Know your workforce: Using data strategically for inclusion & organizational excellence
Gathering demographic data about your employees is widely regarded as a best practice in diversity and inclusion, according to the Canadian Institute on Diversity and Inclusion. Their recent report, What Gets Measured Gets Done, suggests that an Employee Census can be a critical first step in designing, implementing and evaluating the efficacy and impact of diversity initiatives. Yet the same report also estimates that nearly one-half of Canadian organizations do not track basic demographic data of their workforces, and few organizations measure the impact of their diversity initiatives.
To learn more about this important topic, Hire Immigrants Ottawa held a workshop on May 15, 2013, for HR professionals, hiring managers and other stakeholders. The session was led by two Ottawa employers who are using employee data strategically for inclusion and organizational excellence.
Janice McCoy, Superintendent of Human Resources, Ottawa Carleton District School Board, provided an overview of the OCDSB Journey to Building an Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive Culture. Workshop participants heard how OCDSB implemented a workforce census in order to understand the diverse characteristics of their employees and their capacity to serve an increasingly diverse student and parent population. McCoy illustrated how these data are being used to identify employee training and development needs, and to inform the development of the School Board’s policies and procedures.
Lois Emburg, Program Manager, Diversity & Inclusion with the City of Ottawa, spoke about the City’s Equity and Inclusion Lens, a practical tool used to promote diversity and inclusion at the City of Ottawa. Emburg spoke about the successes the City has had using the tool and how the City is now undertaking a survey-based evaluation project to measure the impact and effectiveness of the Lens.
Additional Resources you can use:
What Gets Measured Gets Done: Measuring the Return on Investment of Diversity and Inclusion. This report by the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion presents a cross-sector overview of what Canadian employers are currently doing to measure diversity and inclusion, and human rights and equity initiatives within their organizations, and specifically highlights promising practices among leading organizations. The report includes a Toolkit to assist HR practitioners in the area of assessing the ROI of diversity.
Equity and Inclusion Lens is an innovative and practical tool that enables all City of Ottawa employees and managers to promote equity and inclusion in a systematic fashion. The Lens is it is accompanied by 11 Diversity Snapshots, which serve as effective education and awareness tools. The Lens is designed for use in all types of work situations, whether it’s working with people, designing communications, developing policies, planning projects, or recruiting, interviewing and training.
Count me in! Collecting human rights-based data is a practical guide for human resources professionals interested in collecting employee demographic data. Produced by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, this resource includes examples of Canadian companies that have undertaken data gathering initiatives, which the Commission says can play a useful role in creating strong human rights and human resources strategies for organizations in all sectors.
National Household Survey: this 2011 Statistics Canada’s survey has replaced the Census “long-form” as a primary source of information pertaining to characteristics of the Canadian population. Data about immigration and ethnocultural diversity is now available on-line, and Statistics Canada provides free access to several data products that will be of use to HR professionals and employers who want to better understand the diversity of the communities in which they operate.
