Welcome: Backgrounds shouldn’t matter

Words / Ann Francke OBE, Chief executive, CMI

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 barrierto even gaining a middle management role in their organisation. This is crazy!

I was interviewed by the Financial Times in February about this, and I can only repeat what I told them: “There is so much talk about levelling up when it comes to place. But really, what we need is levelling up when it comes to people.”

Remembering HRH The Duke of Edinburgh

CMI, represented by chief executive Ann Francke OBE and membership director Matt Roberts, was honoured to attend the memorial service for HRH The Duke of Edinburgh at Westminster Abbey on 29 March. The Duke of Edinburgh was associated with the Chartered Management Institute for 50 years, having become an Honorary Fellow in 1969 and Royal Patron in 1992. He handed over patronage to HRH Sophie, The Countess of Wessex in 2019. In one of his last public events, the Duke attended CMI’s President’s Dinner in 2017. The Duke’s values and those of CMI were always closely aligned; indeed, this was reflected by Dean of Windsor David Conner, who spoke at the memorial service of the Duke’s commitment to “the equipping of young people to face tomorrow’s challenges, the encouragement of respect and care for the natural order, and his pioneering work in facilitating conversation between representatives of the different world faiths”.