Social mobility definition

To get an answer to the question ‘What is social mobility?’, it’s first important to consider the different opportunities that your candidates and employees will have throughout their life. Candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds or minority group backgrounds often have fewer opportunities to reach their goals than their peers who come from more advantageous backgrounds and who may have, for example, studied at a university or fee-paying high school where they started to build business networks. 

Candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, might have had less access to training in order to develop their skills, or lack business contacts. Despite this, many people from disadvantaged backgrounds are very capable in their field, or have a lot of untapped potential. 

Why social mobility matters for businesses

By not looking out for candidates from more disadvantaged backgrounds, you might be missing out on some of the best talent. This does not necessarily mean taking on a candidate simply because they come from a disadvantaged background. Rather, it involves recognising their talents and personality traits that make them a good fit for your company, and knowing how to build on those skills as well as that individual’s confidence.

This takes some work getting to know your candidates and employees on a personal level and figuring out what inspires them or how they work best. Each employee, regardless of background, will have their own personal skill profile. You might also want to consider how your employees feel about their place in your workforce in the long term. There are often barriers to employee or candidate career progress, which could include the following:

• Not being able to afford the right training to apply for high-earning jobs.
• Inability to take on unpaid work experience due to lack of financial support.
• Having a disability or chronic illness that stops them from regularly coming into the office, performing certain tasks or communicating either verbally or in writing.
• Discrimination or stereotyping based on race, gender, sexuality or age.
• Discrimination or stereotyping during the interview process based on socio-economic background and/or accent.

When it comes to improving social mobility in your business, the drive usually has to start from the top. This means that managers and your talent acquisition team would need to be well informed about diversity and inclusion, and how to put this into practice when it comes to training, communicating with employees and recruiting new hires.

Gathering data about social mobility

Before you create a social mobility plan for your business, it’s helpful to gather data on the different demographics of employees working for you. This information can give strong indications as to whether you are under or over hiring people from a particular background. It will also tell you which jobs they tend to hold in your business. Gathering data on someone’s background, however, might be more complicated than simply looking at which employees have which protected characteristics. You might create a survey that asks your employees or job applicants questions like:

• What jobs did your parents have when you were younger?
• Did you attend a fee-paying school without a grant, a fee-paying school with a grant, a comprehensive school or a school outside of the UK?
• Were you eligible for free school meals?
• Did one or both of your parents attend university?

This information can help you to learn much more about candidates and employees, as it helps you to learn more about their social background. This is important to consider as you might have candidates that come from a minority background, but also attended a fee-paying school where they were able to make connections. At the end of the day, each candidate will have their own unique profile to consider.

Developing a social mobility plan for your workplace

 To develop a social mobility plan for your workplace, you may wish to create a strategy for developing social mobility in your workplace. Options to consider for your strategy could include the following:

• Listening to employee concerns regarding social mobility and looking into ways to improve this.
• Creating a diversity, equity and inclusion committee who oversee a social mobility strategy for your business.
• Helping employees reach their full potential by providing adequate training, so that their skills are kept up to date with any industry changes.
• Providing paid internship opportunities that offer a living wage.
• Improving the outreach of your recruitment strategy, for example by approaching high schools not usually targeted by recruitment drives.
• Considering whether the phrasing of your job advertisements and descriptions might discourage candidates from a minority group or disadvantaged background.
• Providing disabled candidates with the option of attending a remote interview via video conferencing tools, and providing flexible or remote working to disabled candidates.
• Looking at a candidate’s soft skills and cultural ‘add’ rather than their cultural fit and what experience they currently have.

Employee retention and social mobility

Creating a social mobility plan doesn’t just include hiring candidates from diverse backgrounds, it also involves ensuring that your employees continuously feel welcome, included and supported throughout their career at your workplace. By doing so, you might be able to help increase employee retention, as it means that they are less likely to be looking elsewhere for a new role. Instead, they see a clear path to progress within your business.

This is where regular training sessions come in. Some employees may not feel comfortable being tested on new skills or making mistakes, which can deter them from excelling during training programmes. This is why it often takes a manager with good communication skills to be able to listen to and respond to an employee’s concerns during training – especially if they are less confident due to past bad experiences sitting exams or taking tests. 

It might be that some employees require accommodations while they train. Assistive technology like text-to-speech might be a good option for employees who have a learning disability relating to writing and reading.

By enabling social mobility in the workplace, you can help disadvantaged or minority background employees reach their personal and professional goals. This doesn’t just have the capacity to benefit your employees; it can also help improve employee retention. Before creating a social mobility plan, consider gathering the relevant data on your employee’s backgrounds to help aid your decision making.