Ensure a compelling, shared vision across your organisation.
A diverse workforce is a more productive workforce, so embed this ambition into your culture – and ensure your employees’ voices are heard, by encouraging people to share their ideas and experiences. You can watch the video for more top tips or read our guidance below.
Developing
Activities at each level are related, but distinguished by scale, detail or commitment.
Appoint a senior individual with an informed and respected voice to advocate socio-economic diversity and inclusion internally.
Include discussion of socio-economic diversity on board-level agendas alongside more established issues such as gender and ethnicity.
Appoint an individual with internal management and operational responsibility for socio-economic diversity and inclusion.
Ensure your anti-discrimination policies clearly incorporate and relate to socio-economic background, and that managers understand this.
Optimising
Activities at each level are related, but distinguished by scale, detail or commitment.
Appoint a senior leader with external profile as a leading advocate for socioeconomic diversity and inclusion.
Appoint specific individuals to be accountable to the board for this agenda; communicate this internally.
Convene a community of managers with individual accountability to advocate socio-economic diversity internally.
Ensure there is:
Developing
Engage senior colleagues in crafting a narrative about socio-economic diversity that highlights:
Include elements of this narrative in regular internal communications alongside other diversity areas to emphasise intersectionality and equal importance.
Optimising
Ensure the chair and CEO are public in their support for this narrative.
Ensure the narrative always features prominently in key communications, including your website, recruitment
communications, annual reports and procurement materials.
Communicate evidence of positive organisational change in this area.
Developing
Communicate internally that data is being collected and analysed to understand socio-economic diversity.
Set targets using internal and external data benchmarks and analysis.
Optimising
Ensure there is board accountability for targets, and make progress a standing item on the board agenda.
Share performance against targets publicly.
Link managers’ accountability for diversity and inclusion targets to their performance review and promotion.
Developing
Create opportunities for employees to engage with the narrative on socio-economic diversity, for example:
Optimising
Engage with your supply chain in advancing socio-economic diversity, with contractual obligations where appropriate (e.g. about unpaid internships, becoming an accredited voluntary Living Wage employer and data collection).
Explore how and in what ways client perceptions and expectations affect who gets ahead.
Youth Futures Foundation is the What Works Centre for youth employment. It aims to narrow employment gaps for young people facing the greatest challenges by identifying what works and why and investing in evidence generation to improve policy and practice.
https://youthfuturesfoundation.org/ Find out more