Employment Equity in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada — Annual Report 2000-01

• Introduction
• The Office of the Auditor General of Canada
• Our Employment Equity Environment
• Implementing Employment Equity
• The Employment Equity Numbers
• Our Employment Equity Plan
• Appendix—Statistics

Introduction

This Annual Report on Employment Equity in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada highlights employment equity activities during the period 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001.

It also presents information on the representation of designated groups as at 31 March 2001.

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Enabling Legislation

The Auditor General Act, the Financial Administration Act and a variety of other acts and orders-in-council set out the duties of the Auditor General as they relate to legislative auditing and monitoring of federal departments and agencies, Crown corporations and other national and international organizations.

Independence from Government

We are different from departments and agencies through our independence from the government of the day and our reporting relationship to Parliament. Our independence is assured by a broad legislative mandate, freedom from certain controls over our budget and staff, and a ten-year term for the Auditor General. The first independent Auditor General was appointed in 1878.

Application of the Employment Equity Act to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada falls under the Employment Equity Act, section 4.(1)(c) as a portion of the Public Service of Canada — set out in Part II of Schedule I to the Public Service Staff Relations Act — employing 100 or more employees.

Our Vision and Mission

Our vision and mission statements guide the work of the Office.

Our Work

The principal activity of the Office is legislative auditing — providing reliable, relevant and timely assurances and other information on financial and program performance to help legislators hold government accountable.

Our Organization

The Office is organized into three branches — Audit Operations, Corporate Services and Executive — along with the Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. Most of the staff work from the head office in Ottawa. Regional offices are located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal and Halifax.

We have a specialized workforce, with roughly two thirds of our 528 employees at the middle manager and auditor levels.

Our Employment Equity Environment

Our Values

Employment equity is an underlying value of the Office of the Auditor General. Our Strategic Framework includes five principles that guide us in achieving our mission. One of these principles — Caring about people — includes the following statement:

We value the talent and diversity each individual brings to the Office.

In 1995, a Strategic Framework initiative was launched to identify ways in which staff can work toward day-to-day demonstrations of the people skills that lead to creating a respectful workplace.

Every two years, we identify a corporate goal that we believe supports a respectful workplace in which staff having varied backgrounds and abilities are respected and valued.

In November 1999, the Auditor General announced our newest goal — Dialogue. This goal was chosen to encourage our staff to stay connected with each other by listening, understanding and working together. Over the year, a number of workshops were held to support this goal.

Our Structure

In January 1998, we updated our Strategic Framework and added a new employment equity strategy — to identify under-represented groups and take action to meet Office goals. This strategy has been incorporated into our Human Resources Corporate Plan.

In March 1998, we created a new senior committee — the Human Resources Committee. This committee is responsible for monitoring the implementation of both our Human Resources Corporate Plan and our Employment Equity Plan.

Our Employment Equity Committee is committed to ensuring equal opportunity in the workplace for all employees, including, but not limited to, members of designated groups.

There are sub-committees established for each of the four designated groups. The Employment Equity Committee reports to the Human Resources Committee.

Implementing Employment Equity

Implementation of the Legislation

Our Employment Equity Committee and its sub-committees represent the interests of designated groups in the Office. This committee has existed in our Office for many years. Each year, it has organized events and activities to promote awareness of employment equity and diversity issues in the workplace.

Our first step in implementing the requirements of the legislation was to organize and complete a self-identification survey in April 1997. We then completed a workforce analysis to determine the degree of under-representation of members of designated groups in each occupational group.

This analysis is updated each year. The results at 31 March 2001 are presented in this report.

Employment Equity Records

We have implemented procedures for the maintenance of orderly and accurate employment equity records. We have also developed information vehicles and practices to keep our employees up-to-date on employment equity matters. For example, our INTRAnet provides all employees with easy access to current employment equity information. Periodic notices are sent to remind all employees of their right to self-identify at any time. All new employees are asked to complete a self-identification questionnaire even before their first day with us.

