Employment Equity in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada—Annual Report 2019–20

Introduction

This annual report on employment equity in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) outlines the state of employment equity representation for the 2019–20 fiscal year.

Employment Equity Environment

Enabling legislation

The OAG has a legislative basis in the Auditor General Act, the Financial Administration Act, and a number of other statutes. The Auditor General’s powers are set forth in legislation passed by Parliament.

Independence from government

The OAG differs from most other government departments and agencies because of its independence from the government of the day and its reporting relationship to Parliament. Controls are in place to ensure the OAG’s independence, including exemptions from certain Treasury Board policy requirements, its status as a separate employer, and a 10-year non-renewable term for the Auditor General.

Application of the Employment Equity Act

The OAG is subject to the Employment Equity Act, in accordance with subsection 4(1)(c).

Work

The OAG audits federal government operations and provides Parliament with independent information, advice, and assurance regarding the federal government’s stewardship of public funds.

The OAG is in the business of legislative auditing and conducts

• performance audits of federal departments and agencies
• annual financial audits of the government’s financial statements
• special examinations and annual financial audits of Crown corporations

The OAG also audits the governments of Nunavut, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories and reports directly to their respective legislative assemblies.

Since 1995, the OAG has also had a specific environment and sustainable development mandate, established through amendments to the Auditor General Act.

The OAG’s audit findings—which include good practices, areas requiring attention, and recommendations for improvement—are reported to Parliament.

Employees

The OAG employs 657 people between its head office in Ottawa and 4 regional offices in Vancouver, Edmonton, Montréal, and Halifax.

The OAG’s audit professionals are highly qualified in their fields and bring a rich mix of academic disciplines and experience to their work. They include accountants, engineers, lawyers, management experts, information technology professionals, environmental specialists, and economists. All financial audit trainees have a bachelor’s degree. The remaining audit staff have either a graduate degree or a bachelor’s degree and Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation, with some having additional credentials.

Auditors are organized into teams that are assigned to audits of specific federal departments, agencies, or Crown corporations or to audits of Canada’s 3 territories. The OAG is supported by employees in a range of professions, such as legal services, professional development, editorial services and translation, international relations, information technology, security, information management, human resource management, financial management, communications, audio visual services, parliamentary liaison, and desktop publishing and publications and graphic design.

Work environment

The OAG is committed to providing a work environment where all are treated with dignity and respect and all are supported as they strive toward fulfilling their career potentials. The OAG encourages open and honest communication to create a climate of trust and teamwork. It values everyone’s talent and diversity and supports learning and work-life balance.

OAG employees are expected to demonstrate personal integrity and ethics and to adhere to OAG values, standards, and codes of conduct. People management competencies and behaviours are evaluated when staffing positions and are discussed continually during check-ins between managers and employees. These discussions serve to support employees’ development and growth and the achievement of desired results.

Our people fuel our strength, which is why the OAG is committed to creating a workplace that supports their well-being. Through its Mental Health Strategy, which was launched in June 2019, the OAG aims to raise awareness about mental health and to foster a healthy, safe, supportive, and inclusive workplace. The strategy’s Roadmap for 2019 to 2022 sets out organizational goals, the necessary activities to achieve them, and the measurable outcomes for employees and the OAG. As part of this strategy, the OAG identifies actions to increase diversity and raise awareness about inclusion and respect in the workplace.

Structure

The Principal, Human Resources, serves as Diversity and Inclusion Champion and works to highlight employment equity and diversity issues in the OAG.

In addition, the OAG’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee promotes awareness of equity, diversity, and inclusion issues. This volunteer committee works to support increased awareness of inclusion and undertakes activities to promote a workplace culture of trust, respect, and belonging.

The committee’s Chair reports to the Diversity and Inclusion Champion on employment equity issues that are discussed during committee meetings. In addition, the Chair provides input on policies and issues that may affect diversity and inclusion.

Employment Equity Implementation

Implementation of legislation

The OAG implements the requirements of the employment equity legislation by administering a voluntary self-identification questionnaire. It then conducts an annual workforce analysis to determine the degree of representation that designated groups have in each occupational group. The results (as of 31 March 2020) are presented in Appendix B.

Employment equity records

The OAG maintains orderly and accurate employment equity records. All employees are asked to complete a self-identification questionnaire before their first day at the OAG and upon promotion. Employees are also reminded annually that they can update their employment equity information at any time.

The OAG’s INTRAnet provides employees with easy access to current employment equity information.

Recruitment

The OAG established a resourcing strategy for 2017–20 to address key challenges as it continues to hire the employees necessary to fulfill its mandate. Specifically, this strategy reinforces the OAG’s continued focus on maintaining a diverse workforce that reflects Canada’s population. This strategy will be updated for 3 additional years (2021–24) and will continue to focus on increasing the OAG’s diversity, with particular emphasis on recruiting Indigenous employees.

