U of T to begin tracking staff ’s race and gender

Efforts reflect growing student calls for more diversity in the hiring of new teachers

Canada’s largest university is asking its employees remarkably personal questions — from what race they are and where they come from to whether they’re transgender — in a bid to make sure certain groups aren’t being left out of jobs and promotions.

In a new survey given this week to all10,000 employees from professors to secretaries, the University of Toronto goes beyond asking staff if they see themselves as “persons of colour” or “racialized,” to whether they are black, white, Asian, Latin/Hispanic, Middle Eastern or mixed. And that’s just to start. The updated Employment Equity Survey then dives to a level believed unmatched on any other Canadian campus: If you answer "black," are you African, Caribbean, European, North American or South American?

If you said Asian, do you mean East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan), Southeast Asian (Malaysian, Filipino, Vietnamese) or Asian Caribbean from, say, Trinidad? Hispanic employees are asked if their heritage is Caribbean, Central American, European or South American.

The questions also offer a sneak peek at what the university’s 85,000 students will be asked this fall on its first student demographic survey.

“Students have made it very clear they don’t see themselves reflected in faculty and staff, so collecting data is part of an overall move to get a better sense of who is underrepresented so we can do better outreach and targeted recruitment,” said Angela Hildyard, vice-president of human resources and equity.

Like other organizations that do a certain amount of business with the federal government, U of T has for decades been required to track its employees by gender, disability, whether they’re aboriginal or members of a “visible minority.”

“But this language no longer makes sense,” said Hildyard, especially with students.

“If you’ve been to one of our convocations lately, you’ll see we’re so diverse, the visible minority would likely be white.”

Even changing the category last year to “person of colour or racialized person” shed little light on the true diversity of campus workers.

“If equity and diversity are linked to excellence — and we are the only university in North America to have a statement making it clear we’ll only be excellent with diversity and equity — then we need to collect more information on how different groups are represented on campus.”

Some black faculty members have been vocal about the need to increase their ranks, she said, “but we have no idea how many we have because we don’t have data. This gives us a better sense of who we have here and if they are under-represented, and target candidate pools.”

Moreover, the university will start giving the survey to job applicants as well, so it can track where the gaps begin.