Organization probes family life, sexual orientation, level of education
When employers conduct diversity surveys, many take their cue from employment equity laws and draft self-identification surveys. These typically ask employees to check a box if they belong to one of four groups: women, visible minorities, Aboriginals or people with disabilities.
Some employers, however, are taking diversity surveys further. At the Ottawa Police Service, the 2005 Workforce Census goes beyond the level of detail seen in most other surveys. In 28 questions, the survey asks the police service’s 5,000 employees about an array of issues including how they spend time outside work, what dependants they have to care for, what training they’ve obtained and what training they continue to obtain.
The survey reflects the thinking at Ottawa Police Services that there’s more to diversity than the representation of four designated groups. The way the police service conceptualizes it, the diversity initiative is part and parcel of the strategy to be “employer of choice for all.”
Having a pulse on the diverse needs of the workforce helps the police service recruit and retain the sworn and civilian employees it needs. One example of this can be found by looking at education. Officers no longer enter policing right out of high school as they once did. At the Ottawa Police Service, 16.4 per cent have a university degree and 24.2 per cent hold two degrees. Plus there are 33 employees with a master’s degree and 32 doctorate degree holders.
“What that tells us is we’re in for a bit of a problem. When I joined 28 years ago, 95 per cent had high school. Nobody had a university education,” said Staff Sgt. Syd Gravel, manager of the outreach recruitment project and the professional development centre at the Ottawa Police Service. “When you joined the police, they had you for life. Now people have all sorts of alternatives to their career paths. Now, if they don’t like this anymore after five years, they have other options.”
Trevor Wilson, a Toronto diversity consultant hired to draw up the survey and tabulate results, said one the rules he had going in was that every question had to have a purpose.
“If, in fact, they weren’t going to do anything with that information, that would create a level of expectation” that would be unmet, said Wilson.
Transparent process
To make the process totally transparent, each question is accompanied by a brief explanation about why the question is asked and what potential benefit the information may bring to the police service.
The police service made another interesting decision about questions relating to ethnicity. Instead of just asking what ethnic group employees identify themselves as belonging to, the survey also asked for ethnic identification of spouses, parents and grandparents. The reason for this is to find out the extent to which employees are connected to the community. A sense of affiliation with a community group may be cultivated through a spouse or a partner, or through parents and grandparents as well, Gravel said.
The communication effort around the survey included 90-minute “fireside chats” between the chief of police and all the inspectors, superintendents, staff sergeants, managers and police association representatives.
High among concerns were privacy issues, which is why the survey had to be handled by an outside company and made completely anonymous.
The survey garnered a 72-per-cent response rate. Wilson said part of the success had to do with the level of probing. People are more cynical when they see a survey asking about only four groups.
“A census could be a good news conversation in terms of, ‘What we’re trying to do is to find out more about the organization so, as an employer, we could provide the appropriate services for employees and provide things that are more relevant for planning purposes,’” said Wilson.
Still the exception
But Marc Berwald, president of Halifax-based Clear Picture Consulting, said he doubted this level of detail would be acceptable in other environments. At a police service, it might be easy to see a direct line between workforce makeup and operational needs. But, in a factory environment or a call centre, workers might wonder why the employer wants to know if they’re gay.
Berwald said he seldom sees surveys with this level of detail. What’s more common among “enlightened” companies are employee identification questions that are part of employee surveys. Though they may often be limited to the four categories, these identification questions allow employers to analyze the success of their management and HR practices, as viewed through the lens of the four groups.
However, Berwald believes the employers willing to make the time and do the work involved in carrying out such diversity-related surveys are still the exception.
“If you look at the 50 Best Employers in Canada, if 10 of them have programs that are really working, in the sense that they’re trying to get a competitive advantage out of them, you’d be lucky,” said Berwald. “One in five, or maybe two in five, and that’s among the best.”
That may be because employers are wary about getting a return for all the work that’s involved in doing it right, he added.
“It’s not an easy strategy. It’s long-term, it requires a lot of work and a lot of tact,” said Berwald. “It’s a hard thing to pull off.”
Halifax survey backlash
Sex orientation probe raises ire
An employer’s attempt to find out more about its workforce can backfire. Recently, the Halifax Regional School Board sent out diversity questionnaires to its 8,000 employees. On top of the usual categories, the questionnaire asked about ethnic groupings and, among Aboriginal people, whether someone was a Micmac or a Métis. However, it also had questions about employees’ sexual orientation, and those were the questions the teachers’ union urged members to boycott.
The goal of the school board’s survey, said spokesperson Shaune MacKinlay, is to identify where there are gaps in the organization in terms of representation of various disadvantaged groups.
“We may find we’re more diverse in certain areas than in others,” said MacKinlay. “For example, there may be more women teaching in some areas or at some grade levels than others. And where there are gaps, is there an impediment around hiring that we don’t know of.”
But most worrying for the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union is the fact the survey is not entirely confidential. Each questionnaire carries the employee’s name, though access to the collected questionnaires is restricted to only a couple of in-house researchers, MacKinlay said.
Grant MacLean, chair of the union’s Metro regional council, told Canadian HR Reporter in an e-mail the union had sought reassurance that the confidentiality of teachers’ responses be protected.
“In discussions held, the board could not guarantee the information could be kept confidential,” said MacLean. “The union discussed with the board a proposal that would allow the membership to participate in the survey that would allow the name of the teacher to remain anonymous. The board was not prepared to accept this proposal.”
MacKinlay said putting names on surveys allows the school board to keep updating the records.
“We wanted a live database so that if somebody moved off our system, the data can be changed. Without that, it’s a snapshot that’s only valid at the time collated.”
