Does "Sensitivity" or "Diversity" training for bad employees or cops, actually work?

Lmao…sensitive cops…oh that’s just funny….

I’ve known a few “bad seeds” who were sent to anger management classes that covered subjects like diversity and sensitivity and it did nothing for them but fuel their social contempt.

1. Purpose: To determine the effectiveness of cultural sensitivity training on the knowledge and attitudes of health care providers, and to assess the satisfaction and health outcomes of patients from different minority groups with health care providers who received training.

Design: In this randomised controlled trial, 114 health care providers (nurses and homecare workers) and 133 patients (from two community agencies and one hospital) were randomly assigned to experimental (training) and control groups, and were followed for 18 months.

Methods: Providers completed the Cultural Awareness Questionnaire and the Dogmatism Scale. Patients completed the Off-Axis-Ratio (OAR) Multidimensional Measure of Functional Capacity, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Physical and Mental Health Assessment Questionnaire, and the Health and Social Services Utilization Questionnaire. A qualitative analysis was conducted to identify and analyse themes from personal journals kept by participating nurses.

Findings: Cultural sensitivity training resulted in increased open-mindedness and cultural awareness, improved understanding of multiculturalism, and ability to communicate with minority people. After 1 year patients of mostly European and British origin, who received care from trained providers, showed improvement in utilizing social resources and overall functional capacity without an increase in health care expenditures.

Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that a cultural sensitivity training program not only improved knowledge and attitudes among health care providers, but it also yielded positive health outcomes for their patients.
Journal of Nursing Scholarship

@nikipedia , thanks for finding that, it’s very interesting and gives a glimpse that training given to normal people, may result in benefit. However one flaw with that study is that the Diversity Training was provided to a group of normal (randomized) nurses.

If, however, they focused only on the racist or sexist nurses, and gave them the training, but not the normal nurses, would the results then be so positive?

I have noticed that when a black officer shoots a white perpetrator, it gets a lot less air-time in the news than in the reverse case. Some news folks even think any racist activity done by a non-white is not racism if you look at the reporting and body language.

@majorrich , that is true. Racists have a few valid complaints that they use to support their twisted ideology, and they brink up things like that. And the things like that that they bring up, are true. I’d have to say that society’s light-form of ‘reverse’ racism is not right either. But it’s not as evil as certain individuals’ heavy-forms of direct racism.

@Kraigmo , Have you ever done any ride-a-longs with urban police? They are free. A lot can be learned by observing after-dark behavior.
Are you accusing me of having twisted ideologies?

@majorrich , no…. not on any level at all, I’d have to be a real ass if that was the implication I was making. But really, there is no implication. Take it literally.

My experience in ‘police work’ was fairly brief but not in this country. It is difficult not to have a tilted view of a demographic once you have seen them behaving at their worst.
Sometimes even the most innocent of a comments intent can be taken badly if either end either encodes or decodes wrong. I am ill and cranky. Sorry if I caused any consternation.

It works unless personnel don’t to learn. In those cases, it’s at least good for the organization to have made an effort to extinct the undesirable behavior.

Diversity training helps the company in a law suit, they can say they made every effort to train their employees and avoid bad sitations.

I’m sure it does help to some degree, especially if the training is done by someone outside of the company. Makes people more aware of actions or words they may be using that might be offensive. During the class usually people feel more able to ask questions and air their frustrations.

Diversity training is in fact a way that many “bad seeds” get away with their bad behaviors. It is like a simple slap on the wrist.

Having said that however I highly highly recommend diversity training for all job positions especially those that involve social services. Diversity training at the beginning of the job and a more complex one after working there awhile can be very enlightening and helpful. In fact I have friends who have been part of the cultural community that still attend diversity trainings voluntarily because of what they can learn from it. I’ve also seen those who obviously have no cultural education learn quite a bit from a training, sometimes a slower training but nonetheless it is useful.

So essentially it is quite helpful if used as a preventative measure but if used as a punishment it is much less effective, if at all.

I have been to diversity training.

Something is better than nothing.

“Diversity training” only works on those inclined to be ‘diverse’ in the first place, or whose livelihood is at stake. Unless you are unbelievably easy to sway (and cops probably aren’t), all it does is tell you what you can do to avoid trouble.
But it makes the bosses look good, so they do it. Don’t expect any profound changes in character.

Frankly, I don’t much like the idea of diversity training. In theory, it’s basically brainwashing. Which may be why its success rate is so low; a lot of people actively resist it.

It works by putting the employee on notice that the next offense will get you fired. Most follow the rules after that. Whenever I take any class or attend a meeting I try to think of at least one thing I learned. I ask myself, what did I not know before the class that I know now? The post anaylsis helps me decide if the class was worthless or not.
Our entire department attended diversity training and it taught us nothing more that what we all learned in kindergarten and first grade: no hitting, no fighting, respect, wash your hands after using the bathroom. (wait! That was in kindergarten), the contact point in HR for reporting a violation.
It was a waste of time but the mangers had to make sure all employees were educated so they could show 100% attendance. I’m sure the company stock price did not rise that day.