Know your place: A short history of class in the workplace

Words / Ian Wylie

A short history of class in the workplace – and why management is the answer to social mobility in the 21st century

It's a classic comedy sketch from 1966. A 6ft 5in John Cleese, representing the upper class, looks down on the Two Ronnies, who represent the middle and working classes. In the middle, Ronnie Barker says: “I look up to him [Cleese] because he is upper class, but I look down on him [Ronnie Corbett] because he is lower class.” The tiny Corbett says: “I know my place.”

More than half a century later, it has not become much easier for someone to move up a “class”, even inside our supposedly more inclusive organisations. “I’ve met many people on ethnic diversity schemes who tell me that, actually, it’s their working-class background that has prevented them from getting on in the workplace,” says the University of Exeter’s Lee Elliot Major, the UK’s first professor of social mobility.

Thankfully, managers and management education have become vectors of change in recent years. Workplaces once full of glass ceilings are gradually being remade as they face up to long-held biases against people on the grounds of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual identity. But organisations won’t be truly inclusive and diverse, says Elliot Major, until the “class ceiling” has been removed too.

The golden age of management mobility

In the centuries before the industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, the land-owning aristocracy were the most powerful section of many societies. But the transformation of largely rural, agrarian nations in Europe and the US into industrialised, urban economies allowed the middle classes to swell in number and confidence. Social mobility rocketed as they took on new professional, managerial, technical and clerical roles which required education, training and expertise. New skills and occupations boosted people’s social status as well as their incomes.

This “professional managerial class”, as defined by American political theorists Barbara and John Ehrenreich, expanded further in the 20th century as the private and public sectors grew dramatically in economies such as the UK and US. “Mass production and the growth of companies into complex, multi-layered organisations increased the need for many different types of management," explains Elena Beleska-Spasova, professor of international business at Henley Business School. "The shift towards services and the expansion of government also demanded workers with higher levels of skills and further managerial roles." Indeed, in his 1941 book The Managerial Revolution, philosopher James Burnham argued that managers had become the new "ruling class".

In the UK, the 1950s and 1960s were, in the words of Oxford sociologist John Goldthorpe, a “golden age” as professional and managerial jobs more than doubled as a proportion of the UK labour market, spurring a dramatic growth in upward mobility. In 1951, higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations made up just 11 per cent of the working population. Today, says Elliot Major, that figure is closer to 44 per cent.

A new era of inequality

Unfortunately, the transformative impact of managerial jobs on social mobility has diminished over time. For example, during the second half of the 20th century, many of the new professions – eager to maintain or raise standards and the status of their occupation – began to restrict entry, often excluding those without degrees. The expansion of managerial and professional jobs has slowed too, as the growth of developed economies has become more pedestrian. According to Snakes and Ladders, the latest book by Oxford professor of modern history Selina Todd, that “golden age” of social mobility in Britain ended abruptly with Margaret Thatcher’s election as prime minister in 1979.

It’s a contentious view, but inequality has certainly become more extreme in recent decades. A new report by the Resolution Foundation points to “jobs polarisation”: in the 1980s and 1990s, there was as much growth in low-paid occupations as there was in higher-paying occupations. Social mobility may not have disappeared completely, says Goldthorpe, but for those born since the early 1980s, it is as likely to be down as up. According to research by Elliot Major and his colleague Stephen Machin, the UK and US are now at the bottom of the table for income mobility among developed countries.

What is incontestable is the role and power of family. Who you are born to and where you come from still matters. Armed with the same university degree, someone from a poorer home will earn less on average than their equally educated but more privileged counterpart. You are still 60 per cent more likely to get a professional job if you come from a privileged rather than a working-class background, according to figures from the UK government.

Why? Because “loss aversion”, as psychologists call it, means that parents in managerial and professional positions will do all they can to prevent their children from falling down the social ladder. The desire of parents to do the best for their children is only natural, but this instinct makes it harder for those without that family background to climb the social ladder.

“As things stand, you are less likely to get into the managerial classes if you’re not there already,” says Elliot Major. Studies by Goldthorpe and his colleague Erzsébet Bukodi found that the children of parents in higher managerial and professional positions are 20 times more likely to end up in such positions than the children of working-class parents.

