I believe that for Britain in the 21st century, success will be down to whether we make the most of our biggest asset: people. But to do our best, we need a system change to deliver more opportunity. It’s about more than just education – companies are part of the solution too.
One area my Social Mobility Pledge campaign has worked on is getting companies to commit to looking beyond pure academic achievement so that they don’t screen out talented candidates before they’ve even walked through the door.
Academic attainment can only tell you so much about the potential of a young person. It’s inevitably partly a rear-view mirror on where a candidate has come from, not necessarily on where they can get to.
Social Mobility Pledge employers know that the key to success for young people in the workplace is about wider skills – teamwork, resilience, problem solving, the right attitude – more than just getting good grades. More than that the reality is that often young people with less than perfect starts have better developed life skills than those who may have had a smoother path through school.
Through my Social Mobility Pledge campaign, I’m finding employers who are systematically asking themselves how they can find the ‘rough diamonds’ and help them succeed. Many employers know it’s the right thing to do and in many cases are driven because they also know what it’s like to have to overcome barriers to be successful. I’m not the only one who cares about working to deliver equality of opportunity.
But more than that, their experience is that the young people they bring into their business from backgrounds considered ‘disadvantaged’ are often the ones who do the best too, having been given the chance, so it makes good business sense. It’s a win-win. One City bank told me that due to team feedback, they’d scaled back on their graduate recruitment programme which delivered candidates from a narrower socio-economic background. Instead teams wanted to scale up their school leavers entry scheme which targeted more diverse candidates.