Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Action

Our DEI mission is to reflect the rich diversity of the communities we serve.

Building Internal Capabilities First

Our team members reflect British Columbia as a whole, and we celebrate their diverse thinking and different perspectives. Our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) initiatives help us achieve this in a variety of ways – from our hiring practices, to learning opportunities, to our Employee Resource Groups fostering psychological safety and inclusion for everyone.

Along with developing a vision and mission for our DEI program, we’ve developed a set of guiding principles to help guide this work and weave it into our daily business. This lays a strong foundation for us to continue learning about DEI and to design initiatives that support our people, which in turn better positions us to take thoughtful, meaningful action in support of diverse communities across British Columbia.

Three photos of members of the BCAA team celebrating at the Vancouver Pride festival

Diversity in Hiring

We strive for diverse talent to see themselves working at BCAA and feel encouraged to apply for our roles. We offer accommodations throughout the recruitment process, including assistive technology and flexible work arrangements, and design marketing collateral to reflect diverse groups.

Applying a DEI lens has broadened our talent sourcing to include more employment service organizations representing persons with disabilities, Indigenous and other equity-deserving job seekers. BCAA is committed to advancing reconciliation, and we’ve developed a multi-year Indigenous Inclusion strategy to attract and retain Indigenous talent.

BCAA is committed to supporting a workplace that represents, respects, and celebrates the diversity of BC.

We leverage the Global Diversity Equity and Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB) to inform our organizational DEI performance indicators. Key stakeholders across the business use the GDEIB framework to select relevant benchmarks.

Annually, we compare our internal demographic data to Statistics Canada Census data for BC, enabling us to measure how closely we are reflecting the rich diversity of our province.

Because of these and other initiatives, in a recent audit of BCAA’s DEI program by KPMG, BCAA scored a 4 out of a possible 5 on the DEI Maturity Curve.

Learning About DEI

It’s one thing to learn about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion through required courses or training. It’s an entirely different experience to listen to backgrounds, experiences and perspectives first-hand.

We bring DEI to life with a series of educational events themed around significant calendar dates (e.g. Black History Month, International Women’s Day, Pride Season, National Indigenous History Month). We invite guest speakers from different equity-deserving community partners to join us for these conversations — all of whom provide takeaways to advance inclusion and belonging. Our guests are informative, vulnerable, authentic and raw, speaking to both our heads and our hearts, and sticking with us long afterwards.

In tandem with each event, we promote relevant charitable organizations on our team member giving platform, so that our team members can couple their learning with support of underrepresented communities.

Our Impact Report

We’ve committed to tracking our progress in three pillars – People, Planet and Prosperity. These measures tell us when we’re on track, when we’re doing better than expected and where we need to course-correct. Take a look at how we’re doing so far.

2023 Impact Report