When DEI training doesn’t work, the approach, not the concepts, may need a shift

Beyond the various discussions around DEI—and whether it’s good, bad, or somewhere in between—there’s a deeper conversation happening between DEI practitioners: how do you create and execute DEI training that will resonate with workers?

This comes at a time when some companies, including AT&T, Meta, and Molson Coors, have ended DEI training as part of wider DEI rollbacks, and as the Trump administration has publicly denounced them.

DEI practitioners committed to improving the efficacy of their trainings, despite all the noise, first need to understand the history of these initiatives, including the aspects that haven’t worked.

A (brief) history lesson. Diversity training dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and discrimination lawsuits that followed, according to an article from Kira Lussier, a researcher at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

The early years of diversity in the workforce focused mostly on Title VII compliance, according to a 2008 academic paper co-written by Rohini Anand, former SVP of corporate responsibility and global chief inclusion belonging officer at Sodexo, and Mary-Frances Winters, founder and CEO of the Winters Group consultancy. They wrote that trainings were typically a one-and-done, four-hour event that often failed to relate teachings to the potential business impacts.

The courses gained momentum in the 1980s, after Price Cobbs, a Black psychiatrist and diversity consultant, created Valuing Diversity, a video series that became popular across corporate America. But even then, white workers resented the training, Lussier wrote.

Diversity training expanded between the late 1980s and the turn of the century, as companies shifted from a compliance focus (centering women and racial minorities) to a more holistic, justice-centered approach, which broadened to focus on everyone, Anand and Winters found. While they did touch on sensitivity and the relationship between diversity and business outcomes, they did not have a set curriculum to help address bias in the workplace.

As diversity training continued growing in the 1990s, resistance remained as well. A white man who was interviewed for a 1994 article in Bloomberg said the DEI training he attended at work made him feel like he was to blame for injustices like slavery and the glass ceiling. “I became bitter and remain so,” he told Bloomberg.

By the mid-2000s diversity training was seen as a best practice and 80% of HR leaders at companies with at least 10,000 employees said they had mandatory or voluntary training. But it became a “check-off-the-box” obligation, to be measured in test scores, not verifiable change.

Despite the widespread adoption, diversity training rarely reduced bias or stuck with employees, according to a 2016 article from the Harvard Business Review. Some studies even showed that the positive effects lasted less than a week, and that the trainings could create backlash.

One-off diversity trainings were criticized for leaving employees with questions and nowhere to direct them, or without space for ongoing conversations. (Current critics of DEI training share this sentiment, recent surveys suggest.)

In 2020, when companies expanded their diversity initiatives in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, some DEI training fell to professionals who lacked the knowledge necessary to conduct quality training, according to Abi Adamson, founder and principal consultant at DEI consultancy the Culture Partnership.

“Anyone who looked like they could possibly be part of a marginalized community was rushed into the limelight and then told that they were going to do DEI,” she told HR Brew. “So of course it’s going to go wrong.”

Finding a way forward. The average employee may conflate DEI training with DEI in general, due to their employer’s one-off trainings, so DEI training should be just one part of an overall DEI program, Andrew Grissom, director of community growth at Catalyst, told HR Brew

“They might have only done some one-off DEI training. [But] their employees might not be aware of the larger body of work that their organization may or may not be doing,” he said, adding that companies still often stick to compliance-based unconscious bias training and might perpetuate the problems that have existed for decades. “We started to see some research that suggests certain types of unconscious bias screening might actually increase or exacerbate existing biases, especially if they are sort of one-off sessions, or are inducing, in some way, guilt or shame.”

Furthermore, mandatory training can exacerbate the backlash, “activating the very biases they’re supposed to address,” according to Adamson.

For its part, Catalyst, which works with employers on DEI training, conducts multiple trainings in an ongoing process that combines reflection and follow-up through instructor-led sessions and group discussion.

Grissom also recommended that employers adopt a mutual accountability mindset, taking the burden off the marginalized communities and making change everyone’s responsibility. “This looks like creating learning environments that are non-shaming and non-blaming, encouraging participants to own their own influence and commitments, and supporting peers in holding one another accountable for inclusive behaviors,” Grissom said, noting that companies should focus on dialogue and collective action.

Companies also need to think about when training occurs, according to Adamson, who said that companies usually conduct DEI training at inopportune times. “People sit through DEI training during onboarding paperwork when they’re absolutely overwhelmed with joining a new business,” she said.

Instead, employers could conduct training before important touchpoints, like performance reviews, and use different metrics to determine if the training has helped the organization. “Companies celebrate when participants can recite talking points after a workshop…but they’re not measuring actual behavioral changes,” Adamson said. “Real impact means looking at who gets hired, who gets promoted, who stays, who leaves. And most DEI trainings never touch those kinds of outcomes.”

Finally, DEI training should be anchored in organizational readiness, and those implementing the training should understand the organization’s objectives, whether a culture shift or improving retention. “Training works best when it’s intentional, contextual, connected to real organizational priorities, and focused on fixing systems rather than individuals,” Grissom said.

“DEI training fails when we treat it like a vaccine,” Adamson said. “It works when we treat it like what it actually is: ongoing practice. Timed strategically, integrated systematically, and measured ruthlessly, not by whether people can recite the right word, but by whether the decisions they make actually make positive changes within the workplace.”