The following was ghost-written for a Sales Manager.
July 30, 2019
Working in recruitment, it’s really important to me to believe that every potential candidate Capita comes into contact with gets an equal chance at success. We’re talking more openly about things like gender, race, sexuality, and mental health than ever before. It certainly seems like we’re doing enough, as businesses and a society to make equality happen.
But a recent event really got me thinking. Along with a few Capita colleagues, I attended a day with charity Making the Leap, called ‘Suited and Booted’. Helping prepare young people to enter the workforce through practice interviews, I went there hoping to inspire them as to what can be achieved when you don’t necessarily have the easiest start in life – but instead, they inspired me. Several young people I spoke to face real challenges at home, yet have started their own businesses, are seriously focussed on studying, and are really excited about their prospects.
Making the Leap specifically focuses on helping young people from poor backgrounds develop the skills, behaviours and attitudes needed to succeed in their chosen careers. Capita also has a corporate charity partnership with Teach First, who work in partnership with schools to ensure that children from low-income communities have a great education, and I’m looking into becoming a work experience mentor with them. While it’s great that so many charities are getting involved, in some ways it points to the size of the problem. Young people born into poverty are less likely to do well at school and go to university, and are more likely to end up unemployed and with health issues. There should be just as much outrage about this kind of inequality as there is for those facing financial issues beyond their control too.
I don’t want to get too political, but a report from the government’s social mobility commission earlier this year has really stuck with me. It stated that social mobility has been ‘virtually stagnant since 2014’. Young people from the better off part of our society are nearly 80% more likely to end up in professional jobs than those from working-class backgrounds, and sadly even when young people from disadvantaged backgrounds land a professional job, they earn 17% less than their privileged colleagues. As Capita CEO Jon Lewis put it at the 2019 Social Mobility Awards, ‘the separation between the haves and the have-nots has become more acute, not less acute.’
I’m not saying that everyone wants the stereotypically ‘professional’ career, or that it’s the only marker of success, but a public poll from the same organisation found ‘a worrying level of pessimism amongst young people who think they have little chance of moving up in society’. The young people I met were fantastically optimistic, but it’s hard to blame anyone for being overwhelmed when the odds are so skewed.
Coming from a working-class family and struggling through our rigid education system, I would have been a prime candidate for Making the Leap. I know first-hand how powerful one conversation can be in transforming someone’s life trajectory, from a fixed understanding of the world and my place in it, to something completely different. In my case, I was lucky: had it not been for an almost-complete stranger who saw something in me, and encouraged me to take a different path, the career I have today would never have happened. But that was just my good fortune – there are people all over this country who get left behind at school, see doors slammed in their faces, and accept a career that’s way below their skill level.
I’ll always be grateful to that lady who gave me a nudge in the right direction, but I don’t think that being inspired to look for opportunities should be left to chance. The work of charities like Making the Leap is really important, but if social justice isn’t enough, there are real benefits to business too. I’ve written before about how important diversity of thought is to creativity, but there are proven business benefits: two heads might be better than one, but two heads that think the same way won’t make much difference. Someone whose background looks different to yours will bring a whole host of new insights.
So, what can your company do to address these kinds of imbalances?
First of all, reach out to local charities and organisations. Making the Leap is just one brilliant example: I’ve listed a few others below. Many of these would appreciate donations, corporate sponsorship or just some volunteering hours to help them keep going – they may also be in a brilliant position to offer advice on fairer recruitment practices.
One of the commission’s recommendations is that the government extend childcare allowances. As a business, could you be offering more? If it helps those currently earning a lower income take a big leap up into your business, it’s a price worth paying.
Invest in apprenticeships and fully paid internships. These can give young people a much-needed leg up, and an opportunity to learn on the job without them needing to make their own financial sacrifices.
Invest in training at all levels, even if your employees could be deemed low-skilled. When 49% of the poorest adults have received no training since leaving school, compared to 20% of the richest, you could be giving those individuals a real chance at long-term success. This is especially true when manual or repetitive jobs are the most at risk of replacement by automation.
When it comes to recruitment itself, be open minded about what you’re looking for in a candidate: is university really that important? Does the company they last worked for matter? These tick-boxes can help you make assumptions, but if they haven’t been treated fairly in the past, their CV might not be representative of their abilities.
Nobody wants to think that they had it harder because their parents weren’t rolling in cash, or publicly acknowledge that they had a leg-up because Dad’s an executive – but I think it’s time we faced up to the fact that inequality isn’t always as visible as the colour of someone’s skin or their gender.
All over the UK, fantastically intelligent, talented and innovative young people are waiting to be discovered. Don’t let their backgrounds be a barrier to you bringing them onboard.
Recommended charities and organisations
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-leap-five-things-your-organisation-can-do-social-dan-lovell/
Grace Thiele 