How does staff development and training create effective EDI practice? Empowering your team to make positive change

This blog is part of a series diving into how we can build robust EDI practices to create positive changes. There are 4 key aspects to robust EDI practices we’ll be exploring:

Development and training,
Inclusive and accessible policies,
EDI strategies to guide this development,
Involvement of staff and service users.

This blog focuses on staff development and training. Check out our blog page for the other posts in this series.

Development and Training

As covered in the previous blog, policies are the bones of EDI in your organisation. However, without the confidence or knowledge progress can be limited. Training can help to flesh out these bones to create something impactful.

Unconscious bias training is one of the most common EDI courses offered to staff. However, exposing the issues that come with bias but not giving staff the tools to process and address them can halt meaningful progress and development for your organisation. There are a couple of approaches you can take to restart this progress:

Equipping leaders with the skills to champion EDI:

Whilst all staff should be able to develop their EDI knowledge, ensuring there is buy-in and confidence from leadership to support your staff and lead your EDI work is key.

Practices like Inclusive and Compassionate Leadership can empower leaders to centre EDI, empathy and compassion to build inclusive and equitable workplaces.

Anti-Discriminatory Practice:

The best way to create truly inclusive environments is to create a community where unacceptable and anti-social behaviour are not tolerated and are actively challenged. We can do this through anti-discriminatory practice that can be adopted at personal, cultural and structural levels1. When staff witness negative behaviour they have a choice whether to challenge and deescalate it or let it fester. The latter can normalise these actions and potentially grow into an unwelcoming culture.

Active Bystander theory and education helps staff:

understand what discrimination is,
realise the impact it can have on a workplace.
build the skills to safely challenge behaviour at odds with the culture you want to build.

This can build strong foundations that can see positive organisational change beyond recognising unconscious bias.

Our blog on ‘What is an Active Bystander?’ breaks this down further.

Ongoing training:

With foundations such as Inclusive and Compassionate Leadership and Active Bystander intervention laid, you can dive deeper into experiences of marginalised communities and inclusive approaches you can take to create a truly equitable culture that acknowledges intersectionality at its core.

Identifying the gaps in your team’s knowledge can be intimidating but is important to understand where you have potential to grow. Exploring how to adopt anti-racist practice, and proactively support neurodiverse and/or LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual) staff and service users are great places to start growing beyond the foundations.

So where do I start?

There are lots of ways to build your staff confidence even when time feels limited. Having a clear vision for how you will continuously invest in EDI training and upskilling each year is the best place to start.

Sharing your vision with your teams can then ensure they understand your organisation’s commitment to EDI and how you will lead the positive changes this training can make for your workplace. We’ll be exploring this in more detail in our next blog.

Our pre-designed training and bespoke consultancy can support you to extend your practice and skillsets. Get in touch with us to hear more about how we can collaborate in building change together.

This blog is one of four posts in a series about building effective EDI practice. Check out our blog page for the next post in the series where we will explore building EDI strategies.

1 Anti-Discriminatory Practice, Neil Thompson, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.