by Ruth Clark

Little did I know when I started to write this in early January 2023 that one of my central examples was about to again become headlines. Many years back I was working in Washington DC when the headlines announced an incident involving leaking of classified information from White House Staff to the media.  What was the solution to this incident?  You guessed it:  A training course for White House staff  to review rules and regulations on handling of classified documents.   This solution assumes that the inappropriate behaviors stemmed from a lack of knowledge rather than a multitude of other possibilities that you can readily imagine. Most of us in the workforce training business believe that our products serve some organizational good such as to improve sales, promote safe working practices, boost efficiency, or make the organizational workplace more effective.  But sometimes there is no expected outcome for a training event – other than to check a box -– problem solved!

A recent news article (Opinion  Does diversity training work? We don't know — and here is why. - The Washington Post) asked whether diversity training works and argues that we generally have no idea. According to the author, following the murder of George Floyd, organizations have paid an estimated $3.4 billion to outside firms to enhance their diversity offerings with little to no knowledge of what this investment accomplished.  The author who is a behavioral scientist at Princeton University found only 2 large studies that tracked the effects of diversity training mostly using surveys with questions such as how much did you appreciate this?

According to the author in 2020 a CEO addressed diversity issues by hiring a consulting firm to train thousands of workers using a documentary film-based program that was highly creative but completely untested.  The author designed a rigorous evaluation of the training.  Her plan involved a gradual roll out of the program to randomly chosen divisions allowing comparisons between trained and untrained staff.  Some measures included: 1) hiring, promotions and retention of underrepresented workers 2). how much minority and female employees were heard in meetings based on analysis of speech and chat contributions with online meeting software and 3) surveys that asked about attitudes among coworkers (rather than self-reports).  

What was the result of the evaluation effort?  The evaluation was never conducted because the organization shut it down.  The author claims that CEOs don’t want to risk a lawsuit by sharing data nor do they want to find out their training investment has had no effect (or even a regressive effect). 

Another reason I would add is that many training efforts such as compliance or diversity and inclusion are what I call “Check a Box”.  The goal is to document some event with little expectation or even concern about outcomes.  Sometimes these training investments are based on a misunderstanding about what training does and does not accomplish.  There is a naïve view that a training course will solve a problem and everyone can move on feeling good because they have taken action.

So, what can we practitioners do about Check A Box training?  One solution is to require some evaluation efforts for all training that exceeds a certain budget amount.  Even better might be investing in some upfront research to specify performance gaps and identify causes for those gaps which often are not lack of  knowledge. Third we can engage in continual client education regarding what training can and often can’t accomplish.

In spite of your well intentioned efforts, your client may just want to check that box anyway.  Then you have an ethical decision to accept or refuse the assignment (if refusal is in fact an option for you).  If for whatever reason you do accept the assignment, perhaps a well-designed training effort may still achieve some positive results – even if neither you nor the client will ever know.  And what about all those classified documents?  Will we ever know?

Have you been involved in Check-A-Box training?  How did you respond?  What lessons can you share with your LDA colleagues?