Publications
Publications
- January 24, 2025
- Science
Behaviorally Designed Training Leads to More Diverse Hiring
By: Cansin Arslan, Edward H. Chang, Siri Chilazi, Iris Bohnet and Oliver P. Hauser
Abstract
Many organizations have shown interest in increasing the diversity of their workforces for various reasons. Collectively, they have spent millions of dollars and countless employee hours on diversity training. Yet, there is little empirical evidence that such training increases diversity in organizations (1, 2). Diversity training may be ineffective because it is commonly implemented in ways that are not conducive to changing behavior: It takes place far in advance of consequential decisions and tends to be generic and not specific to the behaviors that organizations may want to affect (e.g., hiring). Results of our large-scale field experiment in a global telecommunications and engineering firm show that behaviorally designed diversity training can influence hiring decisions. This training increased the short-listing of women and nonnational applicants and increased the hiring of nonnational applicants relative to business as usual. This proof of concept demonstrates that new approaches to diversity training can deliver results.
Keywords
Training; Diversity; Selection and Staffing; Behavior; Outcome or Result; Organizational Change and Adaptation
Citation
Arslan, Cansin, Edward H. Chang, Siri Chilazi, Iris Bohnet, and Oliver P. Hauser. "Behaviorally Designed Training Leads to More Diverse Hiring." Science 387, no. 6732 (January 24, 2025): 364–366.