As part of this focus on diversity, the OAG plans activities and collaborates with external groups to increase employment equity representation. These projects and programs include

• an Indigenous outreach project plan through Indigenous Link, which was developed to help employers like the OAG attract Indigenous employees
• a course on recruiting and attracting Indigenous talent, available to all OAG employees since April 2019
• the chartered professional accountantsCPA Martin Mentorship Program for Indigenous High School Students, which matches volunteer OAG employees with grades 9 to 11 Indigenous students to provide ongoing mentoring and encourage Indigenous youth to complete high school and enroll in post-secondary education
• LiveWorkPlay, an organization that helps young people with developmental disabilities integrate into society

Activities, training, and communications

In the 2019–20 fiscal year, the OAG planned and participated in half a dozen activities to promote a corporate environment that supports diversity awareness:

• a live Healing Dance, a traditional Indigenous jingle dress dance by Lisa Charette and Elaine Kicknosway, award-winning Anishnaabe and Cree dancers
• a presentation by Carlana Lindeman from the Martin Family Initiative about the educational obstacles faced by Indigenous youth
• a presentation by Maayan Ziv on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities that discussed her mobile crowdsourcing platform that helps users identify accessible buildings
• OAG participation in the Capital Pride Parade
• a fundraiser for the Iqaluit food bank
• a Lunar New Year lunch to celebrate New Year’s traditions around the world

The OAG promotes respect in the workplace through its employee onboarding program and by highlighting courses from the Canada School of Public Service. Some of the courses offered to all employees are on the following topics:

• respect and inclusion
• prevention of violence, harassment, and discrimination
• values and ethics

In addition, the OAG’s 2020–21 curriculum includes new courses meant to raise awareness about Indigenous peoples and issues.

The OAG regularly distributes internal corporate communications that celebrate diversity. The following are examples of diversity-related topics of communications that were posted on the OAG’s INTRAnet in the 2019–20 fiscal year:

• Black History Month
• International Day of Persons with Disabilities
• welcome to international fellows and lunch and learns with audit offices of other countries
• Women’s History Month
• gender equality
• National Indigenous Peoples Day
• Multiculturalism Day

Information and consultation

The OAG provides employees with information about the OAG’s progress on achieving representation objectives by publishing updates online and sending internal communications. It also creates meaningful consultation opportunities with employee representatives to improve policies and plans, such as the Triennial Employment Equity Plan and the OAG Mental Health Strategy.

Employment Equity Plan

In accordance with the requirements in section 10 of the Employment Equity Act, the OAG maintains an employment equity plan. The plan covers a 3-year period and includes specific goals for improving representation. The Triennial Employment Equity Plan—2017–2020 was finalized and published in December 2017. It presents the OAG’s commitments to enhancing or maintaining representation across occupational groups and levels; highlights the OAG’s efforts to sustain an inclusive, diverse, and respectful workplace; and reports on activities carried out to comply with legislation. Appendix A presents the OAG’s commitments, targets, and results for the 2019–20 fiscal year. This employment equity plan will be updated to cover an additional 3 years (2021–24).

Numerical goals

The OAG understands the importance of employment equity and is committed to ensuring that all employees have equal opportunities in its workplace.

The OAG strives for 100% representation of workforce availability for each of the designated groups: women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and persons in a visible minority group. The success of the OAG’s efforts is monitored by the Diversity and Inclusion Champion.

Employment Equity Numbers

The OAG’s employment equity numbers are prepared according to the National Occupational Classification (NOC) developed by Employment and Social Development Canada. This classification comprises 14 employment equity occupational groups (EEOGs)—as defined in Schedule II of the Employment Equity Regulations—and 500 NOC unit groups.

A closer look at this system shows that the OAG has a very specialized workforce:

• The OAG’s 657 employees fall into 7 of the 14 EEOGs (Exhibit 1).
• Most employees (78.7%) are concentrated in just 2 EEOGs: professionals and middle and other managers (Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2—Distribution of OAG employees by employment equity occupational group

Exhibit 2—text version

Exhibit 2 is a pie chart showing the distribution of employees in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, according to major occupational groups.

The chart indicates that 5.8% of the Office’s employees are clerical personnel and 1.7% of employees are senior managers. Middle and other managers make up 25.0%, and 53.7% are professionals. Another 13.9% of employees fall into the “all others” category.

Shaded sections of the pie chart indicate that the majority of the employees—78.7%—are concentrated into two groups, middle and other managers and professionals.

Representation in designated groups—Highlights

The OAG compared its representation in each designated group with the most recent workforce availability figures provided by Employment and Social Development Canada in the department’s 2016 Employment Equity Data Report. The OAG used national figures for this comparison in most areas, except for the administrative and senior clerical personnel category and the clerical personnel category, for which the OAG used data from the National Capital Region.

Women

As of 31 March 2020, women represented 63.2% of the OAG’s workforce, which surpasses the workforce availability of 52.0% (Table 4). Women are well represented in all EEOGs and salary bands (Table 11).

