As workplaces become more diverse, the need for co-workers to show respect for each other grows. This new program may help build it at your organization.
A recent Daily Advisor article talked about maintaining worker respect for management authority. That’s one of two kinds of respect in a workplace. The other, equally important, is respect for one’s co-workers.
The issue has become increasingly important as diversity grows on the job. With an aging population, women promoted to posts they’ve never held before, and immigration on the rise, workers simply have to learn to get along with others unlike themselves. To help them do it, we’d like to make you aware of a brand-new BLR PowerPoint® plus booklet training program, appropriately titled, It’s All About Respect: Avoid Discrimination in the Workplace.
Undoing Prejudices
The program seeks to help undo prejudicial messages this society imparts almost from birth. … stereotypes we learn from parents, friends, even teachers and religious groups. The media and advertising add to this unhealthy mix by showing all the successful people as young, thin, English-speaking, and healthy. If that’s the case, ask what message is sent about those who aren’t?
The It’s All About Respect program first seeks to make employees understand that, know it or not, they have these prejudices. It’s done through a Personal Influences Inventory, with questions like these:
–What messages have you received about ethnic or religious groups, people with disabilities, older workers, etc.?
–How do you treat people based on these messages?
–Have you ever been treated as a group member rather than as an individual?
In providing answers, trainees can begin to look within themselves and see things from the viewpoint of others. The program’s slide presentation then goes on to detail the following points:
–Discriminatory behavior is not only inappropriate, it’s illegal. Laws ensuring equal employment opportunity are listed and explained.
–Disrespectful/discriminatory behavior often masquerades as teasing or joking, and can take the form of stereotype-based assumptions about job capabilities or segregation of an entire group in a work area or function.
–Diversity in the workplace is growing, which makes respect for co-workers key to organizational success. This section lets employees, who may think that “old dudes just can’t cut it,” know that 50 percent of the workforce will be over age 40 in just 4 years.
–Fictions abound in discussions about diversity. One myth, punctured in the program, is that people of the same group get along better with each other than do people of different groups. In fact, research shows that just the opposite is true.
The program includes a 22-slide PowerPoint on CD-ROM, 20 copies of a 16-page full-color employee booklet keyed to the presentation (additional booklets can be ordered at a discount price), complete speaker’s notes, a reproducible handout, and a 10-question quiz with answer key.
It’s All About Respect: Avoid Discrimination in Your Workplace has the capacity to break down prejudicial behaviors, model respectful ones, and build your increasingly diverse workforce into a true team. Pretty remarkable results for a program that costs less than $100, wouldn’t you say? We’d suggest you consider ordering it.
To order It’s All About Respect: Avoid Discrimination in Your Workplace for just $99 with satisfaction guaranteed, click here.
From another perspective, I work for an agency where 51% of the employees have a physical disability and I do not. Reverse discrimination is rampant and people with different disabilities even discriminate against each other. There is an unwritten hierarchy of disabilities where people with non-visible disabilities are at the bottom of the barrel and those in wheelchairs are at the top. There is a certain sense of entitlement that comes from the individuals who feel their are at the top of the foodchain. Additionally, one of these individuals (who is also executive management) stated that it was ok for her to call another person in a wheelchair “a gimp” because she was in one. She did not comprehend that this in and of itself is a disriminatory and disrespectful act that models poor behavior to others in the agency.
I am an avid reader of these reports, but it seems to me you are doing a lot more “selling” than reporting. Please return to your previous process and continue to teach us. I don’t want to spend my time reading an advertisement. Thanks for the past wisdom you’ve shared.