The Ontario Public Service (OPS) upholds the public interest by providing non-partisan advice to the elected government of the day and frontline services to the people of Ontario. A diversity of lived experiences, skills, and viewpoints in our leadership teams will enable us to deliver responsive, inclusive policies and programs for the people we serve. As such, the OPS is committed to closing the gaps in representation between our senior leadership teams and the Ontario labour force by 2025.

Representative leadership matters to OPS employees. We are focused on building an organization where employees can experience the impact of being represented in leadership.

The findings of the third-party review of OPS inclusive workplace policies and programs concluded that systemic employment barriers, discrimination and racism are impacting the career trajectories, wellbeing and experience of underrepresented groups in the OPS. Underrepresented groups in the OPS include employees with disabilities, and employees who are:

  • Indigenous
  • Black
  • racialized
  • francophone
  • women
  • transgender
  • non-binary and/or Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ employees.

As an employer, we are committed to tackling the priority actions outlined in the OPS Leadership Pledge, such as addressing systemic employment barriers and discrimination experienced by our workforce, so that we can fully support and harness the talents of all employees when delivering services to people in Ontario.

Transparent reporting keeps us accountable for ensuring progress on the OPS’ strategy to diversify senior leadership. This annual report offers a look at the socio-demographic makeup of OPS leadership teams and pathways to leadership.

We continue to hold our senior leaders accountable for progress by linking outcomes for leadership pathway targets to deputy minister performance assessments. In 2020-21, we took our accountability mechanisms one step further and now require ministries to report on ministry-specific outcomes to their staff.

The OPS is also building organizational capacity to collect and use data to identify systemic employment barriers. In 2020. we introduced the collection of socio-demographic data within the OPS’ Workforce Information Network (WIN). At the same time, we actively use data to monitor progress on targets for pathways to leadership and to ensure diverse representation in recruitment and selection processes.

Moving ahead, the OPS will remain focused on using data to drive accountability for our goal of closing gaps in representation between the Ontario labour force and the most underrepresented groups in senior leadership by 2025. The everyday actions of our leaders to develop underrepresented talent are crucial to our success. Over time, these actions will allow us to diversify and harness the full potential of our workforce when serving the people in Ontario.