28 August 2024 In Case studies, URelles By URelles

Case study: City of Laval

The City of Laval

The City of Laval is a municipality located in the province of Quebec, and is the province’s third largest city in terms of population, after Montreal and Quebec City. Laval is a dynamic city with a steadily growing population. It is home to a diverse population, including residents from a variety of ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The diversity of its population is one of the aspects that makes Laval unique and culturally rich.

The challenge

The City of Laval is moving towards greater DEI awareness within its ranks. With nearly 5,000 employees, the municipality wanted to offer support to its HR Business Partners, a team of around 15 people. The latter are on the front line in helping managers navigate complex DEI-related situations, but the City of Laval noticed that it lacked the protocols and tools to respond effectively to these challenges.

Proposed solution

The City of Laval chose to start by offering tools to support its 500 managers. For its first stage, the choice of intervention focused on HR business partners, who are the people on the front line to answer managers’ questions and who are more likely to witness DEI situations and issues. To meet this need, URelles proposed two practical workshops on DEI. The first workshop, which lasted 3 hours, aimed to review the basics of DEI, establish a common language of understanding of the topic, address persistent myths and note the nuances that enable greater appropriation of the subject.

Between the two workshops, we sent an online questionnaire to the participants to collect their questions and real-life work situations, with a view to sending them on to the second workshop.

The second workshop also lasted 3 hours. Participants were invited to share concrete cases encountered in their day-to-day practice, and to co-construct realistic solutions. Practical scenarios were also discussed. On the more theoretical side, we discussed several cases of potential microaggressions that could occur at work. The aim was to co-create practical tools, such as a decision tree or questions to ask managers, to help HR business partners effectively support their colleagues.

DEI Impact

Thanks to these workshops, City of Laval HR Business Partners are better equipped to help managers better support their teams. They are also better able to provide empathetic and caring support to managers, while helping them to make informed decisions. In addition, collaboration with Benjamin Hernandez, DEI advisor for Laval, enriched and consolidated participants’ knowledge of what is already being done in the City in terms of DEI.

The workshop program was designed to deepen understanding of DEI without turning participants into experts. Using a personalized approach based on real-life City situations, 15 employees strengthened their ability to respond to the specific needs and challenges encountered in their day-to-day practice.

What the City of Laval thought of our collaboration

What impact did the workshops had on City of Laval?

“The workshops brought DEI knowledge up to date, and raised awareness among some participants who were not very involved or felt little concern.”
– Sandrine Fouillard-Roussel – Organizational Development Advisor, City of Laval

If you had to choose three words to describe your collaboration with URelles, what would they be?

Co-construction
Adaptability
Two-way sharing

“We were impressed by Chloé’s professionalism and adaptability in response to our less conventional request for assistance. Our reflections, based on situations close to our reality, paid off. This marked the beginning of this type of activity for all our employees.”

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