Diversity-oriented HR work becomes interactive

Starting point/challenge

How can business and HR managers expand their staff recruitment and successfully manage diversity among employees? Up to now, the only way for representatives of SMEs to get answers to these questions was to spend hours reading demanding and very dry printed brochures, information websites or PDFs.

In order to make information on diversity- oriented HR work more appealing, the IQ Competence Centre for Intercultural Opening and Anti-Discrimination decided to create a new tool: the interactive online course.

Implementing the tool

The key themes relating to diversity- oriented HR work in SMEs were compiled and prioritised by experts. Following this, the concept was developed in terms of educational methodology. When starting out, a particular challenge proved to be the technical implementation of the planned content and methods. The platform best suited to the project needed to be clarified, as did how to ensure the online course produced was varied and appealing.

The next step was to assess the feasibility of the most viable and innovative learning management systems. The other four IQ competence centres, the 16 regional networks and their subprojects as well as a range of different companies worked together to create and prepare the content, and integrate it in the selected tool.

The online course created is called "Vielfaltsorientierte Personalarbeit für KMU" ("Diversity-oriented HR work in SMEs") and delivers its content digitally in a fun and interactive way which enables self study. Participants are able to click on images or cards and can also look at videos or memories; each topic ends with a quiz to test their knowledge.

In the three easy-to-follow sections entitled "Einführung und Vorteile interkultureller Vielfalt im Betrieb" ("Introduction to and advantages of intercultural diversity in a business"), "Wie Sie Fachkräfte am besten finden" ("The best way to find skilled workers") and "Wie Sie Fachkräfte gekonnt halten & binden" ("How to effectively keep and retain skilled workers") HR and business managers can train themselves with the goal of effectively managing diversity in their business.

Working through each topic only takes 10 to 20 minutes. Once participants have completed the course in full, a PDF certificate of participation is automatically generated. The content of the sections is regularly brought up-to-date by the competence centre.

Conclusion

The online course was published by the IQ competence centre in April 2021. More than 200 users had registered by the end of August 2021. By this point in time the page had been viewed approximately 10,400 times and around 2,400 visitors had been recorded.

Users include company employees as well as disseminators from Chambers and business associations. Staff from a wide range of different administrative levels, such as job centres and city integration officers, are also using the new learning opportunity.