By Ian J. Cook

There is an increasing need to monitor and track the diversity of your organization. For some federally regulated employers it is a legal requirement. For others it is a means to understanding whether or not you are tapping into the full range of talent that is available to your organization. Given the existing recruitment challenges and the fact that they are going to get worse before they get better, knowing whether or not you have utilized all of the possible talent pools is an important insight.

The way to measure diversity is as a percentage of headcount. The equation is fairly straight forward, however there are a couple of areas of concern to be aware of to ensure that you understand how to formulate this measure in an appropriate and acceptable way.

Diversity Percentage =

Employees who self identify in a diversity category/ Total headcount

This fraction is then expressed as a percentage. For example if

Headcount = 550

(Headcount will include the people who identify in a diversity category and this is correct in order to get a true picture of your percentage of headcount.)

People who self identify as:

Women                            = 41

Person with a Disability        = 4

Aboriginal person                = 2

Visible Minority                   = 8

Diversity Percentage = (41+4+2+8) / 550 = 55/550 = 1/10 = 10%

There are two crucial elements to ensuring this measure is accurately and appropriately used. The first is to only use the diversity categories as identified and described by Canada’s employment equity legislation. These diversity categories are as follows:

• Visible Minorities
• Aboriginals
• People with Disablities
• Women

Further information on the Act and how to determine each category can be found on the Government of Canada’s website.

The second key element is to only use data where employees have chosen to put themselves into this category. It is not appropriate to determine whether or not someone belongs in a certain category through observation and assumption. In order to respect an individual’s rights the legislation and this metric have been crafted to reflect the choices of individuals – not the assumptions of others. Hence when you are collecting and reporting the data, it is important to be clear that this is a count of “people who self-identified” as belonging to one of the four diversity categories.

A potential pitfall when you are collecting data is that someone may identify as belonging the more than one diversity category. For example they may self-identify as being female and belonging to a visible minority. In this instance it is important that you only count the person once as to do otherwise would be to falsely inflate your diversity percentage. This is an important step to consider when designing your process for collecting and managing the data you need to calculate this measure.

A further step that some organizations take is to separate out females from the other three diversity groups. In this instance they calculate diversity percentage using the categories of aboriginal, visible minority and person with a disability and calculate their female percentage separately. The main reason for this approach is to get a more detailed view of which programs are working and how well they are working. Either approach will work within an organization. The important thing to check when you come to benchmark yourself against others is exactly which groups have been included in their Diversity Percentage calculation.

Whichever route you choose,being able to tap into and manage a diverse pool of talent will be a requirement of organizational success in the near future. Armed with the information above, you are ready to start measuring and through this develop the skills and approaches you need.

Ian J Cook is the director of HR knowledge and research at BC HRMA. Ian is using his global HR consulting experience and business knowledge to grow a function which delivers informative, relevant and timely comment.