Suppose that you’re a manager who reads the academic literature, sees that the heavy-handed self-criticism styles of sexual-harassment or racial-diversity training are somewhere between useless and counterproductive, and proposes canceling next year’s training. Legal is going to complain that this will look bad if you face a wrongful-dismissal suit anytime soon. . . . Many employees will complain that they expect the firm to express their values, which includes holding seminars featuring “privilege walks” to reaffirm the firm’s commitment to ending white supremacy and other forms of
...more
These HR courses are counterproductive, but utterly necessary to innoculate the corporation from liability. It is a cheap solution to the issue of litigation that only makes the problem worse. Courts need to realize this & stop allowing companies to sidestep liability by claiming they did all they could with trainings PROVEN to be ineffective (and sometimes to even harden biases.
