Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8221896.stm. Basically, Microsoft (badly) Photoshopped an image of an African American man in an advert which was running globally. The ad, reworded in Polish, appeared with a white face superimposed on the body of the previously featured Black executive (just the face mind you - the man’s hand remained Black!) Just about every e-learning programme I have ever seen which features real images of people also features a balanced gender and ethnic mix. This is perfectly appropriate and something we should be applauding – presenting a positive view of a diverse workforce is an essential part of being in a learning and development role – especially if working with large, diverse companies where ensuring everyone feels the programme is for them is an important entry ticket to learning taking place. But if you then follow the discussions on Reddit www.reddit.com – the irreverent IT community site – as many correspondents are up in arms about the tokenism of the Microsoft approach to its US advertising as are inflamed about the apparent racism implied by the doctored image in Europe. Here’s a tricky conundrum for materials developers and bespoke e-learning producers. Do we use models, or stock photography, chosen in part to represent a wide but essentially false demographic or do we hold up a mirror to the organisation? As one of the contributors on Reddit points out, maybe the problem is that in a US based technology company 80% of the employees in this type of meeting would be white men, and yet there is not a single white man in the advert. My line is that we always use pictures of real employees in the programmes that I am involved in designing, choosing gender and ethnic balance to both reflect the real people in the organisation and to be aspirational for those from under-represented groups. We avoid tokenism. If white men happen to be in the majority at certain levels or in certain roles, we need to reflect this without ruling those who are non-white or female out of the equation. White, male learners should be represented by the materials they use too. I find this balanced approach infinitely preferable to avoiding the issue with cartoon images which just ask users, and more importantly their managers, not to take Disney-esque learning materials seriously. No black and minority ethnic employees to feature? No women in senior roles? There’s a whole raft of training needs asking to be met! I’d be interested in finding out others’ views of this diversity issue. One thing is for sure, the option of replacing minority ethnic images with ham-fisted use of Photoshop is the worst option I can imagine. We should never avoid acting positively through fear of sparking the ‘Political Correctness gone mad’ debate amongst those threatened by diversity.