Time for a new golden age?

So, how do we remove the obstacles for “first-generation” managers and professionals? Well, we need a new “golden age”, says Goldthorpe, who argues that governments should develop an industrial strategy that creates more good management jobs. That means upgrading low-paid jobs such as caring roles and turning them into professions with secure, regular income and prospects of career progression.

The UK government’s latest “levelling up” plans, aiming to tackle low-paid, low-productivity economic activity by redistributing wealth and opportunities outside London, could be a step in that direction; 20 towns and cities are being targeted for redevelopment in an effort to create more high-quality jobs. In England alone, the government aims to encourage 200,000 more people to complete skills training annually, including 80,000 more completing courses in the lowest-skilled areas.

Technological changes could also help drive further growth in managerial roles. “I’m confident that as technology and automation advances, they will generate greater demand for higher-level skills to manage these more complex systems,” says Beleska-Spasova.

In the meantime, employers can and should do more. Social class is conspicuous for its absence from the diversity and inclusion strategies of most organisations. This is odd, says Elliot Major, as we know socioeconomic background profoundly affects people’s life chances. Research by Paul Ingram of Columbia Business School found that workers from humbler backgrounds in the US were 32 per cent less likely to become managers than those whose families sat higher up the social ladder. That represented a greater disadvantage than the one experienced by women compared with men (27 per cent), or black employees compared with those who are white (25 per cent).

“When we talked to FTSE 100 companies, we found that very few are looking at socioeconomic background alongside other attributes in their diversity efforts,” says Elliot Major. Even so, he applauds outliers such as KPMG, which has set a target of 29 per cent of its partners and directors coming from lower socio-economic backgrounds by 2030. The firm is measuring this in terms of the occupations of an employee’s parents when the employee was a teenager. It’s a powerful predictor of life outcomes.

“I challenge employers to produce targets around social class,” Elliot Major says, “and I’d encourage them to rethink how they define ‘talent’. Often, we use middle-class traits as proxies for talent, but is performing well in front of an intimidating interview panel really a guide to the talent needed for a job, or just a demonstration of middle-class confidence?”

A recent study on “first-generation professionals” for the Harvard Business Review recommends that employers offer and actively promote resources from groups that help to prepare employees for greater success in the workplace. Its recommendations also include making inclusive communication a core competency for everyone and assessing the current workplace culture and norms – in other words, don’t simply appoint people according to how well they’d fit within the existing culture.

The rise of management and degree apprenticeships

Employers can also make greater use of opportunities for upskilling such as degree apprenticeships. These are proving to be a powerful vehicle for social mobility. Two-thirds of degree apprentices at Middlesex University, for example, come from non-professional backgrounds. Overall, 44 per cent of management apprentices come from the bottom half of UK areas ranked by deprivation levels. What’s more, half of management apprentices are women.

“Many of the learners we see wouldn’t be studying management if it wasn’t for the degree apprenticeship route,” says James Farr, external engagement manager for apprenticeships at Henley Business School. “Typically, they’re people who didn’t go to university and who entered the workplace at 16 or 18 and worked their way up the ranks with employers. Apprenticeships are democratising management education and broadening its reach. And I think this government is right in seeking to create more alternative paths to higher education, more lifelong learning and greater flexibility with shorter and more modular courses.”

Joe O’Hara CMgr MCMI is one manager who has progressed via the degree apprenticeship route. He had been working for Lloyds Bank for more than a decade when he enrolled on the Chartered Manager degree apprenticeship which Henley runs in partnership with CMI. “My parents didn’t go to university and I wasn’t the most academic of students at school, but after 10 years of gaining practical experience, the bank offered to fund me through a degree apprenticeship,” says Joe, who is now client services director within the bank’s commercial division. “Worth the best part of £30,000, there was nothing to dislike about the opportunity. I’ve always been conscious of not having a degree. I know what I’m capable of, but I was curious about whether I could back up what I know with a proper qualification.”

Joe O'Hara CMgr MCMI

Within the first six months of studying, Joe was promoted into a more senior role. “The degree apprenticeship has made me feel a more rounded, thoughtful and reflective individual. I might even consider doing an MBA next!”