The Importance of Social Mobility in Hiring Policies

The Importance of Social Mobility in Hiring Policies

In Episode 93 of Talent & Growth - The Talent Acquisition Podcast we spoke to the amazing Felicity Halstead , the founder and CEO and founder of GoodWork . GoodWork is a great cause, and they’re already making a great impact. They’re a non-profit that supports young people from less privileged backgrounds getting into rewarding careers. They bring more talent into the workforce and help young people who tend to get excluded opportunities a foot in the door. Felicity told us how we can use social mobility to open up new talent pools and why doing so is so important for a healthy and diverse workforce of the future.

You can just read on to find out how to implement a social mobility program into your?hiring strategies.

How are you redefining social mobility strategies?

At GoodWork, we recognise that mobility often manifests through programmes that focus on access to university or higher education and corporate grad schemes. We have to recognise that those are not accessible for everybody or the right option for everybody. The link between educational disadvantage, socio-economic disadvantage, and lower educational attainment is really strong, and unfortunately, it does translate into how we hire. A history degree doesn’t impact somebody's ability to do a business development role, yet those things are still looked for on CVs. We are aiming to redefine social mobility and take it back to basics and say that social mobility can look like lots of different things. It could look like accessing university, or it can also look like an apprenticeship or working for a startup or starting your own business. There are many challenges with the apprenticeship system that often makes it less accessible to young people. Our programme is genuinely accessible to any young person if they have the motivation, strength and ability to develop the competencies we're looking for.

Where do we start with this strategy to open up our talent pools?

It's about starting to rethink our approaches. Many organisations have begun doing that through apprenticeship and school leaver programmes. However, the challenge is that they still have minimum grades required to enrol somebody, so it's still not that accessible. We're trying to move away from that graduate terminology. I see startups and scale-ups putting out roles that don't require a degree, but the challenge?is that you need to engage communities to be actively involved.?I was talking to an organisation recently that opened their grad scheme to all applicants but still only hired graduates. The problem is that if you're not proactively making it accessible to other people, you will not reach a diverse talent pool. Regarding what organisations can do, I would partner with an organisation like ours because we can help develop assessment approaches, and we have networks with candidates. You can also go to your local job centre and talk to them. You cannot tell me that none of those young people has the aptitude to do well in a professional work environment. The unfortunate thing is that they are not being given the opportunities or training they need.

Young people need support when they enter work. If you chuck somebody into a role without formal training, it is likely that it will be difficult. The Government’s recent Kickstarter scheme supported businesses to take on young people who were on Universal Credit. Unfortunately, the organisations were left to train and develop their new employees.?As a result, those young people were frequently being used by small businesses as a bit of cheap labour and not being engaged with their development being a priority or with a view to them becoming a permanent employees. Make sure you can give that young person lots of support internally or work with an external provider to provide?them with a positive experience in that placement.

How do we embed social mobility into our long-term strategies?

I hear a lot about making sure that we're investing in founders and leaders from diverse backgrounds. What is often the missing piece, particularly in the tech world, is that if you only focus on diversity and inclusion in senior leaders and founders, you are not resolving the problem at its root cause. The gap in progression, pay and access to work starts the minute these young people leave school. If you, as an organisation, say you're committed to finding brilliant, diverse senior leaders. Still, you only hire entry-level talent if they've got a degree from Oxbridge; you are making that problem harder for yourself and the next generation of young people. You’re not giving them access to the opportunities and, therefore, the progression that enables them to be candidates for your senior roles in 10 years.

Businesses must take a long, hard look in the mirror. If you can take on early career hires, you can work with a young person through a programme like GoodWork. Unfortunately, there are existing biases against the community that we work with. It's not somebody else's job to train up the next generation; we've all got to be part of that. We have to think about the way that you work job adverts. We should be proactively going out and getting people to apply, thinking about our assessment approaches and ensuring we're looking at the whole picture of that young person.

People often say that Gen Z is a classic career hopper; they constantly change jobs. If you see that, look internally because I don't know many people who leave employment in organisations that they love, get fairly compensated for, and have opportunities to grow in. If you can't offer that to somebody, you should encourage them to go out and be an ambassador for your organisation, but they need to do it elsewhere in a job where they can grow. If you care about people and talent and progression, that's going to serve you as a strategy in the long run. I think it is true that this next generation of young people is?values and purpose-driven. It's possible to retain great people if you are focused on ensuring they have a rewarding career, have room to grow, and are in an organisation that lifts its values.

How do we make a business case for investment in this longer-term strategy and entry-level talent?

If you're willing to invest in young people who are unemployed or underemployed and engage with them, you have done something great for your ESG and acquired and retained talent that positively impacts your business. This is just intelligent hiring. It's a great way of accessing diverse talent pools. Any organisation working with the public sector needs to demonstrate social value. With any organisation that has ambitions to be a B Corp or needs investors to get onside, this is a fantastic strategy because everybody is thinking about how you tick these boxes. Acquiring and retaining your talent is brilliant because you're killing multiple birds with one stone. Those young people will stay with your business and help you to grow as they grow.

?If you would like to hear more about the impacts of a socially mobile hiring strategy, tune into the full episode of The Talent & Growth Podcast here.?