FUTURE TALENT November - January 2019/2020 | Page 11

FRONT OF HOUSE
F
WHO IS CHAMPIONING
SOCIAL MOBILITY IN
THE WORKPLACE?
PwC tops the list of UK employers for social mobility,
according to the Social Mobility Foundation’s latest
Index. Published in October, this highlights the
employers doing the most to change the way they
find, recruit and progress talented employees from
different social class backgrounds.
More than a quarter (28%) of employers have social
mobility targets and nearly 40% assess whether their
organisation’s culture is welcoming to those from lower
socio-economic backgrounds, the survey reveals.
Tellingly, 85% of respondents to a question about client
priorities said they felt their clients want them to be
diverse in terms of socio-economic background.
To enhance social mobility, some 30% of employers
now remove the name, university and/or school grades
of candidates when reviewing applications, while one
in four puts the grades of applicants in the context of
the academic performance of the school or college
they attended.
However, the survey also shows that less than
20% of employers monitor progression within their
organisation by socio-economic background and
only 36% encourage firms in their supply chains to
take action on social mobility. Oxford and Cambridge
are still visited by Index entrants more than 72
universities combined.
HIGHEST-RANKED EMPLOYERS BY KEY AREAS
Overall – PwC
Banking – JP Morgan
Engineering – Arup
Government department – Ministry of Justice
Insurance – Aviva
Law – Baker McKenzie
IT & telecomms – Capgemini
Publishing – Penguin Random House
Property/real estate – JLL
Media – BBC
Retail – Enterprise Rent-A-Car
THE END OF JOB ROLES?
57
%
of hiring executives say they’ve recruited
for a specific skill set even if there was no
existing role for the candidate to take up.
The method is most prevalent for bringing in
digital skills. More than three-quarters of
respondents to Korn Ferry’s global survey
also said they were hiring for roles today that
didn’t exist a year ago.
Utilities – Severn Trent
November – January 2019 // 11