Social Mobility Awareness Day celebrates its second year on the 15th June, a day organised by Making the leap to help raise awareness of social mobility and encourage organisations to share their social mobility stories.
Of all the D&I areas of practice we surveyed our Signatories on for our Diversity in Tech report, only 38% of Signatories are looking at data on Social Mobility. This blog will highlight why you should care about Social Mobility, why it is a tech problem and what you can do to improve Social Mobility practices within your organisation.
The UK tech industry has got a money problem…
Tech shortages are costing the UK economy an estimated £50bn a year. A significant figure that could be vastly reduced if the gap was bridged between the shortages and young people who are hard-working and capable but not working in tech because of the structural barriers that are associated with their socioeconomic background.
We spoke to expert Sarah…
“It shouldn’t be the case that the things that define your career outcomes are more about where you grow up, what kind of jobs your parents had or school you went to. It should be about how hard you work, how talented you are and your skills or potential"
Sarah Atkinson is CEO of the Social Mobility Foundation, a charity whose mission is to create opportunities for young people who are held back, not because of a lack of talent or ambition but because of structural barriers that are associated with their socioeconomic background. We spoke to Sarah in a recent Share & learn session on Social Mobility Awareness and measurement where she explained the problem and what can be done.
“Young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds don’t think of the tech industry as welcoming, only 19% of Social Mobility Foundation students think that the tech industry is a place where they could work”
As the UK has low social mobility, an individual’s career prospects are strongly defined by their socioeconomic background.
We discussed with Sarah the hard barriers that people from a low socioeconomic background face when it comes to a career in tech. These can range from qualifications, access to and opportunities with technology because of financial barriers, as well as geographical mobility when it comes to interviews, assessments and hackathons or even the ability to relocate for a role.
Young people who don’t have access to privileged opportunities or networks of people who can advise them lack the knowledge about how to follow the pathway, play the game or know what is expected from them.
The Social Mobility Foundation support young people in the following 3 ways:
- They run programmes for young people to connect them with opportunities which build their knowledge, networks, confidence and their understanding of career pathways and how to gain access.
- They work with employers. The Social Mobility employers network helps them understand what they can do to identify and break down barriers and how they can provide more meaningful opportunities for people to get in and get on in their organisations.
- They campaign and advocate for social mobility.
The UK tech sector has a huge amount to offer and should be fantastic for Social Mobility as it’s important to have people with different lived experiences in the room when designing and building products for all.
The current profile of roles within the UK tech industry - in particular in more senior level and decision making roles - is of people from a higher socioeconomic background. As a result, we’re missing out on hugely important skills that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds bring: plain speaking, grit and hustle, enormous resilience and determination.
People’s ability to problem solve, their design thinking and analytical skills are more important than their socioeconomic background. It should be about how hard you work, how talented you are and your skills or potential.
Young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds don’t think of the tech industry as welcoming: only 19% of Social Mobility Foundation students think that the tech industry is a place where they could work. So what can we do to change this perception?
5 key things you can do to improve Social Mobility
- Collect data
- If you can only collect on one metric, ask about parental occupation at age 14. See our recent ‘Social Mobility: how do you measure it?’ blog for ideas on the other types of questions to include. The Social Mobility Commission also has a toolkit where you can find questions and a matrix which helps to interpret what the responses actually mean.
- Set yourself a target for response rates. It’s an important measure of confidence and engagement that your employees are willing to give you this information.
- Then set yourself a target for improving the response rate. You can then start to work towards the point where you are benchmarking for your sector or against other industries.
- Look at your recruitment process
- However you recruit as an organisation, take a look at your recruitment process. Are there different patterns or balances in the way you recruit? For example, back-office usually has more socioeconomic diversity. This can give you a focus on what you can change.
- What kind of approaches are working or making it more difficult for you to recruit people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds? Have a think about what talent looks like and what you are including in your job specs. Do high performing individuals always need to have a top degree from a top university? Or should we also be looking for candidates with grit and determination, cost-awareness and honesty - traits that every workplace wants to access.
- Support and career progression for current employees
- Think about career progression and what talent and high performance looks like for your organisation.
- What do you reward and what does a successful individual look like? Are you expecting it to come from a certain place and in a certain package or are you looking for potential and different strengths?
- Have a social mobility conversation
- Look to have a social mobility conversation.
- In a big organisation that might look like a Social Mobility network with a senior sponsor.
- In a small organisation, it might look like getting employees around a table and having an open conversation about different backgrounds and their challenges.
- Discuss what socioeconomic diversity looks like in your organisation and what ideas you may have to make things more inclusive. Normalising the conversation, especially amongst leadership, can really energise a powerful awareness of the issue.
- Be a mentor, sponsor, a supporter
10 resources you can use for social mobility
- Watch our Share & learn session on Social Mobility Awareness and measurement with the Social Mobility Foundation.
- Read about social mobility in our Diversity in Tech report.
- Read about how to measure social mobility in our recent blog post.
- Enter the Social Mobility Foundation index to receive a free tailored report with recommendations for your organisation.
- Social Mobility Foundation 2022 Employer Social Mobility report.
- Use Sutton’s Trust social mobility guide or the
- Social Mobility Commission’s Toolkit to set up your data collection aligned to current research and best practices.
- View the list of organisations businesses are partnering with on social mobility.
- Social mobility in tech resource via the TTC Open Playbook.
- Use a structured scheme like Social Mobility Foundation.