The 2023 Employment Equity Report presents a comprehensive analysis of trends in employment equity for faculty and staff.
The comprehensive report is prepared by the UBC Equity & Inclusion Office (EIO) in partnership with the Planning and Institutional Research Office (PAIR) and published annually. It presents the latest demographic data, key findings and ongoing efforts to create a more equitable workplace.
New for 2023, the report incorporates:
- improvements to the various categories in which UBC’s employment equity data is presented and labour market cohorts to which that data is compared;
- continued efforts to more fully explore employees’ lifecycles by including turnover data (introduced for the first time in the 2021 report), a high–level depiction of voluntary and involuntary separations and retirement and the proportional representation of designated groups among employees who leave UBC;
- Faculty and portfolio snapshot data.
Data presented in the report is based on the November 1st, 2023 snapshot of Employment Equity Survey data.
Key findings
- Record response rate: UBC achieved its highest cumulative response rate to date, with 84 per cent of eligible employees completing the Employment Equity Survey.
- Demographic composition trends: The report provides detailed demographic data for various employee groups, including faculty, staff and executive leadership. Notable findings include:
- Women: UBC continues to demonstrate strong overall representation amongst women in its workforce (59 per cent at UBCO; 56.4 per cent at UBCV), exceeding regional, provincial, and national workforce representation levels at both campuses.
- Indigenous employees: The overall proportion of Indigenous employees at UBCO (5.1 per cent) aligns with or exceeds regional, provincial and national comparator cohorts, while at UBCV, the proportion (2.1 per cent) is in alignment with regional but below provincial and national comparator groups.
- Significant gaps in the representation of Indigenous Peoples are present among UBC’s senior-most Executive group, as compared with provincial and national workforce data, as well as across various professorial and lecturer categories, educational leadership and research streams, research associates and post-doctoral fellows and across a range of staff employment categories.
- Racialized employees: The overall proportion of racialized employees at UBCO (22 per cent) exceeds regional, falls just below provincial and aligns with national workforce proportions, while racialized employees at UBCV exceed provincial and national workforce proportions but fall below the regional comparator cohort.
- Significant gaps have been identified among UBC faculty across several professorial and associate professorial categories, Educational Leadership and Research Tenure Streams, with specifics dependent on campus. Significant gaps in the representation of racialized staff are also present in more than half of the employment categories at UBCO.
- People with disabilities: The overall proportional representation of people with disabilities exceeds national and provincial comparator cohorts at UBCO (12.2 per cent) but is below provincial and aligned with national comparator at UBCV (9.6 per cent).
- There are significant gaps in representation at UBCO among various professorial roles, in the Educational Leadership and Research Tenure Streams and among Research Associates and Postdoctoral Fellows. There are also significant gaps across a number of employment categories for staff at both UBCV and UBCO.
- Non-binary, trans, and 2SLGBQIA+ employees: The representation of these groups is similar across both campuses: non-binary representation is at 1.2 per cent at UBCV and 0.9 per cent at UBCO, trans representation is at 1.2 per cent at UBCV and 1.2 per cent at UBCO, and 2SLGBQIA+ representation is at 10.3 per cent at UBCV and 10 per cent at UBCO. There are no comparable data collected by the government.
Aggregate level summaries may mask nuances of representation at disaggregate levels. For more information on disaggregated data, please access the full report.
Ongoing efforts and next steps
UBC is committed to continuous improvement in its employment equity practices. Key initiatives include:
- Data-driven decision making: UBC is leveraging systematic collection of demographic data from job applicants through its Applicant Diversity Survey, providing search committees with informative workforce gap analyses and enabling better monitoring of diversity throughout the recruitment process.
- Equitable hiring practices: The Guide to Equitable Hiring Practices and forthcoming updates to the Equity in Hiring Canvas module will provide hiring managers with specific guidance on integrating equity principles throughout recruitment and hiring processes.
- Strategic Equity & Anti-Racism (StEAR) Roadmap: UBC’s StEAR Roadmap outlines strategic actions to improve data collection, analysis, and reporting capabilities, ensuring a holistic understanding of the university’s progress on employment equity commitments.
- Future reports: Looking ahead, UBC plans to release a more comprehensive report in 2025, featuring detailed snapshots of demographic composition across faculties and administrative portfolios, as well as an in-depth analysis of intersectional identities among employees. This expanded analysis will help uncover any masked equity gaps and differential experiences among employees with multiple marginalized identities. The report will provide a clearer picture of the university’s efforts and progress in fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.
UBC’s overall efforts to advance equity and anti-racism are guided by the Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism Framework and Roadmap, inclusive of the 2019 Employment Equity Plan. UBC’s Employment Equity Policy (HR10) sets out the university’s commitment to equity and employment.
For a full analysis of employment equity at UBC, read the 2023 Employment Equity Report.