Today, organizations have taken an interest in taking compliance and diversity beyond the traditional paper initiatives. And as they should! Both compliance and diversity are crucial to ensure a safe and fair workforce, with both needing to be enforced from the top down via compliance training for employees to administer successfully.
Unfortunately, businesses continue struggling to find common ground between compliance and diversity. More specifically, they find it challenging to see the link between both, such as how diversity can improve compliance efforts and vice versa.
But let’s look at how both factors can work together in compliance training courses for a better workforce.
How Cultures of Diversity Translate to Ethics and Compliance
Like a culture of diversity, the first step to creating a culture of ethics and compliance is for leadership to establish a set of guiding principles. Doing so will raise awareness among employees and managers, seeding the workplace with a guiding voice predicting adherence while mitigating risk.
Compared to homogenous days, diversity culture is increasing the threat of scrutiny. Diversity task forces have now become used to reduce bias. With leaders coaching employees about the essential nature of compliance, the same framework will apply to regulatory compliance.
Threatening employees with negative incentives is very ineffective in gaining positive action. Changing behavior for the better will require accountability and not merely valuing signaling.
To encourage adherence, you must go beyond compliance training. You should also create structures encouraging active participation and using routine compliance assessments as a way to engage employees on regulatory issues. This reiterates the importance of compliance and emphasizes the need for individual action aligning with positive results.
How Adapting to Diversity Affects Ethics and Compliance
With diversity becoming standardized, workplace adaptability continues to increase. If one’s behaviors or beliefs are misaligned with new group mentalities, one will experience cognitive dissonance. Individuals would alleviate dissonance by shifting their behavior to what would adhere to what’s accepted.
Employee readiness to adopt new perspectives and policies will directly affect compliance programs. Open and willing organizations will readily accept policy requirements, minimizing the risk of compliance failure. Moreover, employees will improve their workplace experience by integrating the new policy changes.
Groups embracing change are more inclined to support other future changes necessary for a company’s success compared to those who still have to realize the benefits integration offers. Increasing diversity will improve accepting new ideas, but this will only work if all employees recognize that teamwork and openness are mandatory.
Build a Speak-Up Culture
An essential element corporate compliance programs give employees is allowing them to speak up if they feel like something isn’t handled appropriately. Not only does this apply to diversity concerns but in other situations in the business.
Compliance training will teach employees to report any incidents appropriately and how the investigative process goes. When those processes are in place, employees will feel empowered to speak up when needed, creating transparency and enhancing diversity efforts.
Wrapping It Up
Hopefully, you learned a lot about compliance and diversity and their importance in the workforce!
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