Nik Miller is Director of the Bridge Group. Nik has worked with a wide range of leading universities, employers, and Government bodies to research and promote social mobility. He worked with the Cabinet Office to establish a common set of measures of socio-economic background.
July 2016
Diversity and inclusion is all about people. However, as we have found during years of working on promoting social mobility, programmes of change risk being ineffective (or worse – misguided), unless they are also built on evidence derived from data.
Analytics can support this in various ways. The most recent survey from the Association of Graduate Recruiters highlights that far fewer employers are measuring the socio-economic backgrounds of their intake, than have active strategies to address diversity in this area.
Analytics can support this in various ways. The most recent survey from the Association of Graduate Recruiters highlights that far fewer employers are measuring the socio-economic backgrounds of their intake, than have active strategies to address diversity in this area.
Our belief is that robustly diagnosing a problem, before designing solutions, is critical to realise positive and lasting change.
And that diagnosis need not be an endless research project. For example, analysing applicants against the pool of eligible candidates can offer insight about attraction practices, just as assessing the effect of socio-economic background at each selection stage can reveal challenges in identifying talent.
Analytics can also help to evaluate the impact of specific policies, from widening school outreach programmes, to removing academic criteria, to recalibrating selection tools. The more robust evidence that can be built about effective practices, the greater our collective chances of making gains to support socio-economic diversity and broadening the talent pool.
More fundamentally, analysis and evidence is critical in developing the wider business case for socio-economic diversity. A key objective of our analyses is to investigate the relationship between diversity and performance; after all, the purpose of recruitment is to place the best person in the job, and the ultimate fruits of diversity are enhanced performance and competitive edge.
So, what exactly are we measuring? How should an employer define someone’s socio-economic background? Or, to put it more pointedly: who are we talking about?
This is a sensitive and complicated matter: there is currently no consensus amongst employers about the best approach, and without this, some analysis risks being built on soft ground.
This is why the Bridge Group is working in partnership with the Cabinet Office on a consultation to establish a common methodology for identifying the socio-economic background of candidates, hires, and the wider workforce.
A standard approach will ensure that analysis to understand recruitment pipelines is founded on common ground, and enable benchmarking (between employers and against eligible candidate populations) where this is deemed to be useful.
We know that no single indicator can fully capture the multiplicity of social and economic factors that are predictors of an individual’s progress, and that there is much good practice amongst employers, especially in the higher education sectors (including, of course, within the academic literature). The practice established by Professions for Good is also an important foundation on which to build.
The consultation has just closed, and the response from across sectors has been hugely encouraging. We are now working through colleagues’ views, and building a set of recommended measures, which will be published in August 2016. The Civil Service will pilot these measures from that date, and will invite other employers to join them.
This ambition for greater rigour of measurement and analysis is key to driving positive change to combat social immobility. This goal should resonate with the accountancy sector, where analysis and evidence are at the heart of the profession. We very much hope that employers in this area can support the development of robust practices, alongside providing inspiration and evidence of good practice to colleagues across other sectors.
And that diagnosis need not be an endless research project. For example, analysing applicants against the pool of eligible candidates can offer insight about attraction practices, just as assessing the effect of socio-economic background at each selection stage can reveal challenges in identifying talent.
Analytics can also help to evaluate the impact of specific policies, from widening school outreach programmes, to removing academic criteria, to recalibrating selection tools. The more robust evidence that can be built about effective practices, the greater our collective chances of making gains to support socio-economic diversity and broadening the talent pool.
More fundamentally, analysis and evidence is critical in developing the wider business case for socio-economic diversity. A key objective of our analyses is to investigate the relationship between diversity and performance; after all, the purpose of recruitment is to place the best person in the job, and the ultimate fruits of diversity are enhanced performance and competitive edge.
So, what exactly are we measuring? How should an employer define someone’s socio-economic background? Or, to put it more pointedly: who are we talking about?
This is a sensitive and complicated matter: there is currently no consensus amongst employers about the best approach, and without this, some analysis risks being built on soft ground.
This is why the Bridge Group is working in partnership with the Cabinet Office on a consultation to establish a common methodology for identifying the socio-economic background of candidates, hires, and the wider workforce.
A standard approach will ensure that analysis to understand recruitment pipelines is founded on common ground, and enable benchmarking (between employers and against eligible candidate populations) where this is deemed to be useful.
We know that no single indicator can fully capture the multiplicity of social and economic factors that are predictors of an individual’s progress, and that there is much good practice amongst employers, especially in the higher education sectors (including, of course, within the academic literature). The practice established by Professions for Good is also an important foundation on which to build.
The consultation has just closed, and the response from across sectors has been hugely encouraging. We are now working through colleagues’ views, and building a set of recommended measures, which will be published in August 2016. The Civil Service will pilot these measures from that date, and will invite other employers to join them.
This ambition for greater rigour of measurement and analysis is key to driving positive change to combat social immobility. This goal should resonate with the accountancy sector, where analysis and evidence are at the heart of the profession. We very much hope that employers in this area can support the development of robust practices, alongside providing inspiration and evidence of good practice to colleagues across other sectors.