A report last month from CBRE Group Inc. confirmed what was already known by many in the Vancouver tech community: The burgeoning sector on the West Coast is not exactly an exemplar of diversity.
The real estate services firm found people in Vancouver’s tech sector who were identified as white made up 54% of workers, while those of Asian descent made up 42%. Those identified as Hispanic (2%), Black (1%) and “other” (1%) made up the remainder. (Indigenous people make up 5.9% of B.C.’s population, according to 2016 data from Statistics Canada.)
“We know that there's an underrepresentation of Indigenous people in tech,” said Lauren Kelly, the director of sector transformation at the First Nations Technology Council (FNTC) in North Vancouver.
Her organization is embarking on a new initiative — Moving Beyond Inclusion: Partnerships and Reconciliation project — aimed at addressing that issue by partnering with the tech sector in what the FNTC describes as a decolonization of corporate systems.
The goal is to transform corporate cultures and better integrate Indigenous worldviews and thought leadership within the tech industry.
Starting with SAP Canada Inc. earlier this year, the council has been doing deep dives with companies to better understand their corporate policies, how they hire people and how performance management works.
“When we think about decolonizing corporate systems, we're trying to find the ways that those values of colonization are still in the system, and then try to think critically about what could we create and how could we create new systems that don't exclude people, that don't privilege [some] people over other people,” Kelly said.
Canadians have faced a reckoning this past summer, as the country’s colonial past manifested itself in the present with the horrifying discoveries of children’s bodies at the former sites of residential schools.
“We are seeing a growing awareness about the history of colonization, we're seeing the mobilization of people, we're seeing individuals deepen their learning,” said Kelly.
“But that doesn't necessarily extend to people who aren't from this country and don't understand that context.”
That’s why a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work with the various tech companies coming on board with the program, according to Kelly.
Some of the first participants, like Bench Accounting Inc. and PageFreezer Software Inc., are headquartered in Vancouver.
Others are multinational organizations, such as the aforementioned SAP as well as Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT), that aren’t necessarily tuned into Canada’s colonial past.
“When we give recommendations or co-create actions with the companies, we want them to be grounded in their actual reality. Otherwise, the potential impact of those actions is reduced,” Kelly said.
“If we make a policy recommendation that’s not going to be possible because of a particular global legal framework, that's not a really helpful recommendation and it's not going to lead to tangible and meaningful change.”
Meanwhile, a May 2020 McKinsey & Company report bolstered findings from 2015 regarding the financial success of businesses that are ethnically and gender diverse.
Companies with more than 30% female executives were 25% more likely to be more profitable than the national industry median, and ethnically diverse companies were 36% more likely to be profitable than the national industry median. (McKinsey’s survey was based on a broad range of nations.)
The Partnerships and Reconciliation project is partnering with companies on a staggered basis so that the FNTC can perform the deep dives necessary to understand the corporate cultures they’re dealing with, and then support with the implementation on an ongoing basis.
“Our Canadian legal system, our healthcare system, our education system … all of these systems were born out of a colonial mindset,” Kelly said.
“Because these businesses are built on unceded territory in Canada and they continue to economically benefit from that initial act of taking the land … there's a key role [for the corporate sector] to play.”
Correction: The original version of this story stated the council began working on the initiative earlier this year with SAP Labs Canada Inc. The council, in fact, began working with SAP Canada Inc.
