Racial equity at work: Upskill yourself to become a better leader

Racial equality in the workplace is an inevitable and timely discussion sweeping organisations globally. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet recently released a note announcing the company’s commitment to racial equity and inclusion.

As part of its effort to fight racial inequality, the company is establishing what it calls a range of anti-racism educational programmes that are global in view and able to scale to all Googlers (people who work at Google).

Pichai says, “We’ll be welcoming external experts into Google to share their expertise on racial history and structural inequities, and start conversations on education, allyship, and self-reflection.”

The company is also introducing educational programmes that it hopes would help tackle systemic racism and help its employees develop racial consciousness, “This week we’ve begun piloting a new, multi-series training for Googlers of all levels that explores systemic racism and racial consciousness, to help develop stronger awareness and capacity for creating spaces where everyone feels they belong.”

The company has expressed the plan to roll out this training globally by early next year. It also has plans to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into its mandatory manager training.

Pichai also added that the company has concrete plans to improve the representation of underrepresented groups in the company’s leadership by 30% by 2025.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion are some of the most important elements of healthy workplace culture. A Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation.

The report also suggests that companies with above-average diversity on their leadership teams, in both developing and developed economies, report a greater payoff from innovation and higher income margins.

Diversity and inclusion training is an important way of educating yourself on how to work with people from different backgrounds. In fact, every manager or leader in an organisation needs to understand its importance, and actively implement diversity policies in the workplace.

If you are a leader in an organisation, and would like to work on your skills in working with diverse groups of people, you can start by enrolling in free online courses that will help you develop an understanding of racial equity and how to lead diverse teams at work.

Microsoft offers a host of lessons, including those that will help you develop an understanding of unconscious biases and how they influence behaviour. This course will also teach you about the actions you can take to counter bias in your own teams and organisation.

Optimising Diversity on Teams is an online course that enables you to learn about diversity and teaches you how to use it to maximise team performance, innovation, and creativity.

This free online course was developed by the University of Pennsylvania and teaches you how to “handle conflict and establish common ground rules through real-world cases and peer-to-peer discussions. In addition, you discover how to overcome common biases faced in diverse teams”.

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is an online course available for free. This MOOC course was developed by ESSEC Business School and can be completed online. The course will help you understand the concepts and relevance of diversity in the workplace.

The course will also introduce you to how cognitive processes such as social categorisation impacts the cues that we pick up as well as how we view and respond to our social environment within an increasingly diverse social context.

Leading with Effective Communication, Inclusive Leadership Training is a course that helps leaders communicate more effectively in a diverse setting. This course is available for free and is conducted online.