Anti-Racism at Work
Anti-Racism at Work is a half-day workshop that builds one capability properly: what a person actually says in the ten seconds after something happens at work.
It is deliberately narrow. The session builds a repeatable way to name conduct and its effect without accusing anyone of intent, and most of the time goes on practising it. Participants work through real workplace scenarios out loud, watch them go badly, and run them again.
We make a smaller claim than most providers in this space, and we'd rather you heard it from us. Anti-racism training as a category is barely tested. A systematic review covering 2000 to 2022 found 8 studies examining it, and only 2 collected follow-up data.
What does hold up is interpersonal confrontation as an individual skill, and behavioural rehearsal as the method that moves behaviour. This session is built from those components and measured against what people do.
Nobody in the room is told they are the problem. People arrive already holding the values, and the session works on the technique.
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“43% of racially marginalised workers said racism was common or very common in their workplace. Among racially privileged workers, describing the same workplaces, the figure was 18%.”
– Diversity Council Australia, Racism at Work, 2022
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Diversity Council Australia surveyed 1,547 Australian workers for its Racism at Work report. 88% said racism is an issue at work. Fewer than a quarter believed their employer took immediate action when it happened.
The obligation has also shifted. Safe Work Australia now treats racism at work as a psychosocial hazard, so a person conducting a business or undertaking has a duty under the model WHS laws to do all that is reasonably practicable to eliminate or minimise the risk of it occurring, using the same risk management process as any other hazard.
In Victoria, the positive duty under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 already applies and race is covered. The Australian Human Rights Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework, released in November 2024, recommends a federal positive duty to prevent racial discrimination.
For People and Culture teams, the question has moved from whether the organisation holds the right values to whether it can show it took reasonable steps. Training alone won't discharge that duty. Being able to show a session changed what people did afterwards is a defensible part of the answer.
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The half day. An in-person workshop for up to 20 people, built around the one capability. Long enough to teach the skill and give everyone real practice at it. This is the right starting point for most teams.
A longer program, designed with you. For organisations that want the work to hold past the day. Scoped with you rather than pulled off a shelf, and it can take in spaced sessions over a period, scenarios drawn from your own sector, and time on the decisions in your organisation that shape who gets what.
Both need a room with moveable seating and enough space for small groups to work apart from each other.
One condition either way. Attendance is voluntary, or framed as a development opportunity. Controlling, compliance-style framing is associated with worse outcomes than running nothing at all, so we'll raise it if the brief changes.
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A clearer read on why the same workplace gets described so differently depending on who you ask
A repeatable way of naming conduct and its effect without accusing anyone of intent
Practice saying it out loud, including the attempts that go badly, which is the point
A basis for choosing between speaking up in the moment, following up privately, and escalating
Something they've committed to doing differently, inside their own authority, needing no budget or permission
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The two do different work, and the distinction matters when you brief participants.
Unconscious bias training
Looks at how the individual mind works
Core skill: notice, interrupt and replace your own automatic response
Best used before decisions, to improve individual judgement
Anti-Racism at Work
Looks at what gets said and done between people
Core skill: name someone else's conduct and its effect, out loud, in the moment
Best used after incidents, to change what the room tolerates
The two are complementary and neither replaces the other. This session runs well as a follow-on, and works with no prior training.
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Most training in this space is evaluated on how much people enjoyed it. That tells you very little, and it's the single most common criticism the research makes of the field.
We'd rather know whether people speak up more afterwards, so we build measurement into the engagement. What we collect and when depends on what your organisation can support, and we work that out with you on the discovery call.
If the numbers are disappointing you'll get them anyway, with our reading of why.
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We design on the assumption that people who experience racism are in the room. No participant is asked to represent an experience. Anyone may step out of any activity without explanation. Scenarios are always played from the position of the bystander rather than the person being targeted.
If you'd like a separate short briefing offered to staff who may find the material personally difficult, raise it at the scoping call and we'll build it in.
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Design methods are drawn from Kaospilot learning design, Liberating Structures and human-centred design. The evidence base is drawn from the prejudice reduction, organisational behaviour and Australian workplace research, and we're happy to talk through the parts of it that are inconvenient for us.
Every engagement starts with a discovery call before anything is designed, so the session reflects your sector and the room you actually have.
