order to be more effective in increasing global diversity in the company?

Globalizing the Training Design Process

Directions: Review the polarities in each stage of the design process and consider your current process and its range of inclusiveness. Check off which box best describes your current and/or preferred response. Consider how you might adjust your process by reconciling the differences to become more inclusive of diverse perspectives.

1. What We Might Need (Assumed Problem)

  • Information stems from senior managers or those who hold influential or authority positions; data-collection tools use corporate HQ language and approved categories; formats are low-context (check-off boxes, scales, and so on); limited quantifiable data collected through e-mail/pulse surveys sent off to unknown evaluators.

  • Information globally sought for individuals crossing levels and reflecting diversity of nations, regions, and civilizations; respondents use their first or most expressive language to communicate; high percentage of face-to-face interviews surfacing in-depth data; balance of qualitative and quantitative data; information provided to trusted staff.

2. What We Have Found (Analysis and Confirmation)

  • Headquarters or departmental leadership directs/controls analysis; reviews data for conformity to standards of global training objectives or models; seeks universal issues facing the company and less the particularistic issues of a nation, division, or unit; convergence preferred.

  • Analysis process always incorporates different and broad national perspectives and regionalized objectives; divergence valued; analysis widely shared, seeking additional feedback before completion; modes of interpretation are broad; analyzed through multiple national cultures to discover nuances of similarities, differences, and specialized perspectives.

3. What We Will Do (Intervention Identification)

  • Range of possible interventions parallel headquarters' established plan; "We don't do that type of training in this company"; issues discovered by worldwide (HQ) guidelines and lenses; fiscal restraints set by corporate; regional interventions are massaged by expatriates to conform to "back home" models, weakening local impact and supporting mono-cultural training orientation.

  • Identification processes balance corporate with national training needs and are open to different requirements; local resources highly valued in intervention identification and may be more valued than headquarters.'

4. How We Will Design It (Design)

  • Designed internally or by headquarters-endorsed vendors in country other than country of delivery; driven by worldwide vendor contracts and cost containment; focus on tangible outcomes linked with economic results; reflects mandated headquarters learning style, which is seen as an absolute so that all employees are exposed to the same data and act the same way.

  • Locally designed and adapted programs reflecting national or regional preferred presentation styles and their subcultural constituents; creates a both/and learning style that responds to the tools, processes, and behaviors that best enable participants to learn; adjusts to local learning style as well as components that reflect the corporate global style; uses local case studies and role plays in addition to program–appropriate global material; reconciling process of local and corporate culture always a part of the design process and in-session design.

5. How We Will Organize (Administration)

  • Training only involves authorized training staff; walk in, set up, walk out; low-context announcements of events, e-mail needs assessments, no personal contact before training; limited prework—people are too busy; disconnected with the business.

  • Senior managers are present and supportive; out-of-session time (coffee time, formal meals, evening social events) as important as in-session time; interpersonal component highly valued through selective telephone interviews and personalized invitations; high-context data gathered through interviews; close alignment of sending managers and training subordinates with accountability to manager, business goals, or learning goals.

6. Who Will Do It (Staffing)

  • Training conducted by headquarters staff in official language only or by approved consultants and vendors who have been endorsed.

  • Training conducted by diverse staff from multiple locations capable of communicating in the most effective language and other necessary languages.

7. What We Say About It (Reporting, Level I, II Evaluation)

  • Reports data points fitting the needs of global training reports (head-counts, number of programs, cost per person); pictures presented in glossy training document/company newsletter that indicate what "we" did; participants report they learned what was in the training box.

  • Reports on global diversity intellectual capital and what was the enhanced learning from the training event; align new learnings with the global diversity context of participants, generating a spectrum of insights related to the individuals and processes in company that illustrate diversity of thought and behavior; "We learned what they wanted, but we also discovered vital leanings outside the training box because we are different and listen to each other."

8. Was It Worth It? (Level III, IV Evaluation)

  • Training costs fit global targets; six-month outcomes show individuals using prescribed skills.

  • Training applied global diversity intellectual capital from another region and is being introduced in new region with positive, measurable results.



  • Does your training and design function have an inherent bias that is obvious from this exercise? If so, what is it? What can be done to create a greater degree of inclusion in the workplace?

Caveats, Considerations, and Variations

  • This exercise can be used by any trainer for a global diversity audit.

  • Training professionals who hire vendors or purchase programs can use this exercise to discern the bias of potential providers.

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