This article is written by Rehan Samad, Airworthiness Auditor at the Department of National Defence.

The views expressed here are mine alone and do not reflect those of my employer.

Current events have made diversity and inclusion top of mind for everyone; this is especially true in government.

Now is the perfect time to capitalise on the resources made available to create a public service that truly reflects the diverse society we serve. More importantly, public servants need to take advantage of the fact that senior leadership in government is willing to have a conversation and listen.

Let’s take this opportunity to speak and let it be known that diversity and inclusion is not just numbers and graphs in a PowerPoint presentation or a trend to be forgotten; it is the lives and experiences of real people with tangible impacts. Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce is a process which involves a lot of trial and error and a long-term commitment.

What numbers can’t reveal

In writing this article, I was tempted to research the Employment Equity (EE) numbers at the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) and present them to give an understanding of the current demographics. I decided against that because diversity and inclusion is not just about achieving certain numbers or percentages of EE designated groups within the workforce.

It is about creating an environment where everyone feels that they are given an equal opportunity to enter the workforce and, once hired, have a sense of belonging and belief that they can progress in their career regardless of their gender, the colour of their skin or their culture.

We cannot just throw solutions at a problem we do not completely understand

I think what paints a better picture of the demographics is the experience within the organisation. As a millennial visible minority myself, I am usually looking around to find another person of colour in meetings; I get excited when someone pronounces my name correctly on their first try; I decide whether to attend a group lunch based on whether the pub we are going to this time around offers at least one thing that’s vegetarian on the menu; when I received a promotion, I found myself explaining why I couldn’t celebrate it by having a “beer call”; and my personal favourite: I am called upon, albeit occasionally, to end a discussion on whether something is racist or inappropriate.

Although I am capable of handling these situations with a sense of levity, it just helps in getting a better understanding of the demographics and culture within the organisation.

An important set-back

So how do we go from policy and statistics on diversity, to “building a workforce that leverages the diversity of Canadian society.”?

The engineering population within Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel) (ADM(Mat)), where I work as an engineer, is pretty significant (several hundred). Being engineers and all about practical solutions, we created a committee which is dedicated to researching and providing concrete solutions to career progression and other issues being faced by the engineering community within ADM(Mat).

One of the working groups of the committee is focused on EE. Through a voluntary survey, we gathered the necessary data regarding the current demographics among our engineers  and came up with some recommendations to improve diversity. One of the recommendations was to provide hiring managers with three EE group qualified candidates when a job is posted and ask them for a justification if they did not hire one of them.

This recommendation was accepted and implemented with high hopes. Unfortunately, it did not work

This recommendation was accepted and implemented with high hopes. Unfortunately, it did not work. In fact, a follow up survey revealed that the demographics among the engineering leadership got worse.

Although this sounds like a set-back, it was in fact an important lesson learned. We cannot just throw solutions at a problem we do not completely understand.

The solution to diversity and inclusion cannot be generic, i.e. mandate implicit bias training, mandate X number of EE group hires, etc. In our case, mandating certain actions seems to have created a reluctance towards EE and diversity and those who did end up being hired are perceived to be unqualified or not as qualified as their peers. In other words, mandating certain actions can have the opposite desired effect!

Based on this lesson, we are currently in the process of making new recommendations aimed towards creating an environment of inclusion. These recommendations include simple things that are easy to implement and elaborate ideas which require more planning. An example of the former, celebrating holidays for underrepresented minorities which can help facilitate dialogue among colleagues.

In the case of the latter, having a mentorship program specifically for the EE group engineers in order to increase leadership’s direct exposure to them. The idea is to eliminate any bias or hesitancy in hiring members of the EE group through meaningful exposure and understanding so we do not have to focus so much on setting numerical targets.

What success looks like

I set out to write about the success of our working group activities, however I think I have to define success realistically for this issue and set the right expectations.

The current workforce demographics is the result of decades of, let’s call it “focused”, hiring practices. Creating a new workforce which represents the Canadian society will take years and require a strategy which allows for constantly evolving tactics as we learn from failed policy implementations and continue to support the things that work.

Success in this situation has to be defined as getting a seat at the table where decisions are made and having the support of the leadership. — Rehan Samad

(Picture credit: Unsplash)