What does social mobility in organisations look like?
In the first episode of our new podcast, The Inclusive Exclusive, Dr Melissa Carr explores how businesses can support social mobility with Roger Clarke from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
It is a well used adage but, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. This is true when we think of diversity and equity in organisations and particularly so for social mobility which remains slow to change.
Social mobility looks at how educational opportunities and life chances are strongly linked to parents’ socio-economic background. If you are born into a well-off family, you are more than 2.5 times more likely to end up wealthy yourself.
In the UK, social mobility is low. One illustration of this can be seen in relation to access into certain occupations such as in medicine, law, finance and politics. These occupations are highly competitive and we often see that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to overcome the barriers into competitive professional careers. The Sutton Trust found, for example, that 71% of barristers are privately educated.