Key Actions for Establishing a Workplace Culture of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

What underpinnings are necessary for establishing successful, lasting transformation in EDI culture?

A diversity of ideas, perspectives, experiences and people is critical to the success of any endeavour, including the EDI goals of Canada’s military, and I am proud to have an opportunity to help where I can as an Honorary Captain (Navy) within the RCN’s technical branch. Achieving success broadly involves strengthening peer networks, and forging bonds with social, professional and technical networks

Engineers Canada also recommends specific key actions that employers can take to increase the meaningful representation of women and other under-represented groups in their organizations. What are these?

1. Commitment from Leadership:

The first thing, of course, is to ensure there is commitment to culture change from within the leadership — and by “leadership,” we mean the board of directors, the people working at very senior levels, and other senior groups that would influence the direction of an organization. Commitment from the leadership has to be the first step in changing the culture of the workplace to one that is equitable, diverse and inclusive.

2. Create an Action Plan: It is also important to create an action plan that has identifiable success points on the path to EDI culture change. Women and other minority groups are skeptical of organizations that pay lip service to supporting better representation in engineering culture change without actually doing anything concrete. It’s one thing to say your organization supports increasing numbers and welcomes people from under-represented groups, but it’s another thing to actually have a plan in place that monitors progress in a transparent way. For this reason, action plans need to be integrated with communication plans. Glass ceilings are real, and organizations must openly demonstrate that increased representation of under-represented groups is happening at all levels of the workplace, and not only in entry level positions

3. Provide the Necessary Resources:

Finally, changing the EDI culture inside an organization cannot and should not be left to under-represented groups to figure out for themselves. Along with commitment from

the leadership to make positive change, and the creation of an action plan to roll this out, EDI initiatives must have the commitment of sufficient financial and human resources to

execute the action plan successfully. Something I observed early on in my career was that often when an organization wanted to make cultural change (usually having to do with

women in the workplace), money would be provided for snacks, and a room would be set aside to allow the women to talk about how things could be changed. But without a

commitment from the organization to hire subject matter experts, or to involve a senior leader to champion this work in concrete ways, what they were funding could essentially

be considered a coffee break or networking session. This isn’t good enough in today’s workplace. Enough money has to be set aside to bring in the right people to guide the

organization through what can be a complicated and stressful cultural evolution, and to support the maintenance of a strong EDI workplace going forward