From the Nominator

"Sheridan’s strategic plan includes a commitment to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). We needed baseline data on the employee diversity to achieve this vision and apply for several EDI grants, which required this data on 80% of our employees. 

The confidential census ran from April 6 to May 11, 2020. It included six questions related to religion/faith/creed, gender and gender identity, racial and ethnic background, disability, sexual orientation, and Indigenous identity. We created the slogan “You Matter. Be Counted.” to encourage participation. We used of mix of promotional tactics (owned media content, posters, emails). We used open forums and road-show presentations to respond to questions in advance of the census. A manager’s toolkit empowered supervisors to have conversations with their employees. Findings were presented at a live virtual Town Hall on September 20, 2020 and published to our intranet and external website. Leaders were trained on how to share their unit level results with their teams, which had to be done by March 2021. 

Fifty-four percent of employees participated with only 3% choosing not to disclose. This number rose to 71% of full-time staff and 61% of full-time faculty. 9.7% lift over the employee engagement survey participation rate (54% in 2020 for census vs 49% in 2018 for employee engagement survey). One hundred percent of leaders reported sharing results with teams. Through this campaign, we educated employees about the need for self-identification data and we collected and shared baseline data from over half of our employees where none previously existed."

From the Judges

Though it did not achieve its ambitious goal, Sheridan College did an outstanding job of developing effective communications for a "complex and delicate construct." Both the lead up and follow up to this campaign were well planned and executed. The final report, in particular, provides a beautiful visual template for others to mirror in the DEI efforts.