Jocelyn McGrandle (Columbia College) , Frank Ohemeng (Concordia University)
Public sector organizations have long sought to increase workforce diversity. As many such countries have succeeded in diversifying their public services, recent years have moved beyond policies and programs designed to simply recruit diverse candidates into discussions of how to make now quite diversified workforces more inclusive. Inclusion is viewed not only as the right thing to do from a moral perspective, but also a way to increase employee engagement. This research seeks to add to the existing literature by examining the Ontario Public Service as a case study, and by combining two established fields of literature using theories of inclusivity (optimal distinctiveness theory and social identity theory) and theories of employee engagement (basic needs satisfaction). Public service studies in Canada, particularly at the provincial level, are quite limited in their examinations of diversity and inclusion. Ontario is home to Canada’s largest provincial public service and has made diversity and inclusion a cornerstone of their public service for the last decade. Using data from the Ontario Public Service (OPS) Employee Survey, this study will examine how public servants perceive diversity and inclusion within the OPS and how those perceptions shape employee engagement.