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Sephora closed all its US stores for an hour Wednesday to hold "inclusion workshops" for its 16,000 employees, just over a month after the R & B star, SZA, said that she had called for security when shopping at a store in Calabasas.
Lmao Sandy Sephora 614 Calabasas called security to make sure I did not fly. We had a long conversation. U have a blessed day Sandy
– SZA (@sza) May 1, 2019
The beauty retailer said the training was being developed months before the SZA experiment, which undermined the company's efforts to become a champion of diversity. Sephora, who apologized to SZA last month, said the incident "reinforces the reason why membership is now more important than ever".
In addition to store closures, the company announced that it would close its distribution centers and headquarters for workshops to discuss what it means to belong to a gender identity, race, ethnicity , at age and more. "open to customers after training.
Sephora provided few details about his workshops, which were closed to the public. The company said there would be more training for employees in the future, but it did not answer questions about what would be taught, how the workshops were organized and how they had been trained. designed.
Employees at a Manhattan store gathered in front of the store Wednesday, dressed in black t-shirts with Sephora's new slogan, "We belong to something beautiful," helping at Starbucks coffee while listening to a speaker. Employees would not speak publicly about the session.
The question of whether diversity training works is debatable. Some companies are rethinking their approach to anti-bias training as a result of academic studies suggesting that such programs have done little to improve workplace diversity and, in some cases, can backfire.
Sephora's initiative follows the closure of more than 14,000 Starbucks stores in the United States last year for anti-bias training after the outcry over the arrest of two black men for sat at the Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything. This incident sparked protests, threatened boycotts and eventually led the Philadelphia Police Department to announce a new policy on how to deal with people accused of trespassing on private property.
While Starbucks also kept his training private, he published training materials showing that employees were invited to break into small groups to talk about their experience of the breed. The program was developed with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
On April 30, SZA tweeted that an employee of Sephora had called security to make sure she was not stealing. SZA, which has already appeared in an advertisement for Sephora's proposed Fenty makeup line, identified the employee solely as "Sandy Sephora". Sephora responded with an apology tweet, saying that she took these complaints seriously.
Sephora presented the workshops as part of a new diversity marketing campaign.
The company, which belongs to the Moët Hennessy luxury group Louis Vuitton LVMH, has long since incorporated diversity into its brand. Two years ago, the company helped launch Rihanna's Fenty line, known for its range of foundations ranging from pale brown to dark brown.
Sephora mentioned the formation of employee resource groups and the organization of "inclusive mentality training for all supervisors" as part of their workplace diversity initiatives.
In 2016, two sociologists, Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University and Frank Dobbin of Harvard University, published an article in the Harvard Business Review, based on a study suggesting that the effects of training diversity rarely lasted and sometimes aroused resentment. in part because many companies use "negative messaging" in their training.
The study, which analyzed 30 years of data from more than 800 US companies, found that the number of Black and Asian leaders had declined among companies that were dependent on mandatory diversity training. The study revealed better results among companies where training was voluntary.
The Harvard Review reports that almost all Fortune 500 companies use diversity training. Various companies have reorganized their approach in recent years, including incorporating this process into the process of integrating all new employees, in part so that it is not perceived as a punitive measure for bad behavior.
Audra Jenkins, chief diversity and inclusion manager at the Randstad US employment agency, said his company had redesigned its own training program, which he calls now "conscious inclusion". She added that every new employee is automatically enrolled in the training, which uses e-learning. gamification to help people recognize prejudices and help them manage them.
Jenkins said Sephora was right to send a quick message to her employees and customers at a time when social media was boosting missteps, but warned that this could only be seen as a first step .
"You have to go out publicly or you will have instant backlash," Jenkins said. "But one day is not enough to handle years of problems. It can not be just a message that disappears quickly because employees will understand that quickly. "
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