Behaviorally designed training leads to more diverse hiring

Many organizations are interested in increasing the diversity of their workforce and spend millions of dollars on diversity training. Yet there is little empirical evidence that such training increases diversity in organizations. We implemented a large-scale field experiment in a global telecommunications and engineering firm (n = 10,433) testing whether behaviorally designed training increases the diversity of who is hired. In particular, the diversity training was timely (delivered immediately before hiring managers shortlisted candidates), tailored to the hiring decision, delivered by senior members of the organization, and made diversity salient. Results show that behaviorally designed diversity training can positively influence the hiring of women and non-national applicants relative to business as usual. Our findings suggest that behaviorally designed diversity training can work to change the diversity of hires but that its success relies on carefully considered design choices and the decision context.