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Engaging diversity in the public sector |
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Rob Beardall, Oganisational Development Officer at Powys County Council, outlines innovative work done by his organisation to engage with the equality and diversity agenda
AS A COUNCIL,WE EMPLOYOVER 7,000 people with a considerably broader mix of job roles, abilities and backgrounds than other organisations, so raising awareness of diversity en masse was always going to be a challenging undertaking. Our main aim was to give staff a practical understanding of diversity and to help them connect the issues to everyday situations at work.
The issues surrounding diversity are contentious to many people and can be associated with stigma, misconception and strong feeling. Our perception was that people’s attitudes at the council towards the subject could be extreme – either they had really strong opinions or did not care. Our approach needed to overcome personal ‘barriers’ in people’s understanding, engage the disinterested and more importantly, leave learners with positive feelings and a sense of empowerment about diversity.
Engaging Diversity Modules
To support us with the process we became partners in a European-funded nationalWales project called Engaging Diversity, which was piloting new approaches to diversity learning. Being partners meant that we could help shape the development of new diversity eLearning material and pilot high impact eLearning modules covering all the main strands of diversity.We were already encouraging senior managers to push the equality and diversity agenda forward with their staff and the Engaging Diversity eLearning modules gave us a universal medium that could be used to engage everyone.
The emotive, documentary-style approach of the Engaging Diversity modules particularly appealed to us – we felt that engaging people on an emotional level was the most effective ‘way in’ to start building their awareness and introduce the issues. Each 50 minute module focuses on a different subject such as ‘Race’ or ‘Gender’ and the learning is broken down into easy bite-size lessons. Each lesson features narrative set to a series of compelling images and delivers a balance of facts, legislative information, thought-provoking statistics and real-life examples. For example, in the introductory lesson of the ‘Disability’ module, the stories of Dame Tanni Grey Thompson and Simon Weston are told, presenting positive role models who have triumphed despite their disabilities. The modules explore each subject in increasing depth so that learners can gradually build their understanding, while the final lesson turns the focus onto the learner, clearly setting out their responsibilities in terms of the law and showing them how they can make a difference in their own environment. The testing element which occurs at the end of each module was an important motivator in ensuring that learners paid attention throughout the lessons – they had to get 80 per cent of the answers correct in order to pass.
Engaging Staff
The eLearning format proved to be highly flexible and accessible for us and helped ensure that high volumes of people completed the learning. We made the learning mandatory for all staff and used a ‘drip feed’ awareness raising approach to keep them interested in the programme – including briefings during departmental meetings and coverage in the staff newsletter and intranet. We also made a range of resources available so that staff had plenty of opportunities to sit the modules.We reserved workstations in the IT suite so that users could log on to the modules whenever they had time. We held dedicated learning sessions overseen by a training co-ordinator who would introduce the module, allow learners to complete it and then return to close the session.We made a stock of headphones available for departments to hire so that learners could complete the programme in their own time at their workstations if they preferred.
The Impact
We have not yet undertaken formal evaluation of the diversity eLearning but our perceptions and direct feedback from learners suggest that it has raised general awareness of diversity and helped to bring everyone to the same level of understanding. The training has helped us to ensure that important and influential groups such as service managers are thoroughly aware of their responsibilities and legislation in all the main strands of diversity. The training has been especially valuable for our customer-facing staff and has helped them boost their confidence when dealing with the public. We plan to continue working with this group to build on their learning with follow-up workshops that will focus on developing practical skills for communicating with people with disabilities and special needs. In conclusion, the eLearning modules delivered understanding of the issues and gained people’s attention in a way that only the most gifted face-to-face trainers could have. The eLearning was also deployed at a fraction of the cost and time required for face to face training.We will continue to roll out the diversity eLearning modules and plan to start using a blended approach with discussion workshops to reinforce practical understanding of how the issues affect us in everyday situations at work.
The Engaging Diversity eLearning modules cover the subjects of ‘Race’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Disability’, ‘Religion and Belief’, ‘Sexual Orientation’ and ‘theWelsh Language’ and are available from the BTC Group. To book a free demonstration, visit: www.thelearningbusiness.com and click on ‘Arrange a Guided Demo’.
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