Complete the Employee Equity Census

The Employee Equity Census only takes a few minutes to complete. Watch the short video or follow the instructions below to access the form in Workday.

The purpose of the Employee Equity Census is to gather personal information like your race, gender identity, Indigenous identity, etc. to better understand our community and support our work toward becoming a more equitable workplace. Your responses are critical to help us to do this work.

Your answers will be de-identified and kept confidential

• Responsibility for handling this data is delegated to a small number of qualified data analysts in Human Resources and Institutional Analysis & Planning.
• De-identified data from this form (using Pseudo IDs) will be transferred and stored in Waterloo’s central secure environment where access will be limited to only a few analysts who support institutional analysis and reporting.
• Institutional Analysis and Planning (IAP) uses a system of role-based data access combined with pseudo-IDs which prevents personal identification by any party, including analysts involved. Pseudo-IDs replace personal identifiers such as your name and employee ID to protect your privacy during analysis. Only pseudo-IDs are used when linking with other records (such as length of time at the university, USG level, rank, and/or salary). No individual will have access to both the pseudo-ID and other variables from administrative data systems  All reporting will use summarized data where no individual can be identified.
• De-identified data may also be shared with Task Forces or Working Groups within the University who will use the data for a purpose consistent with that for which it was collected. Before accessing the data, approved members of such groups must sign data sharing and confidentiality agreements. At all times, the data will remain in our central secure environment and will not be transferred.
• All reports will follow Statistics Canada standards of reporting and protection of individual information.
• Only summarized data will ever be made publicly available. Your answers will be maintained as confidential and no, even potentially identifying information, will ever be reported or publicly released (e.g., to family, professors, employers or in any reports).  Sample sizes under 5 will not be reported.

This is an ongoing data collection and will be updated every year

• We are aiming at 100% participation for this census; there is an option to choose “prefer not to answer” for every question. All new employees will be expected to complete this form and all employees will be asked to update it annually. Disclosure of information is not required as all questions may be answered “prefer not to answer”. There are no consequences to choosing this option, aside from the University missing your contribution to this equity census.
• For this year’s analysis and reporting, this data collection will last from September 20^th to November 10^th. During this time, we will be reminding everyone in our community to fill out this  form. If after November 10^th  we do not have an employee’s responses, they will be recorded as missing data until the next cycle of annual updates.

• For more information about this data collection, we encourage you to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the Equity Data Strategy website.

• The information on the form is collected under the authority of s. 3, 4 and 14 of the University of Waterloo Act for the purpose of enhancing access to programs and career pathways for historically excluded, marginalized and racialized groups and improve the opportunities for employees to reach their potential. Questions regarding this collection may be directed to analysis@uwaterloo.ca