Activities and Events

In addition to promoting a corporate environment that supports employment equity values and ideals, a number of Office activities took place that supported designated groups and promoted an equitable work environment (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Employment Equity Activities

Throughout the year, the Office also celebrated a number of events to recognize and heighten awareness of diversity issues. These included seminars and presentations to observe:

• International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
• International Day of Disabled Persons
• International Women's Week
• Women's History Month
• National Aboriginal Awareness Week

Recruitment Plan

In December 2000, the Executive Committee approved a recruitment plan developed to meet the immediate staffing needs of the Office as well as our ongoing replacement staffing needs. We expect the current tight labour market that we are experiencing to continue over the next several years. This means that our turnover rate will remain high and the supply of qualified candidates will remain low. Our challenge is to identify potential employees and then to attract them to the Office.

The recruitment plan states that we will pay special attention to our employment equity goals in implementing our recruitment program. We will ensure that our advertising is directed as much as possible to designated group communities and we will encourage those engaged in the selection and hiring processes to give full and fair consideration to candidates from the four designated groups.

Succession Planning

The Executive Committee approved a succession planning process early in 1999 and in September of that year approved an action plan to put that process in place. An important component of the action plan is preparing younger employees to move up and take on greater responsibilities as a large number of retirements occur between 2003 and 2008.

In identifying the employees that will participate in this development initiative, we will ensure that due consideration has been given to all designated group members. This effort should, over time, result in an increase in the number of designated group members that are promoted to higher levels.

The Employment Equity Numbers

The data in this report are as at 31 March 2001.

Tables 4 through 7 show comparative numbers as at 31 March 2000. Tables 8 through 10 show the numbers of people hired, promoted and who left during 2000-2001.

Our employment equity numbers have been prepared on the basis of the National Occupational Classification (NOC) system, developed by Human Resources Development Canada. This system comprises 14 Employment Equity Occupational Groups (EEOGs) — as defined in Schedule II of the Employment Equity Regulations — and 522 NOC unit groups.

Figure 2

Classification of OAG Employees under the National Occupational Classification System

Classifying our employees under this system shows that we have a very specialized workforce:

• The 528 employees in our Office fall into 6 of the 14 Employment Equity Occupational Groups (EEOGs).
• Within these EEOGs, 429 employees (81.2 percent) fall into 5 of the 522 National Occupational Classification (NOC) unit groups (see Figures 2 and 3).
• Most of our employees (65.1 percent) are concentrated in 2 NOC unit groups — Middle Managers (NOC unit 0414) and Auditors (NOC unit 1111).

Figure 3

Distribution of Employees by Major NOC Unit Groups

The following comments highlight the data in the Appendix.

Designated Groups Representation

We have compared our representation in each designated group to the most recent workforce availability figures provided by Human Resources Development Canada — the 1996 Employment Equity Data Report. We have used national figures for this comparison.

Representation in Hirings, Promotions, Separations and Salary Distribution

This annual report includes an analysis of the numbers of employees hired, promoted and terminated and the degree of representation in those numbers, of persons who are members of each designated group.

Our Employment Equity Plan

In the past, our Employment Equity Committee developed an employment equity plan that outlined activities and initiatives intended to increase awareness of equity and diversity issues and to improve opportunities in the workplace for all employees.

Developing the Plan

In 1997-98, a new Employment Equity Plan was prepared to meet the specific requirements of the Employment Equity Act, section 10. Our Plan covers an initial three-year period, 1998-99 to 2000-01. It includes short-term numerical goals to reduce under-representation of the designated groups over that period. The Office's Executive Committee has endorsed these short-term numerical goals.

We have now completed the final year of our first Plan. In the winter of 2000-01, we updated the Plan and prepared Version III, which was approved by our Human Resources Committee.

In the fall of 2001, we will analyze our employment equity results against the first Plan and prepare a new three-year Plan, covering the years 2001-02 to 2003-04.

The next Employment Equity Plan, 2001-02 to 2003-04

Communication and consultation

Communication was identified as a critical success factor for the first Employment Equity Plan. Efforts were made throughout the three-year Plan period to keep employees informed of progress that was being made and challenges that remained. This communication regularly reinforced the message that everyone's support and participation was necessary to achieve our goals.

