St. Catharines signs accord to support women in the workplace

Wellandtribune.ca
June 12, 2019
Karena Walter

St. Catharines is making a public commitment to support women in the workplace by becoming the second municipality in Canada to sign the Leadership Accord on Gender Diversity.

City council unanimously endorsed the accord Monday night, which aims to improve opportunities for women through recruitment, retention, career progression, training and development.

"The first step in making a change in an organization is making a commitment to change," said Kathy Lerette, Alectra Utilities senior vice-president of business transformation, addressing council.

"The accord is a great first step. It's a public commitment by employers to promote the values of diversity, equality and inclusion."

Alectra Utilities was the first company to sign the accord after it launched in 2017. The accord now has 76 signatories across the country, with St. Catharines included.

Lerette was representing Electricity Human Resources Canada, the national not-for-profit organization which developed the Leadership Accord on Gender Diversity. She said the organization tackles human resources challenges and opportunities in the electricity sector and develops tools to address them.

The accord was one of the tools they developed because women only make up 26 per cent of the electricity workforce and seven per cent of the trades. She said fewer than 13 per cent of practising licensed engineers are women.

Many electricity providers across the country signed the accord. Earlier this year, the board of EHRC decided the accord should be rolled out to bodies beyond the electricity sector, such as schools and governments, because Lerette said all areas have a gender diversity issue in the workplace.

St. Catharines is the second municipality to sign up after the City of Vaughan, north of Toronto. The EHRC will provide evaluation tools, policies and best practices to guide the city in achieving the goals of the accord.

The city will complete a confidential self-assessment to benchmark where it is today when it comes to gender diversity in the workplace. The accord focuses on three areas -- policy and governance, education and workplace readiness and recruitment and retention practices.
Lerette said every two years, the EHRC will re-send the confidential self-assessment tool so the city can re-evaluate and see if it's moving the dial on gender diversity.

"The beauty of this is that you go as fast or as slow as you want. You're just benchmarking yourself against yourself, so there's no external pressures," she said.

Mayor Walter Sendzik said it was a great step forward for the city and he looked forward to seeing, as Lerette said, the dial moving.

"We can all sign stuff and we can all say we're a part of something but if we don't see the dials moving, then we're not doing our job," Sendzik said. "Our job is now to get involved."

St. Catharines has women representing 42 per cent of its senior management team.

Since Alectra signed the accord, Lerette said it has raised awareness about gender diversity in the workplace and spurred a diversity and inclusion strategy for the company. She said Alectra now has a diversity and inclusion council and has networking and mentoring events for women.