The challenges

DHS is an organization that touches the lives of virtually every person in Oregon in one way or another. It is a very high profile agency, has experienced significant budget cuts, a loss of management personnel due to retirement, and increased pressure to respond to changing demographics, both inside and outside the agency itself.

Furthermore, managers are frequently bogged down with big workloads and, when we began working with them, felt “trained out” – were weary of having to take time away from their schedules for training that they didn’t always see as necessary, partly because many of them had already been exposed to the basic elements of diversity training. An additional challenge could be found in the fact that many people within the organization had ideas about how training could address these issues.

The solution

We met repeatedly with various teams of people at DHS to get as much input as possible about the possible ways to approach what was to be an intensive half-day training session. The process involved a continual distillation of all of their ideas until we could present them with a draft of a four-hour training that would incorporate as many ideas as possible, yet retain a focus and be more than just a four-hour lecture, which we knew would not engage them in the way we wanted to. Ultimately, we settled on a curriculum that, while heavy on content, also utilized the experiential methodology that we at Figure 8 are committed to.

The results

We delivered the curriculum at training sites all over the State of Oregon and to managers from virtually every DHS department. It was not uncommon for participants to come through the door tired, reluctant, and subdued, but virtually all of the sessions were extremely successful, earning comments like, “They work very well as a team and were very entertaining. They did an outstanding job of holding our attention and educating us.” And, “Great. This was the best presentation so far. It was definitely worth my time.”