Indigenous peoples

The OAG’s representation of Indigenous employees was 2.6% (17 employees), which is lower than the workforce availability of 3.5% (23 employees) (Table 5).

Persons with disabilities

The OAG’s overall representation of persons with disabilities was 16.0% (105 employees), which surpasses the workforce availability of 8.4% (55 employees) (Table 6).

Persons in a visible minority group

The OAG’s overall representation of persons in a visible minority group was 23.3% (153 employees), which surpasses the workforce availability of 18.1% (119 employees) (Table 7).

Representation in hires, promotions, and separations

This annual report includes an analysis of the number of employees from each designated group who were hired, promoted, or left the OAG.

Hires

In the past year, 104 people joined the OAG (Table 8). Of these new hires,

• 62 were women (59.6%)
• 45 were persons in a visible minority group (43.3%)
• 20 were persons with disabilities (19.2%)
• 1 was an Indigenous person (1.0%)

Promotions

In the past year, 89 employees were promoted (Table 9). Of these promotions,

• 55 of the people promoted were women (61.8%)
• 38 were persons in a visible minority group (42.7%)
• 26 were persons with disabilities (29.2%)
• 2 were Indigenous people (2.2%)

Separations

During the reporting period, 70 employees left the OAG (Table 10). Of those who left,

• 40 were women (57.1%)
• 11 were persons in a visible minority group (15.7%)
• 5 were persons with disabilities (7.1%)
• 6 were Indigenous people (8.6%)

Although the 6 Indigenous employees who left in the 2019–20 fiscal year accounted for only 8.7% of the departures, they represented 26.1% of the Indigenous employee population at the OAG.

Conclusion

The OAG strives to attract, develop, and retain a qualified employee population that reflects the workforce availability of the 4 employment equity groups. As reflected in the OAG’s Resourcing Strategy 2017–2020, 2017–2020 Triennial Employment Equity Plan, and 2020–2023 Strategic Plan, diversity and inclusion are integrated into our ongoing strategies, plans, and operations. This report highlights 2 specific challenges for the OAG: increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples at all levels of the organization and ensuring the representation of persons in a visible minority group at the mid-management and senior management levels. These challenges will inspire the development of the 2021–2024 Triennial Employment Equity Plan and the OAG Talent Management Program.

Appendix A—Employment Equity Action Plan: 2019–20 Commitments, Targets, and Results

Appendix B—Statistics

Report coverage

This report contains information on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada’s (OAG’s) indeterminate employees and determinate employees with terms of 6 months or more as of 31 March 2020. Employees who were on secondment to other organizations are also included in the OAG’s numbers.

No information is reported in the tables on students or casual workers.

Data on people in the designated groups

All data was obtained through voluntary self-identification.

The completeness and accuracy of employment equity data depend on employees’ willingness to self-identify and opportunities to do so.

The OAG’s voluntary self-identification process began in April 1997. All employees are asked to complete a questionnaire before their first day at the OAG and upon promotion. In addition, at any time during the year, all employees can resubmit a self-identification questionnaire, available on the OAG’s Human Resources INTRAnet page.

Tables 4 to 7 show the OAG’s representation as a percentage of workforce availability, with comparative figures for the previous year. The OAG believes that this is the best way to measure the current state of representation for each designated group.

The OAG provides information by Employment Equity Occupational Group. Tables 4 to 7 include information for the 3 National Occupational Classification (NOC) unit groups that account for the majority of employees—other managers (NOC unit group 0414), financial auditors (NOC unit group 1111), and performance auditors (NOC unit groups 4161 to 4168).

Workforce availability

Workforce availability is the distribution of people in the designated groups as a percentage of the total Canadian workforce. For federal public service purposes, workforce availability is based on Canadian citizens in occupations in the Canadian workforce that correspond to those in the public service and is derived from 2016 Census data.

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

Table 3—Representation of designated groups by Employment Equity Occupational Group

Table 4—Representation of women by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

Table 5—Representation of Indigenous peoples by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

Table 6—Representation of persons with disabilities by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

Table 7—Representation of persons in a visible minority group by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

Table 8—Hiring by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

Table 9—Promotions by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

Table 10—Separations by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

Table 11—Distribution of employees by designated group and salary band

Table 1—Representation of designated groups in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 2—Distribution of employees by designated group and region of work

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 3—Representation of designated groups by Employment Equity Occupational Group

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 4—Representation of women by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 5—Representation of Indigenous peoples by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 6—Representation of persons with disabilities by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 7—Representation of persons in a visible minority by Employment Equity Occupational Group and the 3 largest National Occupational Classification unit groups

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 8—Hiring by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

As at 31 March 2020

Data includes employees hired into term positions (6 months or more) and indeterminate positions. Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 9—Promotions by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

As at 31 March 2020

Data includes promotions and reclassifications. Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 10—Separations by designated group and Employment Equity Occupational Group

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.

Table 11—Distribution of employees by designated group and salary band

As at 31 March 2020

Totals may not equal the sum of components because of rounding and suppression.