Welcome
These are some seriously classy leaders...
ANN FRANCKE OBE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, CMI
---------
Background shouldn’t matter. Let’s level up people as well as places to be honest, I find it pretty staggering that an individual’s socio-economic background can still have such an effect on their career prospects. But the fact is that it does, and we need to start talking about this. In many ways, socio-economic background is the last workplace taboo. Very few organisations talk about socio-economic diversity, let alone measure it. So, in our 75th anniversary year, CMI is determined to bring this topic up the public agenda (alongside the other critical diversity pillars of ethnicity, gender, disability and age). That’s why we’re devoting much of the content in this CMI members’ magazine to the subject. To give you a feeling for the prevalence of socio-economic bias, we recently surveyed 1,000 of our members from across the UK about it. In our survey, about a third said that socioeconomic background is still a barrier to progressing to a senior or executive position. A similar proportion said that class is a barrier to even gaining a middle management role in --------their organisation. This is crazy! I was interviewed by the Financial Times in “ About a third of 1,000 managers February about this, and I can only repeat what I from across the UK said that told them: “There is so much talk about levelling socio-economic background is up when it comes to place. But really, what we still a barrier to progressing to need is levelling up when it comes to people.” a senior or executive position” 02 — SPR ING 202 2
