Technology

Police diversity plan calls for special equity office The Ottawa Police Service has released a multi-year action plan aimed at boosting diversity and stamping out discrimination within its ranks. The plan follows a 2018 census that revealed a deep internal divide over the force’s attempts recruit and promote women and minorities. Data released in November also revealed that black and Middle Eastern drivers are still being pulled over at disproportionately high rates. Later that month, Chief Peter Sloly announced a plan to address those trends would be coming in early 2020. The plan, titled “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,” lists 10 priorities for 2020, including: Creating a diversification and equity office within the force. Reintroducing the hate crimes unit, which was announced last week. Updating outreach and recruitment criteria to remove unintended barriers for certain applicants. The Ottawa Police Service plans to update its outreach and recruitment efforts to remove ‘unintended barriers’ facing some job applicants. (Radio-Canada) A good start Michael Bach, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, applauded the plan as an important first step. “I think they have done certainly all of the the right steps to move forward with this. This is deliberate action,” Bach told CBC’s All In A Day. “I always just use the analogy of a car driving up a hill. If you take your foot off the pedal you know you’re going to go backwards, so you have to keep your foot on the pedal to make sure things keep moving forward.” diversityconference@23 1 October 17, 2023

How Can You Use Technology to Support a Culture of Inclusion and Diversity? The case for diversity and inclusion in the workplace is compelling – not just because it is the right thing to do, but because numerous studies suggest it can drive better business performance too. McKinsey reinforces this in their 2018 study “Delivering through Diversity”. They document the business case for diversity highlighting the link between diversity and company financial performance, suggesting how organisations can craft better inclusion strategies for a competitive edge. With advances in technology and the growth of people analytics, HR increasingly has the tools it needs to promote and embed diversity and inclusion initiatives, and perhaps most critically prove that it can be a significant driver of business performance. Some of the most interesting and insightful research in the D&I space has been undertaken by renowned industry analyst Stacia Garr and her team at RedThread Research. I caught up with Stacia recently to learn more about the research they’ve been conducting. Despite research from the likes of McKinsey establishing a link with financial performance, much of the progress on diversity and inclusion initiatives has been painfully slow. What are the main reasons for this lack of success? In the past, many of the solutions for diversity, inclusion, and equity were focused solely on the individual. Things like unconscious bias and other diversity training efforts, mentoring, and sponsorship were all focused on the behaviour or understanding of one person. It ended up being something of a game of whack-a-mole — all built on a presumption that bias comes only from people. I think now we’re beginning to understand that bias may begin with individuals, but quickly becomes systemic — codified into our processes and cultures. And once bias is part of how we work, it is very difficult to change through one-off efforts like training. In fact, training individuals who then return to an institutionalised system of inequity sends all sorts of mixed signals — and can actually undermine even the good faith efforts companies try to make. Another ingredient that was missing in the past was a lack of energy at the top. Leaders, being largely from populations that don’t suffer from marginalisation themselves, didn’t see, or understand or prioritise D&I, which left organisations struggling to bring the diversity of the world into the workplace, and only perpetuated the lack of diversity at leadership levels. Leaders are gradually understanding the business imperative for a diverse organisation at all levels, and are beginning to realise that building an inclusive culture means also addressing bias as a systemic problem, rather than relying on individual interventions alone. diversityconference@23 1 October 17, 2023