Because there isn’t a set formula for progressing towards equity and creating systemic change, setting goals helps focus your efforts. And evaluating your progress towards your goals is what helps you keep accountable and build trust with employees.
Goals and metrics help communicate the reasons behind why you might agree to prioritize some initiatives and not others. And the more effectively you communicate what’s important to you, the easier it is to build and maintain trust between employees and the HR team.
Good goals build trust
Trust is increasingly considered a core resource to any JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) or ARAO (anti-racism, anti-oppression) work. In her book DEI Deconstructed, equity and inclusion consultant and writer Lily Zheng defines trust in this context as “the extent to which stakeholders inside and outside an organization believe that the organization will do what it says.”
In Canadian work culture, goal-setting and evaluation is traditionally focused more on demonstrating progress to those interested in whether JEDI and ARAO work has benefitted the organization’s bottom line. But when goals, metrics and evaluation work are done in a way that increases trust in an organization, teams have an easier time making progress on JEDI and ARAO work.
Employment equity audit and assessment
Every organization’s JEDI and ARAO goals and metrics will look different. Because all good strategies are grounded in research, you’ll want to assess your organization’s readiness and areas of improvement. Conducting an equity audit and assessment, which can include an Employment Systems Review (ESR), will help you understand your organization’s strengths and barriers to equity.
Identifying barriers to equity
Barriers to equity, inclusion and accessibility may be:
- Physical — if your office can only be accessed by stairs, then wheelchair users can’t meaningfully work there
- Structural or systemic – such as unnecessarily requiring a university degree for a job rules out candidates who may have valuable lived experience or other professional experience
- Attitude-related – which can include believing a job candidate won’t be a culture fit because of how they look, sound, or present
Gathering data
Use both quantitative and qualitative data to get a fuller picture of your organization’s strengths and areas for improvement. Quantitative data are things like statistics, numbers, and trends that can be effective for identifying patterns of inequity. Qualitative data helps reveal why these patterns happen, and potential solutions, by focusing on people’s perceptions, motivations and experiences.
For example, quantitative data may reveal a trend in performance reviews where women of colour receive on average worse ratings than others. But you’ll need qualitative data to know if you can rule out reviewer bias or whether it’s due to a lack of support and resources for women of colour of certain backgrounds to succeed.
Where to collect and find quantitative data
We tend to have limited opportunities to collect quantitative data. Surveys must be constructed intentionally, and even highly engaged employees will be reluctant to spend time filling out survey after survey.
In each case, breaking down data by demographic information like gender and race will give you more meaningful information on who is experiencing inequity. Generally speaking, carry out one of each kind of organization-wide surveys every 2-3 years to avoid survey fatigue.
- Demographic surveys that ask employees to anonymously self-report demographic information like race, gender, age, and other relevant identity markers. You might conduct one for all current employees and allow new employees the option to provide this information. Consent is crucial — you must make it clear this is an optional exercise.
- Employee engagement surveys that ask agree/disagree questions on well-being, belonging, trust, and access to development and opportunities.
- Track internal HR data on hiring and retention rates, as well as usage of benefits like professional development funds
- Conduct a salary equity audit and analysis every 2-3 years, making sure to break data down by demographic information like gender, race and disability.
Where to collect and find qualitative data:
Qualitative data can be easier to come by, through observation or “natural” sources, like noticing what questions employees ask at meetings or anonymous suggestion boxes. Look for qualitative data in places like:
- Allowing employees to add optional and open-ended comments at the end of each survey question
- Observing questions employees ask at all-staff meetings, especially in relation to HR announcements that are made
- Set up a year-round anonymous feedback and suggestions box using a free survey or form tool like Typeform
- Gathering feedback through semi-structured interviews or focus groups on current employee policies and procedures
Developing an employment equity plan
Now that you know where inequities are in your organization, it’s time to start developing a plan on addressing them — starting with setting the right goals, and the metrics that will tell you that you’re headed in the right direction.
Bring in employees to co-create these goals with your team. Invite employees from marginalized backgrounds to be subject matter experts on what they feel will be a material improvement to their outcomes, while ensuring they do not shoulder the task of carrying out the work itself. Your organization may already have JEDI councils and employee resource groups (ERGs). If not, this could be a good time to form some.
While your exact set of goals and metrics will be unique to your organization, these are some common goals that can address common patterns of inequities, and the barriers that hold the inequities in place. Good goals are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Closing the gender and racial pay gaps
Gender and race pay gaps persist in Canadian workplaces. Women earn less than men, but the pay gap widens when comparing racialized women to men of any race. Closing these pay gaps contribute to equity and material improvements for employees from these backgrounds.
Sample wording:
We want to achieve and maintain equal pay for equal work by 2027. We’ll measure the pay gap between men and women in the same roles or job levels, which should narrow over time, with the goal of achieving pay parity.
Diversity at the leadership level
When diversity only exists among non-management roles, this usually translates to people from marginalized backgrounds having little formal decision-making power. Aiming for diversity at the management and senior leadership levels translates to stronger equity and anti-oppression efforts.
Sample wording:
We want more racialized employees to stay in their roles for at least five years at the senior leadership level. We’ll track the self-reported well-being of racialized employees and quality of networks and relationships for racialized employees. We’ll also track the average tenure of racialized employees, and reasons for leaving.
Employee well-being, inclusion, and sense of belonging
Inclusion is about ensuring everyone feels safe, valued, and respected at work. Giving people fair and equal treatment is appropriate at times, while at other times we need to take into account a person’s specific background and needs so that they feel safe to be who they are at work.
Sample wording:
We want our 2025-2027 HR initiatives to result in employees having stronger senses of well-being at work. We’ll track the number of employees going on stress leave, which hopefully decreases when we implement new initiatives, the number of grievances reported, complemented by self-reported data on well-being and engagement.
What’s next?
Goal-setting is just the first step of developing an employment equity plan. Click here to learn how to develop a structure to carry out equitable HR changes, the fundamentals of safe and inclusive HR policies and practices and targeted measures you can take to address under-representation of certain groups.
More resources:
DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work, and Doing it Right | Lily Zheng, Penguin House Canada
Developing an internal communications strategy on employment equity | Canadian Human Rights Commission
Guide to Indigenous-friendly work | Early Magazine
Examples of DEI Goals | Together
With files from Kathy Ma, Manager, People, Culture and Learning at Vancouver Foundation.