Rabobank learns how to make employees into better professionals : Training improves service to ethnic‐minority clients

Purpose – To highlight ways of improving staff attitudes to ethnic‐minority clients. Design/methodology/approach – The briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his own impartial comment and tries to place the article in context. Findings – Gillert and Chuzischvili's article shows that employee beliefs play a more important part than specific intercultural “competencies” in helping staff to deal with ethnic‐minority clients more effectively. Change will be successfully achieved only if it is part of a larger process that causes employees to see that beliefs are not linked to any moralistic notion of having to be fair or non‐discriminatory, but to the very identity of a good professional in the organization. In this context, “on the job” training is more important than classroom instruction. Originality/value – The article suggests key ways in which diversity training can be made more effective.