Photo Source: Pexels, Photographer: skitterphoto
Contributor: Gabriela Deno
If you know there’s a radar gun up the road, there’s a good chance you’ll slow down to avoid a ticket. In fact, behavioral scientists tell us that learned behavior is developed from experience. If an organization has thousands of customer-facing employees, it makes sense to offer training for their workers to avoid an issue.
Sephora is the latest company clocked by the reputational radar gun. The giant Paris-based cosmetics chain recently closed all of its 706 U.S. locations for a one-hour all-hands inclusion and diversity training. Taking a page out of the Starbuck’s playbook, management took this action after R&B singer SZA, accused the store of racial profiling in April. SZA tweeted about her experiencein a Sephora in Calabasas, CA, saying security was called because a staff member thought she was stealing from the store.
Sephora’s team was quick to publicly apologize to SZA and take action to resolve the issue. While the company claims the training had already been in the planning stages, their rapid response in their social media channels and the store closings helped change the narrative towards restoring long-term reputation.
While the company took commendable steps, Sephora may have avoided this crisis entirely if they had implemented their diversity training plan earlier.
CommCore recommends the following to lessen the impact of a potential reputational crisis:
- Don’t just “check the box” on employee training.
- Create short, innovative and entertaining methods to train and inform employees on topics ranging from inclusion, safety, and crisis awareness. Whiteboard animation is one example of how to target the message to the right audience.
- Look at how many of the airlines are creating entertaining safety videos to get passengers to pay attention. This is United’s latest version featuring Spiderman.