Hidden diversity
Recruiting people with working-class backgrounds to your board and executive team will provide the kind of diversity you can’t necessarily see
GROWTH
Image: Istock
Terry Fuller
Head of Partnerships, Legal and General Modular Homes, and former Executive Director, Homes England, and Managing Director, Taylor Wimpey
So, you are delivering a service to your customers – at a guess at least 80% are ‘working class’. Yet your executive team is made up of degree-level (PPE anyone?), highly qualified (RICS; RTPI; CPA; MEng) middle-class people. Frequently, your board members are also middle class, well-educated and qualified.
Although you are doing your best to attract people from a more diverse background that meets the Equality Act 2010 criteria (you know what they are), that does not necessarily bring diversity if they too are degree-level, professionally qualified people, similar to your executive team, and from a middle class family.
Clearly you are missing an important element. Working class representation at executive and board level. Yes, I know some of you have co-opted some tenants on the board, you can tick that box like all the other boxes, but it doesn’t mean it’s diverse.
Diverse benefits
A study by MIT, found that the most diverse workplaces tended to be stronger, most profitable, and quite fractious. Homogeneous offices have higher levels of social capital, but that doesn’t necessarily cause those offices to perform better. “The employees might be happier, they might be more comfortable, and these might be cooperative places, but they seem to perform less well” stated the report.
University of Virginia Darden School of Business studied people who transition between classes and found that the working classes learn to relate to people in a more skilled way, and they are incredibly helpful in groups, as they can understand people from all walks of life, bringing particular value to the workplace. The researchers also noted that “it can also be an exhausting and even isolating experience for that person”.
People who had managed to scale the social ladder reported feeling that they were now playing by a set of rules that they didn’t really understand and were not really prepared for. This is especially pronounced among those who have made the largest transitions, and these individuals were found to be the most culturally savvy, having acquired numerous invaluable tools as they moved through the social classes. The research argued this makes class transitioners highly valuable because they can connect with so many people from so many walks of life, supporting a wide range of positive workplace behaviours.
“A working-class transitioner brings a different language, behaviour, and approach to the organisation, otherwise known as hidden diversity.”
Class ‘transitioners’
How do you identify class transitioners? One way is to ask if they have parents or siblings with university degrees or professional qualifications? If they are the first in their cohort and are aspiring to career heights then you probably have a working-class transitioner who brings a different language, behaviour, and approach to the organisation, otherwise known as hidden diversity.
It is well known that we tend to appoint people in our own image/values, so they fit in with the organisation – that makes the organisation comfortably conservative. Responding to change is slow – ‘we are on a journey, and it takes time’. That’s nonsense! Our customers are struggling because we aren’t changing fast enough to meet their needs!
In my final school year, one kid out of 65 went to university. This was odd given no one in his extended east-end family had ever gone, and none of his brothers gained any professional qualifications either. And while he has done very well in his career, and his kids have gone to university and qualified professionally, he still holds working class language, values, culture and views. And I still feel like an outsider.
I look forward to seeing ‘working class background’ included in your next executive and board advert in attracting diversity.
