Got Harassment Prevention Training?

New law mandates harassment prevention training for companies with 50 or more employees.

It is official: if you’re a California company and you employ 50 or more people, a new law says you must provide harassment prevention training to all of your supervisors every two years.

And it can’t be just any old harassment training with a "plug-n-play" video or an HR representative reading your company’s policy out loud to a roomful of yawning managers; it’s got to be "interactive" training. In other words, trainees must be able to ask questions and have them answered by a knowledgeable, experienced facilitator.

Since 1997, Orlando-Ward & Associates has been providing Scenes from the Front, its groundbreaking interactive harassment prevention training program to companies throughout the United States. Our specialty is in using live, professional theater, expert facilitation and experiential learning as workplace training tools.

Delivered in as little as 90 minutes, Scenes from the Front has been consistently rated as "highly effective," "powerful," and "very memorable," by our clients.

The format is simple: Orlando-Ward & Associates’ Scenes from the Front program features realistic scenarios – performed by professional actors - depicting typical workplace situations that involve some form of harassment. The scenes can be customized or re-written to suit our client companies’ needs and cultures.

After each scene, our "subject matter expert" facilitator initiates a dialogue with the audience about the issues and concepts; introduces clear definitions of harassment, company policies and reporting procedures, and responds to audience questions. Our facilitator works closely with your company’s HR and Legal representatives on program content and delivery, and can include them in the actual program facilitation as much or as little as you’d like.

Cost: $4,100.00 per program + Travel & Expenses for our delivery team of five (5) based in southern California. Discounts are available for multiple presentations.
Contact: 619-461-6777

(reprint from DiversityInc Magazine)

Lights, Camera, Action!

Want to build workplace skills without enduring another tortuous training session? Want to reduce turnover among women and minorities? Penetrate emerging markets?

Enter Gregg Ward, President of Orlando-Ward & Associates, Inc. who uses live, professional theater to simulate the workplace and connect cultural competency to the bottom line. "Every play we perform makes the business case on diversity, both internally and externally," says Ward. "This stuff is not about the warm and fuzzy."

Using half-hour plays performed on site by professional actors and set in fictional corporations, Ward and his team change the way corporate audiences think about diversity with a powerful and memorable impact that goes way beyond typical diversity training. (Of course, the actors have gone through anywhere from four to six hours of diversity training themselves.) "We create custom plays too," he adds, citing his latest endeavors for IHOP restaurant franchisees and Harley-Davidson Motor Company.

For nearly 20 years, Orlando-Ward & Associates has "worked the room" for audiences such as American Express, AXA (formerly Equitable Life Assurance Co.) Ford Motor Company, Nissan, Qualcomm, the Pentagon, Warner Bros and Merck Medco. Orlando-Ward & Associates’ flagship program "All of Us: diversity, beyond race and gender" has been performed more than 1,000 times nationwide. "We facilitate system-wide change," he says, "And we directly reflect our client organization’s core values, philosophy and strategic initiatives."

Orlando-Ward’s programs run anywhere from two hours to two or more days and can be delivered one time or rolled out to all employees. At Wescom Credit Union, for instance Orlando-Ward’s stage was set for two years so everyone from the CEO on down had training on both the strategic business case for diversity and managing diversity conflicts. In fact, ,more than 120 managers learned to leverage diversity so well that new credit union membership in Southern California increased 10-25 percent.

Orlando-Ward & Associates also offers audience interactive Q&A sessions with the actors working "in character;" "experiential learning" sessions where actors work one-on-one with trainees; and personal action-planning and management strategy coaching sessions. Bravo! Contact www.orlandoward.com