The Employment Equity Census: 
A Profile of Western's Employees

In March, 2000, Equity Services, in cooperation with PSCEE, conducted a census of all Western employees. The last census had been conducted in 1990. The purpose of the census was to update and upgrade the employment equity database. The census and its goals were endorsed by representatives of all employee groups on campus.

The census was completely voluntary and individuals were encouraged to contact Equity Services with any questions or concerns they had. An informational brochure was sent with the census itself. Copies of both of these are appended to this report.

In total, the census was sent to 6,559 full-time and part-time faculty and staff. Of those, 3,819 responded to the census. The following is a breakdown of those surveyed and responding:

 

Employee Group	Total Population	Number Responding	Response Rate
Faculty: Full-Time	1,448	912	63%
Faculty: Other	856	449	52.5%
Staff: Full-Time	1,855	1,306	70.4%
Staff: Other	1,326	672	50.7%
Teaching Assistants	1,074	480	44.7%
Total	6,559	3,819	58.2%

Using the responses to the census, four separate sets of tables have been prepared for this report, one set each for full-time administrative staff, part-time administrative staff, full-time faculty and part-time faculty. Please note that teaching assistants are included in the tables for part-time administrative staff, professionals.

Administrative Staff

For purposes of employment equity reporting, administrative staff are divided into fourteen (14) occupational groups. These "employment equity occupational groups" were developed by Human Resources Development Canada ("HRDC") to reflect the occupational structure within companies and for use in measuring the representation and career progress of designated group members over time. They have been determined by a regrouping of the much larger National Occupational Classification ("NOC") used by Statistics Canada. It is necessary for us to mirror these occupational groups in our tables as our comparison data are categorized in this manner. The comparison data found in the tables are obtained from the 1996 Employment Equity Data Report prepared by HRDC.

For administrative staff, the comparison data are taken from the Canadian census of 1996 (with regard to women, Aboriginal people and visible minorities) and from the 1991 Health and Activity Limitations Survey ("HALS") (with regard to persons with disabilities) as provided by HRDC. The Canadian census data are broken down into three levels - national, provincial and local community - and into the 14 occupational groups; the HALS data are national only. Western is required to compare its internal representation of designated groups with the census data that best represents the pool of persons from whom the university would usually recruit employees for the particular occupational group. For example, senior managers are generally recruited from across the country and, thus, national census data would be used for comparison; manual workers would generally be hired from the London community, requiring Western to use the London and area census data for the purposes of comparison. These data appear in the far right hand column of the tables.

The Western numbers reported are those as of January 8, 2001. These reflect the number of administrative staff employed by Western on January 8, 2001, and the number of those employees who responded to the census in March, 2000 who are still employed as at January 8, 2001. Data on total numbers of employees as well as the numbers of women administrative staff come from Western's human resources database. As such, we are able to report an accurate percentage of women employees. Data regarding Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities and persons with disabilities come from the responses to the census. As the census was voluntary and relied on individuals to self-identify as a member of a designated group, percentages are expressed in two ways. The number of respondents identifying themselves as a member of one of these three designated groups is firstly expressed as a percentage of the total number of respondents, and secondly expressed as a percentage of the total number of all employees. This latter percentage assumes that all non-respondents are not members of that particular designated group.

Faculty

Faculty have been divided into four groups for reporting purposes: Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor and Other. For faculty, the comparison data also come from the Canadian census of 1996. Unfortunately, the census provides only information with regard to those persons who, at the time of the census, held doctoral degrees. This information is broken down by designated group (except for persons with disabilities). We have not been able to obtain any reasonably reliable comparison data for the representation of persons with disabilities among the people holding doctoral degrees. There are also no data with regard to how long the designated group members have held their doctoral degrees for the purposes of ascertaining appropriate representation of designated groups at the different levels of professorial seniority.

It is important to understand the limitations of the data. Not only are the comparison data in the final column very uncertain, but the Western data in the second column are only from the survey (except for the data on female participation, which is a complete census), and therefor are subject to the usual errors of surveys. In particular, non-response bias might be serious. In spite of our very best efforts, including a follow-up survey to increase the response rate, the response rate was only about 60%.

In view of these inevitable limitations, detailed comparisons should be made with caution, and with a recognition of their uncertainty.