A final tally was not available, but it’s estimated that more than 3,000 completed questionnaires had been submitted.
Some employers, however, are taking diversity surveys further. At the Ottawa Police Service, the 2005 Workforce Census goes beyond the level of detail seen in most other surveys. In 28 questions, the survey asks the police service’s 5,000 employees about an array of issues including how they spend time outside work, what dependants they have to care for, what training they’ve obtained and what training they continue to obtain.
The survey reflects the thinking at Ottawa Police Services that there’s more to diversity than the representation of four designated groups. The way the police service conceptualizes it, the diversity initiative is part and parcel of the strategy to be “employer of choice for all.”
Having a pulse on the diverse needs of the workforce helps the police service recruit and retain the sworn and civilian employees it needs. One example of this can be found by looking at education. Officers no longer enter policing right out of high school as they once did. At the Ottawa Police Service, 16.4 per cent have a university degree and 24.2 per cent hold two degrees. Plus there are 33 employees with a master’s degree and 32 doctorate degree holders.
“What that tells us is we’re in for a bit of a problem. When I joined 28 years ago, 95 per cent had high school. Nobody had a university education,” said Staff Sgt. Syd Gravel, manager of the outreach recruitment project and the professional development centre at the Ottawa Police Service. “When you joined the police, they had you for life. Now people have all sorts of alternatives to their career paths. Now, if they don’t like this anymore after five years, they have other options.”
Trevor Wilson, a Toronto diversity consultant hired to draw up the survey and tabulate results, said one the rules he had going in was that every question had to have a purpose.
“If, in fact, they weren’t going to do anything with that information, that would create a level of expectation” that would be unmet, said Wilson.
Transparent process
To make the process totally transparent, each question is accompanied by a brief explanation about why the question is asked and what potential benefit the information may bring to the police service.
The police service made another interesting decision about questions relating to ethnicity. Instead of just asking what ethnic group employees identify themselves as belonging to, the survey also asked for ethnic identification of spouses, parents and grandparents. The reason for this is to find out the extent to which employees are connected to the community. A sense of affiliation with a community group may be cultivated through a spouse or a partner, or through parents and grandparents as well, Gravel said.
The communication effort around the survey included 90-minute “fireside chats” between the chief of police and all the inspectors, superintendents, staff sergeants, managers and police association representatives.
High among concerns were privacy issues, which is why the survey had to be handled by an outside company and made completely anonymous.
The survey garnered a 72-per-cent response rate. Wilson said part of the success had to do with the level of probing. People are more cynical when they see a survey asking about only four groups.
“A census could be a good news conversation in terms of, ‘What we’re trying to do is to find out more about the organization so, as an employer, we could provide the appropriate services for employees and provide things that are more relevant for planning purposes,’” said Wilson.
Still the exception
But Marc Berwald, president of Halifax-based Clear Picture Consulting, said he doubted this level of detail would be acceptable in other environments. At a police service, it might be easy to see a direct line between workforce makeup and operational needs. But, in a factory environment or a call centre, workers might wonder why the employer wants to know if they’re gay.
Berwald said he seldom sees surveys with this level of detail. What’s more common among “enlightened” companies are employee identification questions that are part of employee surveys. Though they may often be limited to the four categories, these identification questions allow employers to analyze the success of their management and HR practices, as viewed through the lens of the four groups.
However, Berwald believes the employers willing to make the time and do the work involved in carrying out such diversity-related surveys are still the exception.
“If you look at the 50 Best Employers in Canada, if 10 of them have programs that are really working, in the sense that they’re trying to get a competitive advantage out of them, you’d be lucky,” said Berwald. “One in five, or maybe two in five, and that’s among the best.”
That may be because employers are wary about getting a return for all the work that’s involved in doing it right, he added.
“It’s not an easy strategy. It’s long-term, it requires a lot of work and a lot of tact,” said Berwald. “It’s a hard thing to pull off.”
Halifax survey backlash
Sex orientation probe raises ire
An employer’s attempt to find out more about its workforce can backfire. Recently, the Halifax Regional School Board sent out diversity questionnaires to its 8,000 employees. On top of the usual categories, the questionnaire asked about ethnic groupings and, among Aboriginal people, whether someone was a Micmac or a Métis. However, it also had questions about employees’ sexual orientation, and those were the questions the teachers’ union urged members to boycott.
The goal of the school board’s survey, said spokesperson Shaune MacKinlay, is to identify where there are gaps in the organization in terms of representation of various disadvantaged groups.
“We may find we’re more diverse in certain areas than in others,” said MacKinlay. “For example, there may be more women teaching in some areas or at some grade levels than others. And where there are gaps, is there an impediment around hiring that we don’t know of.”
But most worrying for the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union is the fact the survey is not entirely confidential. Each questionnaire carries the employee’s name, though access to the collected questionnaires is restricted to only a couple of in-house researchers, MacKinlay said.
Grant MacLean, chair of the union’s Metro regional council, told Canadian HR Reporter in an e-mail the union had sought reassurance that the confidentiality of teachers’ responses be protected.
“In discussions held, the board could not guarantee the information could be kept confidential,” said MacLean. “The union discussed with the board a proposal that would allow the membership to participate in the survey that would allow the name of the teacher to remain anonymous. The board was not prepared to accept this proposal.”
MacKinlay said putting names on surveys allows the school board to keep updating the records.
“We wanted a live database so that if somebody moved off our system, the data can be changed. Without that, it’s a snapshot that’s only valid at the time collated.”
A final tally was not available, but it’s estimated that more than 3,000 completed questionnaires had been submitted.
