Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi says City Hall isn't diverse enough and is looking to see if there is anything in the city's promotion policies that is preventing it from getting the best qualified employees.

Nenshi says the city's top leadership positions are dominated by men and that it needs to make sure there's more diversity all around.

"As an employer, and we're a very large employer, we do a really good job of hiring a diverse workforce, a workforce that reflects the city that we serve however we haven't done a great job in the past of promoting that workforce internally to positions of leadership and so we have to ask ourselves questions about, are there any inadvertent or unthinking or systemic biases that are preventing us from finding the best qualified people for those leadership jobs?" said Nenshi.

He says managers should match the people they manage.

“Are we making sure that we’re casting the net wide enough when we're looking at promotions and ensuring that people feel comfortable in applying and that our interview processes and so on take into account people’s real lived experiences,” said Mayor Nenshi.

Nenshi says he is not interested in quotas or numbers and says bringing up the issue will make more people think about how they hire.

Councillor Druh Farrell is one of two women on council and says she and Diane Colley-Urquhart are often the only women at meetings.

Farrell says the city needs to find out what the barriers are and remove them to encourage more women to apply for jobs and elected positions.

“The ideal situation would be to have city hall reflect the demographic of Calgary,” said Farrell. “We need to look at mentoring women, mentoring different cultural groups to be interested in city matters.”

A social work professor at the University of Calgary says the city does a good job of hiring people from diverse backgrounds, but agrees with the mayor that it is not reflected in leadership positions.

“One can’t tell us that individuals in the city aren't qualified whether they're women or racialized minorities and so the question I would ask is, is there a racial ceiling in terms of hiring senior administration and is there a ceiling in relation to women in terms of senior managerial positions?” said David Este.

Este says this could hurt an organization’s morale because people might ask why they are working so hard if they can only move up so much.

(With files from Ina Sidhu)