Inclusion and diversity in Canada

At Accenture, we continue to take actions that advance our unwavering commitment to equality and justice for all, with zero tolerance for racism, bigotry and hate of any kind—within our company and in our communities.

Although we’ve made considerable progress, there is more that can and must be done. We closely examine every aspect of our workplace experience and collaborate with our Employee Resource Groups to drive change, leading to concrete steps, including developing a roadmap and long-term strategy for addressing and overcoming systemic racism in a more strategic way, setting goals to build a workforce and leadership that better reflects the diversity of our workforce in Canada, and working with Indigenous partners towards raising awareness about Indigenous communities, their rich history and culture, and the role that Accenture can play in Reconciliation.

Charting our progress

In 2016, Accenture in Canada began publishing comprehensive data about its workforce. Every year since, we’ve shared our workforce composition and currently share our demographics focusing on gender, race and ethnicity, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+ and current or former military service members.

Since we began reporting our data we’ve made great strides, including:

• Increasing the representation of Visible Minorities by 14.9 percentage points, Indigenous Peoples by more than 1 percentage point, persons with disabilities by more than 6.3 percentage points and executive women by 2.0 percentage points.
• Expanding our data to include LGBTQ2S+, where we have increased our representation by 1.8 percentage points since we began reporting, and current or former military service members, where we have slightly decreased by 0.2 percentage points.
• To be more inclusive of all genders, this year, we added non-binary to our gender data reporting.
• Setting ambitious internal workforce representation goals across nine key dimensions of diversity inclusive of gender, race & ethnicity among other drivers – both for our overall workforce and our senior leaders.
• Working towards Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) certification through the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.
• Offering candidates the opportunity to voluntarily self-identify at the application stage across many dimensions of diversity including gender, race & ethnicity, sexual orientation, persons with disabilities and military veterans – so that we can assess candidate progress at an aggregate level and identify & address any potential barriers.
• Reinventing recruitment, retention, development, staffing, sponsorship and advancement programs to help fulfill all of our inclusion & diversity goals.

The passion our people at Accenture have for equality and making positive, impactful change has never been stronger. This has allowed us to be recognized for the 10th consecutive year as one of Canada’s Best Diversity employers. I’m proud of what we have accomplished and yet we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We will continue to be transparent, and we will not stop until we have achieved our goal of becoming the most inclusive and diverse company in Canada.

Jeffrey Russell
President, Accenture Canada

As part of Accenture’s Key I&D Priority to educate and raise awareness about Canada’s Indigenous communities and their rich history and culture, we have signed a 5-year agreement with the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) to dedicate spaces across Accenture’s Canadian offices as ‘Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund Legacy Spaces’.

DWF is part of Gord Downie’s legacy, a commitment to improving the lives of First Peoples in Canada. In collaboration with the Wenjack Family, the goal of the Fund is to continue the conversation that began with Chanie Wenjack’s residential school story, and to aid our collective reconciliation journey through a combination of awareness, education, and action. Learn more about DWF and the Legacy Spaces program.