Are class barriers getting in the way of recruiting the best talent?

There’s a Netflix show called ‘The English Game’, which is about the origins of football as the game we know today. In the first episode, the posh Old Etonians meet the not so posh Darwen team and use all the rules and their high-level connections to protect their privilege and the status quo. It takes place in the late 19th century, and class was clearly a much bigger issue then than now, but we can still see elements of this Old Etonian protectionism in today’s society it seems.

I am not British, but have lived in London for two decades. As an expat, I never really engaged with class as it wasn’t something that seemed relevant in my own life or career. It was just one of those things that I accepted as a peculiarity of Britishness, and got on with it (I do realise that class is not an issue only in the UK!). However, over the years, I have come to realise just how pervasive class is here and how it can prevent people thriving, resulting in barriers to opportunity as well a huge loss of creativity, talent, wealth creation and our ability to tackle key issues like climate change and the current pandemic. The pandemic has also highlighted the strong links between class and ethnicity, for example, and the many disparities in health, education and earnings that we have not yet solved.

Defining class and its differences

Class is, of course, hard to define. In some ways, how you identify is entirely subjective. As issues of social mobility and class have come to the fore again, it seems that many middle-class people these days are playing up their working class backgrounds even if they go generations back, perhaps to justify their privileges.

Figures from the Social Mobility Foundation and the Sutton Trust show that professionals from a working-class background on average earn £6,400 a year less than their peers from more affluent backgrounds in similar jobs. The data also shows that only 5% of pupils who get free school meals go on to study at a highly elective university, compared with the 7% of pupils privately educated in the UK, that make up a significant proportion of the most influential jobs, like judges and newspaper columnists.

Creating Opportunities

Networks and opportunities are critical. Social capital – in essence your access to networks and people who can support, advice and champion you, helps at every stage of your career and in life. Prospectus is currently working with EY Foundation on a project to support young people who require universal credit / are from lower socio-economic backgrounds (for example those who have received free school meals) to consider careers in the charity sector and be connected to mentors, hopefully having a positive impact on their social capital as well as the future diversity of the sector.

So, what can we do to drive change so that more people from diverse backgrounds can access opportunities, develop their skills and thrive in leadership roles? It’s easy to think that this is a problem for education, big business and government – something someone else needs to sort out. However, in my view, we all have a role to play. As a leader in a business and a headhunter, I see this from two interlinked perspectives.

How can organisations address the class problem?

Firstly, we have to recruit better. Make sure those who interview and assess are from different backgrounds, and that their conscious or unconscious biases don’t interfere. What is ‘being polished’ or ‘having gravitas’ anyway? Only include degree requirements in job descriptions when strictly necessary. Do degrees, where you’ve studied and the grades received matter? For most roles, not really.

Secondly, we have to build more inclusive organisations. Achieving diversity means recruiting well, and good process combined with intentionality, can achieve that. Being inclusive is much more difficult and elusive to achieve, and can come down to how someone feels. Consider how different people can be themselves at work – if they don’t have to worry whether they fit in, they can focus much more clearly on their performance and progression. Therefore, the challenge to any organisation is to harness all talent, regardless of background, ensuring people can bring all of their identities to work. If we get better at that, everyone will benefit. The business benefits are clear too, as this study from McKinsey shows.

At the beginning of the article, I mentioned that I used to feel that class didn’t concern me because I considered myself to be ‘classless’, having grown up in a country with much less social stratification. What I have learnt since is that it does matter, and my real opportunity is to use my position and privilege to achieve change, not protect the status quo.

Find out more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion in all of our recruitment searches in this piece.