Automotive News Canada - July 2020 - 12

* JULY 2020

SPECIAL REPORT

THE DRIVE FOR

INTRO

THE MAY 25 DEATH OF AFRICANAMERICAN GEORGE FLOYD DURING
AN arrest by Minneapolis, Minn., police has
spurred mass protests demanding action
against systemic racism across the globe,

DIVERSITY
Corporate leadership
urged to reflect population
Lack of workplace
diversity is bad for
society as well as
business, but how can
companies bring about
meaningful change?
By STEPHANIE WALLCRAFT
TORONTO CORRESPONDENT

A SCAN OF THE GENDER AND
ethnic makeup of executives steering
Canada's major auto manufacturers
illustrates the dearth of diversity.
Of the 17 CEOs and presidents,
four identify as BIPOC - Black,
Indigenous and Person of Colour -
and zero are women.
It's a trend that can hobble a
company's relevance and bottom
line, said Tash Jefferies, a Nova
Scotian of Black and Indigenous
descent who founded the company Diversa.work to help organizations in the tech sector build diverse
workforces.
"If you have a room of everybody
who looks the same, comes from the
same community, knows the same
network, they're all doing the same
thing," said Jefferies.
"Every single ethnicity and gen-

WHITE IS THE
DOMINANT COLOUR OF
CORPORATE BOARDS
Ryerson University's Diversity
Institute analyzed the diversity
of board members of 178 corporations in Vancouver, Montreal,
Calgary and Toronto. The study
found that of the 1,639 board
members at the companies in
2019, only 13 Black board members (0.79 per cent), while white
members held 1,483 spots (91
per cent) and other racialized
members held 61 spots. (The
institute was unable to classify some members.) In the general population, 22.3 per cent of
Canadians identified as a visible minority in the 2016 census,
according to Statistics Canada.

der drives a car and needs a car. ...
If you're not able to understand and
speak to your entire audience, then
you're going to become irrelevant."
A 2018 study published by the
global management consulting firm
McKinsey & Co. reviewed 1,000
companies in 12 countries. Those
whose gender diversity in leadership
scored within the top 25 per cent
were 21 per cent likely to be more
profitable and had a 33-per-cent likelihood of outperforming their less
diverse competition.

THERE'S NO QUICK FIX
But unless executives step down
to make room for diverse replacements, new recruitment opportunities can only come through a natural
cycle of attrition.
That requires removing bias from
hiring practices and identifying new
sources for entry-level talent, said
Jefferies.
She suggested that companies
partner with postsecondary institutions to find student groups assisting
underrepresented communities.
"Give [students] a chance that is
very hard for them to find," Jefferies
said. "They're young, they're bright,
they're fresh. They will give 150 per
cent because it's very hard for them
to be able to find
that first opportunity."
A similar
approach helped
Hyundai Canada
boost the number
of female employees, and now it is
being applied to
Soklis: "If
recruit ethnically
diverse candidates, we don't get
said Lydia Bowser, a diverse
pool of [job]
senior manager of
candidates,
human resources.
we push back
"We need to
pretty hard."
show them that
there's a career for F I L E P H O T O
them here so that,
over time, applicant numbers will
increase representation," Bowser
said.

BOLSTERING THE RANKS
At Cox Automotive Canada, a
global provider of automotive services, a strategy combining measures ensuring diversity in the hiring process and promoting from
within where possible is reaping
results, said President Maria Soklis.

Every single ethnicity
and gender drives a car
and needs a car. ...
If you're not able to
understand and speak
to your entire audience,
then you're going to
become irrelevant.
TASH JEFFERIES

Founder, Diversa.work
About one-third of the company's
workforce is female and is one-quarter BIPOC, and those percentages
are higher for the senior executive
team, at 50 per cent and 35 per cent,
respectively.
"If we don't get a diverse pool
of candidates, we push back pretty hard," Soklis said. "There has to
be a really strong effort made by the
executives and the people who work
in this industry to insist that there
is a diverse population [and] to hold
themselves accountable."
Soklis said ongoing monitoring of
its diversity strategy keeps the company on track.
"We monitor through [key performance indicators] what our progress
is annually, just to make sure that
we are progressing," Soklis said.
Addressing systemic racism is
new territory for many companies.
The biggest obstacle is overcoming
the fear that can get in the way of
taking the first steps, Jefferies said.
"You might not get it right the
first day out of the gate," she said.
"[As] an Indigenous Black woman
in Canada, I would appreciate just
the smallest actionable items that
any company within this industry in
Canada would do. ... It goes miles to
setting you apart from your competition." - ANC

including in Canada. Recent opinion polls
conducted for various media outlets indicate that a majority of Canadians believe
institutional racism is a problem.
Corporate Canada has also responded to the growing pressure for change. In
the automotive industry, many companies
have addressed the issue with moments
of silence, corporate statements, donations and advertising boycotts. But diversity advocates say these actions do little to
meaningfully address the need for systemic
change from inside the corporate world.
"There are a lot of platitudes and a lot of
cheque-writing," said Renée Bazile-Jones,
an associate at the Canadian Centre for
Diversity and Inclusion in Toronto. "What
are you doing besides writing a cheque?
What are you doing besides the pep talk to
your employees? Unless you're willing to
make meaningful change, we're going to be
in this conundrum forever."

A.I. removes
hiring biases
CONTINUED FROM PA GE 1

Unconscious bias is defined as a preference or inclination formed without reasonable justification that prevents a person's
judgment from being balanced, said Renée
Bazile-Jones, a CCDI associate.
The training of 150 employees, conducted
by Bazile-Jones, was the company's best-attended Zoom group meeting during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Bowser said. Hyundai
Canada has also hired experts to conduct
employee training on Indigenous culture and
Black history.
"Being able to have those conversations
across the organization and then share ways
to mitigate bias is a huge piece," Bazile-Jones
said.
Hyundai also set up employee resource
groups designed to give Black, Indigenous
and Person of Colour (BIPOC) staff the opportunity to share their opinions and insights
with senior management.
"They have to be willing to tell the CEO
directly [about the] organization and how it
needs to change, where it needs to change,
what it needs to change," Romano said. "And
we have to be totally open to their ideas and
their suggestions."

REVISE RESUME REVIEWS
To mitigate unconscious bias in its hiring
practices, Hyundai Canada is using AI technology to screen the first round of resume
review, Bowser said.
"We're still in the early stages of getting
this tool ready for implementation," she said.
"It's an AI tool that is integrated into an existing Applicant Tracking System so that every

Automotive News Canada - July 2020

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