Unconscious Bias & Microaggression Training Workshop
Since 2004, KAYAK has been revolutionising the travel industry. Metasearch for travel was introduced by Kayak. Today, they process billions of queries across their platforms each year for travel information, helping millions of travellers around the globe make confident decisions. With every query, KAYAK searches hundreds of travel sites to show travellers the information they need to find the right flights, hotels, hire cars and holiday packages.
In over a decade, they’ve grown from a small office of 14 employees into a company of over 1,000 travel-loving teammates working across 7 international brands; KAYAK, SWOODOO, checkfelix, momondo, Cheapflights, Mundi and HotelsCombined.
In 2013, they were acquired by Booking Holdings, the world leader in online travel.
Background
Kayak were holding a live conference, for 100 people in Lisbon, Portugal in August 2022.
Need
The participants were finance professionals meeting from across the world in Lisbon for this conference. The objective for the training was to discuss and understand the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workforce. They wanted to focus on unconscious bias and microaggression, understand what these are and get ideas on how they can be avoided.
Activity
The objectives were to develop the participants’ awareness of the importance of these areas and to give an overview of practical strategies and ideas, which they could use immediately.
We developed a highly interactive workshop style session, with people working in small groups around the room. It had to be fast paced but give people enough time to think about the issues under scrutiny.
It also had to try to strike the balance between taking the issues seriously whilst keeping it light as this was the first item on a 2.5 day agenda.
Outcomes
Comment from Martin, “I take great pride in the work I do to ensure it gives value to participants and clients. Firstly in helping them in some way to do their work slightly better. And for the client in helping to further people development as it’s called. In a training career of 25 years, this may well have been my finest hour. To take such serious subjects and get that balance of ideas, insight, space to think, whilst adding some humour and lightness was incredibly difficult. And to do this with 100 people in lecture style seating, at 9:30am at the start of a conference. And then to get the unsolicited feedback I got was just incredible.”
Participant feedback
Comment from Martin. “Following the session we had a refreshment break. Various people came up to me and offered their warm thanks and appreciation for the session. They added their astonishment at how much was acheived in one hour and with such lightness of touch.”
Client comment
The main sponsor of the session said the following. “Martin showed that he undertood the brief and designed this session to suit our needs. We couldn’t be more delighted with the impact and interaction the session achieved. And it got the conference off to a flying start.”