Embracing Equality and Diversity

Course Description:

Does your workplace recognise and value difference?
Do you want to understand how to create value from the diversity of your staff and colleagues?
Do you want to build better working relationships?
Would you like to create a harmonious culture and attitude in your workplace?
Would you like to increase your business success?

Companies want happy, high performing teams and the more diverse the workforce the more chance you will have of attracting a variety of skills and knowledge to enable you to achieve business success. A diverse workforce allows for increased levels of perception and thinking and enables increased business success through a more varied approach. This course will enable you to understand difference and create value from the diversity of your staff and colleagues around you. It is not about political correctness or ticking the right boxes, it is about building relationships and creating a harmonious culture and attitude.

You will benefit from this course if you want to improve your understanding of Equality and Diversity in the workplace morally, legally and from a business perspective. By exploring the advantages of a diverse workforce and its role in business success, you will have the opportunity to examine and share discussions around values, attitudes and behaviour. You will be able to identify strategies for dealing with relevant workplace scenarios and create action plans which will encourage you to work together with your staff to utilise their diverse experiences effectively.

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• Explain what equality and diversity means to you as an individual
• Explore how our values and beliefs shape who we are
• Examine your individual rights and responsibilities in the workplace
• Compare current legislation with my own organisational policies
• What do I gain from the practical workshops?
• Discuss ways in which we discriminate in the workplace
• Review some case study examples
• Explore the advantages of a diverse workforce and its role in business success
• Identify strategies for promoting equality and diversity at work
• Agree an individual action plan to look at next steps.

This course includes the following modules:

Course Topics

• Personal objective setting for the course.
• Discussion around what Equality and Diversity mean to you.
• The definition of Diversity.
• Exploring the differences between Equal Opportunities and Diversity.
• Consideration of your own organisations Equal Opportunities policies and procedures.
• How Equality and Diversity is promoted within your own organisation.
• Exploration of what influences workplace atmospheres and behaviours.
• Discussions around stereotyping, assumptions and pre-judging.
• A look at what constitutes bullying in the workplace.
• Positive interventions for bullying and harassment.
• An exercise on where our values and beliefs come from.
• A look at how we are valued in the workplace.
• How our personal rights are protected at work.
• Current legislation around Equality and Diversity.
• What the legislation means for you.
• Comparing the differences between legislation and your own organisations policies.
• Positive action versus positive discrimination.
• Some case study work around some specific diversity scenarios.
• Exercise around the benefits of having a diverse workforce.
• Discussion of the consequences of not being diverse in the workplace.
• Strategies to encourage Equality and Diversity in the workplace.
• Action planning to consider how you will implement the learning.