How to Prepare Students for Diversity in the Workplace

Discuss bias. To understand discrimination and failure to accommodate the differences of others, students must understand what bias means. Frame your discussion as a non-confrontational talk about the topic to ensure that students who may already exhibit bias don’t feel as if they are being called out or criticized. Explain to students that it is natural to fear the different, helping them see that the feelings they may harbor toward people from cultures that differ from their own don’t make them bad people. By acquainting your students with the topic of bias, you can reduce the likelihood that they exhibit bias once they step into the workplace.

Teach behavioral adaptation. The way in which you behave in a music-thumping night club differs greatly from the way one would behave in a ceremony or of cultural significance. For example, the clothing a student might wear in her day-to-day life will likely offend should she try to walk into a mosque, as in these Muslim houses of worship, women are commonly required to dress modestly and wear a headscarf. To prepare students to effectively interact with those from other cultures with minimum risk of offense, teach your students this, explaining to them that failure to behave properly in certain settings could leave them unintentionally offending those who hold the cultural customs dear.

Dispel stereotypes. Your students likely allow some stereotypes to influence their opinions of others. Work to break these as they can be detrimental in the workplace. List some common stereotypes with your students. Their list will likely include some of the commonly tossed about ones like blondes are dumb and Asian students are smart. After creating your list, discuss the fact that these stereotypes aren’t accurate and valid representations of who these people are and that believing these stereotypes leaves you more likely to marginalize someone. To really drive the point home, personalize it. Have students divide sheets of paper in half, and on one side, write stereotypes that people may assume they fit. On the other, write things that are contrary to this stereotype. For example, the jock in your class could write on one side that people would assume he is all muscles and no brains and then write on the other that he actually loves poetry.

Engage students in simulations. Anyone can talk the talk, but can your students walk the walk? Instead of just having students talk about how they plan to behave in the future, ask them to act out situations that are related to diversity acceptance. By presenting students with situations and allowing them to try their skills out, you can help them take ownership of the acceptance skills you have taught and improve the likelihood that they actually use the skills in the future. For example, ask a group of students to act out a situation in which one worker is being culturally insensitive to another, instructing some students to show what they could do as co-workers to combat this insensitivity.