INTENT

Advantage Personnel recognizes that Employment Equity is a value at the core of our mandate as a community leader and as an industry leading employer.

Employment Equity recognizes the value and dignity of each individual and ensures that each individual will have genuine, open and unhindered access to employment opportunities, free from artificial barriers, whether systemic or otherwise.

Employment Equity involves hiring the most suitably qualified candidate for any open position while ensuring that the hiring process and the qualifications required for each position are fair and equitable for all persons.

Accordingly, Advantage Personnel seeks to integrate fully the principles of Employment Equity with our other human-resource policies and procedures in order to ensure that all present and potential employees receive equitable treatment in all matters related to employment.

Advantage Personnel will take appropriate steps to ensure that, throughout the entire organization, representation rates of historically disadvantaged groups reflect their availability within the labour force of the external community.

All members of the community play a role in the success of Employment Equity. Final responsibility and accountability for Advantage Personnel´s Employment Equity Policy, however, rest with the President.

OBJECTIVES

Under Employment Equity, Advantage Personnel has the following objectives:

(a) To promote the full participation and advancement of members of the designated groups under the Canadian Human Rights act and Employment Equity Act (women, indigenous peoples, members of visible minority groups and persons with disabilities) in the Advantage Personnel workforce;

(b) Develop policies, programs, practices and traditions that facilitate the full participation and advancement of members of historically disadvantaged groups in Canada (indigenous peoples, visible minorities, ethnic minorities whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, persons with disabilities, women, and persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities) by eliminating direct, indirect and systemic discrimination;

(c) To implement such special measures as are required to attract, retain and promote members of the designated groups and to ensure that individuals in positions to make or influence decisions regarding the status or working conditions of current and prospective employees are aware of such special measures and have received training in their application;

(d) To identify those areas of the Advantage Personnel workforce wherein members of the designated groups are under-represented and to focus special measures to redress such under-representation and to ensure that individuals in positions to make or influence decisions regarding the status or working conditions of current and prospective employees are aware of such special measures and have received training in their application;

(e) To ensure that individuals in positions to make or influence decisions regarding the status or working conditions of current and prospective employees are aware of this policy and have received training in its meaning and application, that they implement its core values in all decisions and that they communicate and apply them to all members of staff;

(f) To collect and analyze workforce data, develop a formal employment equity plan and prepare an annual report which will contain specific recommendations for action to be undertaken by the senior officers of this organization and which will detail the progress of those recommendations.

(g) Recruit and retain staff on the basis of individual merit and achievement, while ensuring that all persons and, in particular, members of designated groups, will have genuine, open and unhindered access to employment opportunities free from artificial barriers;

(h) Achieve equality in the workplace so that no member of a designated group is denied employment opportunities or benefits for reasons unrelated to ability by giving effect to the principle that employment equity means more than treating persons in the same way but also requires special measures and the accommodation of differences.

POLICY

In furtherance of these commitments, Advantage Personnel will:

  1. Continue to build a diverse workforce that is representative of the pool of potential candidates with appropriate qualifications from designated groups, while retaining individual merit and achievement as the prime criterion for all staffing decisions;
  2. Ensure that all employment related decisions are based on principles of individual merit and achievement (that is, on such matters as job performance criteria such as skills, knowledge, and abilities relevant to specific positions) and not on factors unrelated to a person´s ability to do the job;
  3. Ensure that Advantage Personnel regulations, policies and practices do not have an adverse impact, direct or indirect, on the employment and advancement of members of designated groups;
  4. Seek to increase the range of applicants for all staff positions to reflect the diversity of the pool of potential candidates with appropriate qualifications from designated groups;
  5. Ensure that, where candidates do not differ in merit, employment decisions are guided by the Advantage Personnel policy on employment equity;
  6. Seek to make reasonable adjustments for differences related to belonging to a designated group thereby enabling them to compete equally with others;
  7. Identify those sectors of the Advantage Personnel workforce wherein members of the designated groups are under-represented and to develop measures to address such under-representation;

IMPLEMENTATION

Advantage Personnel will ensure the implementation of this Policy by:

  1. Developing an employment equity plan appropriate to each employee sector together with guidelines to assist those who make employment decisions in implementing the plan;
  2. Ensuring that these plans address equity in the hiring, promotion, and recognition in all sectors of the workforce;
  3. Ensuring that those in positions to make or influence employment decisions are aware of Advantage Personnel´s employment equity policy and the employment equity plan relevant to their sector;
  4. Ensuring that all “position requirements” constitute bona fides and necessary requirements for the position advertised;
  5. Requiring appropriate units to report on the status of employment equity within the unit;
  6. Ensuring that the heads of units actively support Advantage Personnel´s initiatives in furtherance of the objectives of this Policy;

However, in its pursuit of employment equity it is understood that Advantage Personnel will not:

  • Engage in Reverse Discrimination – Employment equity works to change the composition of a workforce so it better reflects that of society. Employment equity is not reverse discrimination, which occurs when a less qualified candidate is hired over a better qualified one.
  • Impose Quotas – Employment equity does not involve the imposition of quotas for the hiring of members from designated groups. Rather, its goal is the enlargement of the pool of appropriately qualified candidates by encouraging applications from a broader range of persons, and all candidates within this pool then compete for the position.

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