Building an inclusive culture in your workplace is crucial to your diversity and inclusion efforts. Your employees from a lower socio-economic background need to feel like they can bring their whole selves to work, so that they can do their best work. Culture is owned by all, and your ‘privileged’ employees can help to drive inclusion efforts through allyship.
Breaking taboos and avoiding stigma around these efforts can be helped by having open, honest discussions within the workforce about what it means to be from a low socio-economic background and the additional barriers that low SEB employees face in the workplace.
Whether you have a fully-fledged strategy for diversity and inclusion (D&I) in your organisation, or you’re just starting to embed D&I principles, it’s important to make sure you’re thinking (and talking!) about socio-economic background alongside other characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity.
This resource pack is designed for organisations at any stage in their social mobility journey. It includes a selection of resources aimed at getting the conversation around this important issue started.
It includes information on social mobility in the UK and barriers to socio-economic diversity in the workplace, guidance for leadership, HR and internal comms teams on how to communicate with employees around class and socio-economic background, and a guide to running focus groups with your employees.