Financial Changemakers, Series 2 - Social Mobility & Conscious Inclusion

Welcome to the Financial Changemakers podcast with Gretchen Betts – Managing Director at Magenta Financial Planning and Olivia Parnell – Coach, New Horizons, Voluntary Norfolk.

This podcast series is for you if you are interested in learning about diversity and inclusion and are keen to embrace and make positive change in your life, business, management style or company ethos.

In this sixth episode, hosts Gretchen and Olivia, discuss Social Mobility and Positive Inclusion with their guest  Ben Sampson – Head of Employment & Skills at Voluntary Norfolk.

What social mobility means is to ensure that the circumstances of which people are born into, don’t dictate what they achieve in their life.

We’d all like to live in a country where people born into low-income families, have the same opportunities as those born into more privileged circumstances.

Unfortunately, in the UK this isn’t the case, we have one of the poorest levels of social mobility in the developed world. Something as a country we need to reflect on.

Nearly 1 in 3 children in the UK currently live in poverty. By the age of 5, children from more deprived areas are only achieving 75% of their key stage 2 expected levels, compared to those of privileged areas achieving 97%.

Social mobility affects us from birth, through early years childhood to education. Meaning if you’re behind at 5 years old, chances are you going to be behind and have less career opportunities, and less social opportunities to pull yourself out of that social area when you’re old enough to make your own decisions and choices.

We are all born into a society, and we grow up in it. As we grow we develop biases, unconsciously. Positive and negative. We happen to like people who are the same as us. It can lead to biases about people who are different to us. Gender, race, sexuality, geography.

Awareness isn’t enough, but it is the first step.

Do you know your workforce?

Do you know their backgrounds?

By having that information, you can provide a more inclusive environment. It enables you to get more out of your staff. It’s a great place to start. You can then alter your recruitment process to encourage getting more diversity through the doors.

If businesses start to focus less on experience and qualifications and more on what applicants include in the personal statement, they will open a huge portfolio of incredibly talented individuals who have great ideas and who would be huge assets to a company.

Give people a chance to talk about themselves, and you will uncover all sorts of people who haven’t come through the standard system.

Key Take Aways from this episode

Awareness and being self-aware is the first step. Being social aware is the same as being physically active, check yourself like you check your smart watch. Be aware of how big the problem is in this country. We’re in an affluent Country, but the statistics are terrible and heading south. Inequality is getting wider; we are not closing the gap. The average life expectancy of someone living in more affluent county of Berkshire is 16.5 years higher than someone living a the more deprived area of South Wales. That 16.5-year difference is roughly the same, as the difference between the UK as a whole and Sudan as a whole. Re-read the last sentence and think about it.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Don’t be complicit. If you see something is wrong, say something.

This podcast series is about creating a safe place for discussion and ultimately enabling you, our listener, to be a Changemaker.

Let’s listen. Let’s Discuss. Let’s Learn. Let’s Implement Positive Change.