The City of Brampton is hiring a consultant to carry out an organizational equity audit following “concerning” results in a survey conducted by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.

The neutral third-party consultant will be asked to provide further options and recommendations to address issues raised in the centre’s report to council.

CCDI made several recommendations including better education, communication, developing and implementing a diversity and inclusions strategy, as well as creating organization-wide standards and improved accountability mechanisms.

In order to address the concerns raised through the audit, council passed a unanimous motion to adopt the centre’s recommendations immediately and endorse a workplace diversity and inclusion strategy and work plan already developed by senior staff with input from numerous workplace parties.

CCDI presented results of its diversity and inclusion audit of the city during a council meeting earlier this month, finding city employees gave agreement rates lower than 70 per cent on 10 out of 12 inclusion survey questions.

“When we have agreement rates below 70 per cent that is concerning. This is the overall employee population with agreement rates of below 70 per cent,” said CCDI senior director of consulting and partnerships, Cathy Gallagher-Louisy.

“There was a number of different data points that led to (the) conclusion that there was a disconnect between senior leaders’ perceptions and employees’ perceptions. We find this as very common across all types of organizations, that the senior leadership tends to have a more positive view of diversity and inclusion than the employees do,” she added.

Among key findings, CCDI found Black and LGB2sQ+ employees had significantly lower feelings of inclusion and perceptions of the city’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Gallagher-Louisy noted the “T” — which stands for transgender in the more commonly used LGBT2sQ+ acronym — wasn’t included in this particular part of the assessment that focused on sexual orientation. However, gender identity was a consideration in other parts of the survey and CCDI report.

Black employees also gave the city lower scores compared to their white and other racialized counterparts.

“We often look at racialized employees compared to white employees, but we noticed that there was a particularly big difference with Black employees specifically,” added Gallagher-Louisy.

CCDI, which applauded the city for undertaking the audit as a “best practice,” used several data-gathering methods in its methodology including a diversity and inclusion survey, focus groups, individual interviews and other organizational assessments.

Compared to straight, white male employees without a disability, equity seeking groups reported much lower feelings of inclusion and higher levels of distrust in reporting processes, as well as in human resources’ and/or management’s “ability to respond to D&I issues” within the organizational culture.

CCDI did find positive results as it related to inclusive leadership. Based on the survey and interviews, 23.1 per cent of the city’s leadership team were operating from an “acceptance” mindset based on intercultural development inventory metrics compared to an average of just 13 per cent among the general population.

While 77 per cent of those in leadership roles were operating from “minimization” mindset — which according to Gallagher-Louisy is considered normal — the audit didn’t find anyone operating from a “polarization” mindset.

According to its website, the intercultural development inventory survey “assesses intercultural competence — the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behaviour to cultural differences and commonalities.”

The city also ranked well in terms of “organizational maturity” based on the global diversity and inclusion benchmarks, which CCDI says is the most widely used tool in the world to assess organizational diversity and inclusion maturity levels.

The global diversity and inclusion benchmarks rank organizations into five levels; Inactive, reactive, proactive, progressive and best practice.

“The city was found to be the progressive stage of diversity and inclusion development in the areas of recruitment, development and compensation and benefits, which is a fairly high stage to be at,” Gallagher-Louisy told council.

“In terms of the developmental stages — the foundational stages — the city was found to be in the proactive stage,” she said, adding the city was ranked in the reactive stage when it comes to assessment, communication and sustainability.

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“I don’t mind doing a deeper dive and having surveys, but I think that should happen in the context of immediately adopting the recommendations. This council always talks about how important diversity and inclusion is to us and frankly our words have echoed that for the last year,” Mayor Patrick Brown told council.

“Whether it’s participating for the first time in the Toronto Pride Parade or whether it is our work on (Quebec’s) Bill 21, it’s part of our ethos that we believe in our DNA that we believe in diversity and inclusion,” he added.

Clarification - Dec. 18, 2019: This article was edited ffrom a previous version to make clear the CCDI assessment and survey did capture data from participants in relation to gender identity and expression.. As well, the previous version misspelled ‘Transgender’ when referencing the 'T' in the LGBT2sQ+ acronym.

Graeme Frisque is a reporter for Mississauga News and Brampton Guardian. Reach him via email: gfrisque@metroland.com

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