York is committed to employment equity. Employment Equity fosters a diverse and representative workforce at York, which York is seeking to achieve, whilst also managing compliance with legislated employment equity requirements.
York University participates in the Federal Contractors Program (FCP) under the Employment Equity Act, and is required to monitor its representation with respect to four designated groups: women, racialized persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous peoples.
The Annual Employment Equity Statistical Report for 2022, details the workforce analysis for equity identified groups at York University, throughout the period January 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022.
Employment Equity Report 2022
Report Highlights
This report highlights representation at York University for the four designated groups – women, Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, and persons with disabilities, under the Employment Equity Act. As well, representation rates for the 2SLGBTQ+ community are highlighted under the Federal Contractors Program. The report also refers to key accomplishments in 2022 and anticipated equity, diversity, and inclusion related initiatives at York for 2023 and beyond.
In general, the data reveal that while the overall representation rates for women continue to exceed the external availability data, Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, and persons with disabilities show a general trend of representation rates falling below the external availability data provided by Statistics Canada.
At the same time, however,, the data also reveal some improvements including the year-to-year increase in representation of women and racialized persons among total employees over the last three years (2020-2022). Additionally, there has been a slight increase in the representation of persons with disabilities from 2021 to 2022.
Recommendations and Future Initiatives
The report notes a recommendation made from the recently- launched Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (DEDI Strategy) to undertake the development of a pan-university employment equity action plan. The action plan would include benchmarks for recruitment, hiring, and retention of equity-deserving individuals, and qualitative and quantitative reporting mechanisms with the goal of increasing representation, career progression, success and retention across all employee groups.
In addition, due to the high number of significant gaps in representation, it is recommended that the university undertake an employment systems review. The goal of an employment systems review is to provide an explanation for major gaps in representation and to serve as the basis for developing an employment equity action plan to address barriers. Consequently, the conduct of a systems review would precede, and thereby inform, the development of York’s pan-university employment equity action plan.