This fall, we will also communicate the plan results to all employees. In addition to presentations to the Human Resource Committee and the Executive Committee, we will attempt to engage employees through the Office in a consideration and discussion of the successes we achieved and the challenges we faced in implementing the Plan. This broad-based consultation will be key to preparing ourselves for the second Employment Equity Plan.

Challenges and special efforts

In setting the numerical goals for our next Employment Equity Plan, 2001-02 to 2003-04, we will take into account the action plan proposed by the Task Force on the Participation of Visible Minorities in the Federal Public Service in its March 2000 report "Embracing Change". In particular, we will consider the recommendation that visible minorities represent a one-in-five share of external recruitment hires.

In our second Plan, we will also make a special effort to improve the representation of Aboriginal Peoples in our professional and manager groups. This effort will focus around our recruitment and succession planning programs described earlier. We will review our initiatives aimed at improving our outreach to Aboriginal Peoples and communities with a view to achieving representation equal to workforce availability at the end of the next Plan period.

Numerical goals

Our second Employment Equity Plan will establish short-term numerical goals for 2001-02 to 2003-04. Once again, goals will be stated for each occupational group in which under-representation has been identified. Goals will be expressed in terms of our representation as a percentage of the workforce availability and number of additional employees required in each designated group.

The new short-term numerical goals will be approved by our Human Resources Committee.

We will make every effort to ensure that our consultation initiatives are meaningful and appropriate in terms of the Employment Equity Act. The Office of the Auditor General of Canada is committed to employment equity ideals. Our challenge is to reflect these ideals in both our workforce and workplace.

We believe that our first Employment Equity Plan has constituted reasonable progress toward implementing employment equity as required by the Act.

Appendix — Statistics

Technical Notes

Report Coverage

This report contains information on our indeterminate employees and term employees of three months or more as at 31 March 2001. Employees who were on secondment to other organizations are also included in our numbers.

Employees who were on leave without pay from our Office at 31 March 2001 are not included in the population. Because of the rapid turnover of students and casual employees, no information is reported on them.

Data on People in the Designated Groups

All data, other than those for women, were obtained through self-identification, the process by which people identify themselves as being from one of the other three designated groups. The data on women were obtained from other human resources information.

The completeness and accuracy of employment equity data depend on employees being willing to self-identify and on being given the opportunity to do so.

Our self-identification process, including the questionnaire completed on a voluntary basis, began in April 1997. Employees who joined the Office since then were provided with the questionnaire when they began working.

At any time during the year, any employee may complete or revise a self-identification questionnaire, available from our Human Resources Group.

In tables 3 to 7, we show our representation as a percentage of the workforce availability, with comparative figures for the prior year. We believe this is the best single statistic to show how well we are doing in achieving a representative workforce.

We provide information by Employment Equity Occupational Group (EEOG). In tables 4 through 7, we also provide information for the two National Occupational Classification (NOC) unit groups that comprise the majority of our employees — Middle Managers (NOC Unit 0414), which is part of EEOG 2 (Middle and Other Managers) and Auditors (NOC Unit 1111), included in EEOG 3 (Professionals).

List of Tables

Table 1

Representation of Designated Groups in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Table 2

Distribution of Employees by Designated Group and Region of Work

As at 31 March 2001

Table 3

Representation of Designated Groups by Employment Equity Occupational Group

As at 31 March 2001

Table 4

Representation of Women by Employment Equity Occupational Group and Two Largest National Occupational Classification Unit Groups

As at 31 March 2001

Table 5

Representation of Aboriginal Peoples by Employment Equity Occupational Group and Two Largest National Occupational Classification Unit Groups

As at 31 March 2001

Table 6

Representation of Persons with Disabilities by Employment Equity Occupational Group and Two Largest National Occupational Classification Unit Groups

As at 31 March 2001

Table 7

Representation of Persons in a Visible Minority by Employment Equity Occupational Group and Two Largest National Occupational Classification Unit Groups

As at 31 March 2001

Table 8

Hirings by Designated Group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001

Includes employees hired into term positions (three months or more) and indeterminate positions.

Table 9

Promotions by Designated Group and Occupational Category

1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001

Includes promotions and reclassifications.

Table 10

Separations by Designated Group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001