Rabobank learns how to make employees into better professionals: Training improves service to ethnic‐minority clients

Abstract

Purpose

To highlight ways of improving staff attitudes to ethnic‐minority clients.

Design/methodology/approach

The briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his own impartial comment and tries to place the article in context.

Findings

Gillert and Chuzischvili's article shows that employee beliefs play a more important part than specific intercultural “competencies” in helping staff to deal with ethnic‐minority clients more effectively. Change will be successfully achieved only if it is part of a larger process that causes employees to see that beliefs are not linked to any moralistic notion of having to be fair or non‐discriminatory, but to the very identity of a good professional in the organization. In this context, “on the job” training is more important than classroom instruction.

Originality/value

The article suggests key ways in which diversity training can be made more effective.

Citation

(2005), "Rabobank learns how to make employees into better professionals: Training improves service to ethnic‐minority clients", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 9-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/09670730510579605