Promoting Diversity with Staff Development
Once your facility has successfully modified its recruitment and hiring practices to reach a more diverse workforce, the next step is to successfully engage and support your team with proper staff development and training. The goal is to create an inclusive and diverse staff from a variety of backgrounds that feel comfortable and can work effectively for your business. Today, SFM will discuss some things you can do to ensure your staff development program is promoting a great place to work for your entire team.
Things You Can do to Embrace Workplace Diversity
- Learn about the different cultural backgrounds, lives, and interests of employees outside of the workplace. Inclusion requires understanding, so getting to know your employees on a personal level will allow you to better relate to your team.
- Provide opportunities for your staff to interact with each other outside of work. Be creative with these events — you want your team working together and getting to know each other. The goal of any staff development program is to create a team whose members understand each other’s individual perspectives.
- Be aware of special religious and culturally significant holidays and events. Offer a floating holiday for employees to use at their discretion to observe these events.
- When training or providing your employees with information, include LGBTQ examples. For example, when discussing legal issues related to opposite-sex couples regarding retirement benefits, also discuss how they apply to same-sex couples.
- Provide training and learning opportunities to your employees that discuss how cultural differences impact their work and interactions with one another. For instance, some cultures are less inhibited when engaging in physical contact while others are expected to always behave modestly. Some cultures find shaking a stranger’s hand inappropriate. Teaching your team these cultural differences is key to a successful staff development program.
- Provide leadership opportunities for a range of different backgrounds. All too often, leadership mistakes cultural similarities close to their own for the most most relevant qualifications. Understanding that different backgrounds have their own strengths and weakness is key to a successful business. Provide leadership opportunities to a wide-range of backgrounds and you may be shocked at how successful they may be.
Interested in Learning More About Staff Development?
Sports Facility Management understands that staff development is key to creating a cohesive, efficient team. By providing ongoing staff training, owners can ensure that their workplace culture remains diverse and inclusive. Contact our team today to learn how SFM can help your team accomplish the diversity goals that are key to success in today’s business world.