Conducting a workforce analysis

About workforce analysis

Conducting an analysis of your workforce is the second of the nine employment equity requirements. The purpose of your workforce analysis is to identify areas of under-representation of designated group members in your workforce.

This is done by comparing the number of women, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and members of racialized groups in the occupational groups in your workforce with estimates that reflect the qualified and available workforce. In order to prepare estimates that identify the qualified and available workforce, the Employment Equity Act requires organizations to take into account occupational qualifications and reasonable geographic recruitment areas. We elaborate on both of these in this section.

The workforce analysis can be produced using the Workplace Equity Information Management System (WEIMS) software provided by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). WEIMS provides a fast and easy way for organizations to generate an accurate workforce analysis.

• If WEIMS is used, an explanation of any changes to the defaults is required
• If WEIMS is not used, private sector employers must provide an explanation for the level of analysis (NOC or EEOG) and the recruiting area for each occupational group
• If tailored availability estimates are used, a rationale must be provided explaining the need for tailored estimates and justifying the data set chosen

Occupational qualifications

The Employment Equity Act says that employers should hire or promote only employees who meet the essential qualifications.

Employers can find the availability data on occupational qualifications in the 2016 Employment Equity Data Report of ESDC. Data is available for each National Occupational Classification (NOC) unit group in the Canadian workforce. The availability data should be used for those jobs requiring specific degrees, diplomas or licenses. The occupational groups where these jobs are usually found are Professionals; Semi-Professionals and Technicians; Supervisors; Skilled Crafts and Trades; Skilled Sales and Service Personnel and Skilled Crafts and Trades Workers.

Data is also provided at the employment equity occupational group (EEOG) level. These should normally be used for all other occupational groups, since the jobs they contain usually require broad skills, many of which are learned on the job. This is a reasonable approach because the EEOG estimate includes jobs of a similar nature with skills that are often transferable.

WEIMS was programmed to compare internal representation data to external availability data automatically by specific occupational levels (either EEOGs or NOC unit groups) and geographical locations related to recruitment. These settings are defaulted but can be changed with an acceptable written explanation.

Geographic recruitment area

The Employment Equity Act requires organizations to base availability estimates on data for the geographic area where the organization may reasonably be expected to recruit for each of the employment equity occupational groups (EEOGs) in its workforce.

In large workforces, groups such as Senior Managers, Middle and Other Managers and Professionals are often recruited nationally, in order to ensure a sufficiently large pool of qualified candidates. Some groups such as Semi-Professionals & Technicians or Skilled Crafts & Trades Workers may be recruited provincially, while other groups such as Clerical Personnel or Semi-Skilled Manual Workers may be recruited at the city (Census Metropolitan Area or CMA) level.

It should be stressed that the description above provides general principles only, and that the specific circumstances of each organization must always be taken into account. For example, an organization with a small workforce located entirely in Toronto may recruit all positions in the Toronto CMA given the large number of candidates available. For persons with disabilities, national data at the EEOG level should normally be used. This is due to the fact that the small sample size of the Canadian Survey on Disability often results in suppression or unreliable data at the regional and NOC Unit Group levels.