Why is it that so many leaders and managers find current formats of Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Education and Training not convenient to the overall professional development needs of their organization?
Because current formats of Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Education and Training often lack the following key ingredients:
Over the years, leaders and managers in various organizations and industries have highlighted numerous concerns with the standard cultural diversity training currently available. A few of the concerns had to do, 1) with lengthened training, 2) with the high cost, 3) with the rigidity of training and 4) the lack of customization. The leader’s concerns affirm an urgent need for change. CULTURElink 360 (CL360) offers that change.
Company leaders increasingly face the challenge of scheduling lengthy trainings. The majority of diversity trainers and consultants have developed training modules to cover half-day, full-day or even all week training. While extensive training is desirable in some situations, an increasing number of organizations see such sessions more of a burden. Objections to lengthy training cite one or a combination of the following:
Employees are taken away from work for a long period of time, causing companies to loose productivity;
Scheduling to include all departments or most employees is often a daunting task
Absence of room large enough to accommodate large number of participants; thus requiring additional expenses for facility rental outside of the workplace;
Companies with shifts schedules end up training certain shifts and not others;
CL360's solution: Conciseness — CL360 offers a series of short, high-quality modules — some only one hour — that allow employees to remain in the workplace, thereby preserving the company’s daily schedule. It’s as simple as taking a training break!
The program is conveniently offered at your site. Many of our clients choose to offer training right in their conference rooms where the CULTURElink 360 team provides training to groups of employees based on a rotational plan that matches the company’s internal schedule.
Advantages of CULTURElink 360’s approach:
CULTURElink 360 serves clients around the clock, 24/7, thus allowing organizations on a 24-hour day schedule the opportunity to provide professional development anytime of the day or night.
With shorter training and smaller size groups, CULTURElink 360’s approach provides opportunities for higher degrees of interaction and participation in the training process and therefore increases learning.
Note: As we have done in the past many years, we continue to provide half-days, full-day, and week-long quality cultural diversity training when these formats meet the professional development needs of a particular organization.
Full-day or even half-day diversity training sessions may cost thousand of dollars, and are not affordable to most small or big organizations, especially at this time of economic downturns. As a consequence of high training cost, many organizations opt for no-training. This hurts the companies that rely on their human capital to increase productivity.
CULTURElink 360 solution: Affordability. CL360 offers high quality training at competitive costs, as low as $5.00 per person per hour. When the times are challenging like now, you need to keep your bottom line high by increasing productivity. This requires that you invest in your human potential, your key producers.
During our many years providing Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Training to hundreds of organizations in various industries, we heard many leaders and managers reporting that employees in their organizations often have various degrees of understanding of issues of diversity. They added that training programs are too rigid, because oftentimes one program is offered, and, unfortunately, one size DOES NOT fit all.
Employees within the same organization are often situated at various levels on a cultural-sensitivity continuum. That is typical. This may suggest that some employees may have already had extensive diversity training and therefore high degree of acceptance, while others may have limited understanding of how diversity relates to the overall culture of the organization and are likely to be at the level of denial or resistance. When all these employees are put in the same training session, the situation is confusing for some. The training fails to accomplish the intended expectations and may end up being counterproductive.
Moreover, as millions of people from diverse cultures enter the workforce in increasing numbers, the spectrum of Cultural Diversity is becoming wider. Diversity is no longer limited to age and language, sexual orientation and religion, gender and race, disability and nationality; it encompasses a wide range of human characteristics and behaviors that often hinder communication, teamwork and productivity.
CULTURElink 360 solution: Adaptability. Although cultural diversity issues facing organizations today are multifaceted and more complex than ever, CL360 recommends simple solutions, multi-level training modules with increasing complexity. For example, the modules — DIVERSITYexpress, DIVERSITYplus, DIVERSITYbest, and DIVERSITYperfect — are tailored to the specific levels of your teams. Assessment tools are available to determine team levels and the appropriate modules to administer.
The CULTURElink 360 process avoids lumping everyone - the least knowledgeable and the most experienced - in the same training pile. It rather provides each employee with the challenging cultural education she/he needs to enhance her/his ability to understand others, and work efficiently with them in order for the whole team to be productive.
At the time when the USA population is getting more and more diverse, businesses leaders are striving to find the right culture training that is tailored to their industry. The major complain of theirs is that the cultural diversity training they find is too generic. It is obvious that, for example, the medical professional who needs some understand the cultures of his or her diverse patients to better serve them, does not need the same cultural training that the real estate agent who needs to understand the buying cultures of the clients from various cultural backgrounds in order to sell them homes.
CULTURElink 360 solution: Customization - CL360 delivers high quality custom designed Cultural Diversity training for various specific sensitive human issues, and for various industries.
The CL360 Best Strategies Series - programs Nos. 10 to 15 -helps organizations prevent/deal with specific issues that generic Cultural Diversity Training does not address. These are issues such as workplace sexual harassment, various facets of discrimination, workplace violence, etc.)
The Cultural Diversity Competency Series – programs Nos. 16 to 26 - shows how diversity can be used as an asset to enhance productivity or sales in specific industries and professions, by sharing specific strategies to help your organization increase your clientele base, and by assisting you to better serve your clients, no matter their cultural background.
CULTURElink 360 is a service of All World Languages and Cultures, Inc. -DBA Universal Highways at www.universalhighways.com -, which offers consulting and customized training in Cultural Diversity and Inclusion, Team-building Facilitation, Intercultural Communications, Leadership Development, Coaching and Mentoring, and Language Services including translation, interpreting, and instruction in more than 50 languages.
Our Guarantee
We are confident that, like hundreds of other clients –partial clients list- you will be satisfied with the training you receive. If you are not, we will refund 100% of your training fees. Period! No questions asked.
