Why ignoring diversity in L&D is killing innovation

‘We need more images of middle-aged white men please’. I’m not joking. This exact phrase was said during my first ever call with a client in the learning technologies industry. Luckily, I was only there to observe, so they were spared my stutters of disbelief.

Don’t get me wrong, I understood where they were coming from. The majority of the audience for this particular course was management. And in their company, that meant middle-aged white men. They wanted their audience to relate to the characters in the course to promote engagement, and so we changed the photographs.

This happened a few years ago, and I still think about it every day. My (maybe naïve) viewpoint, is that instead of changing these photographs, why don’t you change your hiring practices? Why don’t you work to make sure your employee base reflects the diversity of the world so that your courses can too?

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