Will D&I training increase your capability and capacity for the work?

No, it won’t. Training won’t increase your capability and capacity, doing the work will.

Creating an inclusive organisational culture doesn’t start with building the capability and capacity of our people. It starts with turning down the volume on fear and increasing our confidence to think and act inclusively.

Fear stops people from building skill; once we decrease the fear then we can build capability and capacity.

Organisations responding to a crisis at Intervention or Early Intervention tend to look at training as the answer. They often decide to deliver mandatory unconscious bias training for their people.

Research has proven that unconscious bias training is ineffective and that it can even reinforce and encourage bias, creating further resistance in our people to do the individual and organisational work required to create a culture of inclusion. It has also shown that making D&I training mandatory is highly ineffective, risks reinforcing biases, decreases engagement with D&I and increases resistance to supporting D&I change efforts.

To learn how to make D&I training effective and to discover other inclusion solutions that work, download the Discussion Paper – So you've done D&I training, now what?