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Social Mobility – why impact matters

Published: 10 Sep 2024

As part of this year’s National Inclusion Week, the Social Mobility Commission has invited Carol to reflect on inclusion at Compass and their work to address social mobility, inclusion and impact.

We see the barrierless nature of the foodservice and hospitality industry as a huge opportunity – people can join with little or no formal qualifications. We can then support them to learn, develop and progress. 

The recently published Social Mobility Commission State of the Nation report revealed that not everyone in the UK is able to access opportunities in their local area. As a business that operates across many parts of the UK, one of Compass Group’s unique strengths is that we can offer roles in a variety of places to create much needed local opportunities.    

Offering these opportunities is vital – helping us to future proof our industry, retaining and attracting the very best people, whilst also honing the skills that we need to best support our clients and customers. This makes sense for the people we employ, for the communities we operate in and for us as a business and the wider industry. 

It’s crucial that we create an environment where everyone can thrive. 

This is why in 2022 we launched Compass Group UK & Ireland’s ‘Our Social Promise’. This is our aspiration to positively impact one million lives by 2030, from both within and outside the organisation through job creation, education, training, community and charitable engagement. 

This strategy addresses the barriers that many face when it comes to accessing jobs, learning and progression. Our Roadmap identifies how we will achieve greater equity and provide wider opportunities to people from all backgrounds. From frontline to senior leadership, we want all levels of our organisation to be representative of the UK’s diverse working population.

As an example of the targets set, our ambition is that by 2025, we’ll have reached 50/50 gender parity for junior management through to senior leadership. Our ethnic diversity will be in line with the UK population by 2027 across all levels and by 2030, 40% of our management and leadership population will be from a lower socio-economic background. 

Data is key to reporting on progress and part of this process is continuing to strengthen transparency and reporting to ensure we have a full picture of over 50,000 colleagues. Our work with the Social Mobility Commission’s Employer Advisory Group has allowed us to both learn and contribute to discussions on data and how we can use it to better evaluate our activity.

One area we have seen success in opening up opportunities is through our Social Referral Hub – supporting candidates from a variety of backgrounds that are often overlooked for employment. The scheme is now working with a range of people including care leavers, long term unemployed, refugees, those experiencing homelessness and people living with a range of disabilities. These are some of the groups who are often considered hardest to support and who struggle to access opportunities for social mobility. Our hub has now supported 100 people into roles and 800 people have been supported with job interview training.

Our Career Pathways is integral to creating progression. Career Pathways has been developed to show colleagues from cleaning and culinary workers, through to our central functions and support colleagues, how to ‘Move Up’, ‘Move Across’ or simply ‘Master your Craft’ – offering learning, advice, mentoring and progression.  

Examples of focussed success include:

  • Forward with Marcus Wareing programme – the initiative addresses taking our senior culinary talent to the next level, with modules including commercial, culture, sustainability and the craft. 
  • Earlier this year, we opened our first Xcelerate training hub at Edgbaston, which is the blueprint for other sites in supporting the social mobility agenda through training opportunities. It’s a state-of-the-art regional community skills and learning centre for training and excellence, which aims to support the upskilling of colleagues and the local community. The facility has supported over 800 people since launch. 
  • We have created Sector Work Based Academies and Skills Boot Camps, training around 50 people, with 65% having secured jobs. 

We have so many wonderful examples of people that have worked their way up in our business, having been empowered to progress and provided with opportunities. This is so rewarding to see. 

We are continuing to look at where we can unlock barriers and this work is something I am truly passionate about. There is always more to do in addressing progress and development for all. By annually tracking our progress towards Our Social Promise commitments, it gives us greater insight into where we have improved, what has worked and what we need to do better to support our people and the communities we work in. By doing this, we hope to provide more opportunities for social mobility and change even more  lives for the better.

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