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Why focus on socio-economic background?

Whether you lead a manufacturing company or a professional services firm, the performance, productivity and commitment of your staff is key to your organisation’s success. Yet businesses across the country are missing opportunities to recruit, promote and retain some of the most talented and driven people in our country.

71% of barristers in leading roles attended independent schools

43% of journalists in leading roles attended independent schools

27% of CEOs in leading roles attended independent schools

Competitive advantage

Raise your game. Employees from a lower socio-economic background perform at least as well as their more advantaged colleagues, and often outperform them. In professional service firms, for example, trainees from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to achieve the highest performance.

Have a more diverse talent pool? Diverse workforces give you access to a wider recruitment pool. You may also benefit from higher employee engagement and lower turnover. Greater diversity could make you a destination employer for the high-performing individuals that will drive your success in the future.

How you position yourself. People want to see people who look like them, and they want to work for a business with a purpose. Building a visibly diverse workforce signals a commitment to inclusion and improving society. Companies interested in the long term recognise the benefits of this for their reputation and image.

The next frontier

Recent years have seen a drive to increase diversity in businesses. So far, these efforts have focused primarily on gender and ethnicity.

However, forward-looking companies across industries are now looking at how to increase socio-economic diversity as part of this thriving agenda. Change is gathering pace: the challenge now is to keep up with the best.

An untapped opportunity

Individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds are a positive asset to businesses, but they are under-represented in professional occupations.

People whose parents held professional jobs are more likely to be in a professional job themselves. Likewise, people from professional backgrounds are three times more likely to move to London where the greatest concentration of professional jobs exists.

However, larger employers are increasingly recognising the benefits of shifting this pattern, and are targeting the UK’s social mobility ‘coldspots’ to benefit from talent that exists there.