On May 29, 2018, Starbucks closed roughly 8,000 locations for the afternoon and engaged around 175,000 employees in a 4-hour training session on unconscious bias.
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The highly publicized move was in response to a recent public relations crisis caused when an employee at a Starbucks in Philadelphia called 911 to report two black men as trespassing. The men—who were waiting for a business associate—were arrested and released without charge after a few hours.
The training initiative has been praised in some quarters and criticized in others. The critics argue that the training is primarily a public relations (PR) stunt to counteract the negative publicity that accompanied the Philadelphia incident, that a 4-hour session is too short to be effective and that Starbucks should have had such training before something like the Philadelphia incident occurred in the first place.
It’s this last point we look at here. What are the relative benefits of proactive versus reactionary training?
Proactive
The most apparent benefit of proactive training is that it protects against a negative occurrence happening in the first place. But, it’s challenging if not impossible to predict every possible negative event that could impact an organization.
In addition, training for “what if” scenarios may seem too hypothetical to participants, and lacking real-world application, making transfer of learning less likely. Consequently, time and resources may be wasted in training for an eventuality that has little to no likelihood of occurring.
Reactive
Reactive training, such as what was implemented by Starbucks, seeks to prevent the recurrence of a negative incident. The downside, of course, is that the negative incident has already happened at least once.
The benefit, though, is that the incident has already happened at least once—in other words, the incident is relevant, relatable, and real to the participants. It would be hard to argue that this type of reaction training would be a waste of time or resources.
Obviously, any company wants to avoid negative incidents. In that respect, perfect proactive training that prevents any such incidents would be ideal; however, in the real world, we cannot predict every adverse event, which means that sometimes, proactive training is the best we can do. Starbucks is a timely case in point.