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Why do we need equity in the workplace?
First and foremost, we often tend to imagine that we live in an equitable society, where all individuals have access to the same opportunities for employment and fair remuneration. Yet statistics tell us otherwise. If we had a truly equitable society, we wouldn’t see that Canadian women in management positions earn around 88 cents for every $1 earned by men, and that they represent only 24% of the seats on the boards of directors of the country’s companies. Nor would we see that, regardless of job level, people with disabilities have a 21.4% pay gap with their non-disabled colleagues, and a mere 8% of board seats in Quebec.
Likewise, our gender, age, skin color, brain, body, marital status, etc. influence our experience at work, and do so throughout our working life. Did you know that the percentage of Canadians from under-represented groups reporting discrimination at work is considerably higher than that of the general population? 46% of these people identify as LGBTQ2S+, 38% of Indigenous, Blacks and Coloureds and 35% of people with disabilities report discrimination at work. That’s a lot of people!
How equity can be applied in business
Let’s take the example of a company where we notice that all the people hired for the most influential positions already knew each other to a greater or lesser extent: they either worked together in the past, or went to university at the same time.
How can we explain this phenomenon? First of all, I’m not saying that these people aren’t good at their jobs, or that they shouldn’t have got them. On the other hand, I do wonder about the reason for this convergence. Maybe the individuals, knowing that their employer was recruiting, told their friends and family about it and recommended their friends? Perhaps the individuals explained the recruitment process and were able to talk in detail about the recruiters they were going to meet, so as to arrive well-prepared for the interview?
Access to this information can create an inequality of treatment that enables certain candidates to perform better during the recruitment process, and therefore ultimately be hired. But is it only because of their professional skills, or has the information obtained helped them to appear more competent? Is it really 100% fair?
An equity-focused approach would be to recognize this inequality and, ideally, try to remedy it. For example, this company could make its recruitment process more transparent and accessible to everyone by identifying what the different stages are, what the success criteria are for each stage, who the people involved are, whether it’s all face-to-face or virtual, how much time to expect between each stage, and so on. Then we make everything available on the website!
Equity is…
There are many areas of society where we already take a fairness-based approach – we recognize that people have different incomes and therefore different tax rates, for example. Equity is:
Ensure that a hearing-impaired worker has the software and tools he needs to do his job.
Buying a fat person an ergonomic chair so they can do their job without horrible back pain.
Have a website that allows larger fonts for people with vision issues.
Give some university students more time to write their exams.
In short, we can all agree that we want to work in a professional environment where management and supervisors are understanding and have a human approach, an environment that sees its workforce as individuals who may have changing needs that are different from one another. That’s why we need to consider equity. Thus, equity in the workplace is the concept of offering fair opportunities to all people based on their individual needs.
Believing in equity means believing that everyone can have a pleasant, fair and enjoyable working experience. To achieve this, we need to look at and question our processes, our policies and our ways of doing things. That’s what we’re doing with DEI.
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Does this content resonate with you? Would you like to create opportunities for dialogue in your organization? We offer training and coaching for your equity, diversity and inclusion needs! Contact us to arrange a session!
References for this article
Indeed Canada (2023). Éliminer les obstacles pour un avenir du travail meilleur et plus équitable. Rapport de recherche.
Chambre de commerce du Canada (2024). Des avancées timides : la lenteur des progrès pour les femmes dans le monde des affaires et de l’entrepreneuriat.
Collège des administrateurs de société (2023). Équité, diversité et inclusion dans les CA. Portrait et tendances au Québec.
Statistique Canada (2019). Écart salarial entre les personnes ayant une incapacité et les personnes sans incapacité. Rapports sur l’incapacité et l’accessibilité au Canada.
