Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are widely embraced by Canadian corporations, with 96 percent of firms implementing DEI training and 88 percent establishing demographic hiring goals, a new study suggests.
The study by public policy think tank the Aristotle Foundation also found that most of the top 25 TSX-listed Canadian firms it examined heavily engage in “social engineering.”
The term social engineering refers to the strategic use of intentional, top-down policies and interventions aimed at transforming cultural attitudes in a bid to address perceived historical injustices.
Such training appears to function less as an impartial method of fostering workplace civility at many of the companies, and more as a tool for instilling a preferred moral vocabulary and a specific set of social assumptions, the authors wrote. This sends a signal to employees that only certain attitudes and beliefs are endorsed by the company, they said….