SickKids Foundation is committed to supporting the BlackNorth Initiative in working to remove anti-Black systemic barriers that negatively affect the lives of Black Canadians in our workplace and society. The Foundation continues to make progress in meeting our commitments under The BlackNorth Initiative CEO Pledge.
Our key areas of focus are: increasing Black representation; fostering a trusting, psychologically safe and inclusive workplace; and increasing retention of Black employees.
PROGRESS TO DATE
Since we signed the BlackNorth Initiative CEO Pledge, we have aimed to improve our processes around both hiring and retaining employees at the Foundation. Hiring Practices
- We identified job boards for diverse communities as well as networks to improve our hiring process.
- We collected voluntary, self-reported racial and ethnic data of employees to identify gaps with our policies and procedures.
- We increased the percentages of Black candidates short-listed to a hiring leader (12.5%) and newly hired Black employees (9.7% of new hires, including contract, part-time and full-time roles), and we increased representation of Black employees within the Foundation (from ~2.8% to ~4.8%).
Trusting and Inclusive Workplace
- We adapted our mentorship program to better serve equity-deserving groups including Black employees.
- We increased efforts in creating a trusting workplace and implemented multiple training sessions, including mandatory sessions on anti-Black systemic racism, inclusive leadership and unconscious bias for Board members.
