“Talent is abundant, you’ve just got to know where to find it.” 

With so much conversation around social mobility, and supercharged DE&I schemes that many have felt were simply lip service, or the first cut to be made in a recession, how can companies ensure they not only attract, but comfortably retain diverse talent?  

The Inclusion Edit spoke to Felicity Halstead, the CEO and Founder of GoodWork, a non-profit supporting marginalised young people to access, and succeed at work, to get to the bottom of what social mobility could mean for your company, and how to do it well.  

Thanks for talking to us, Felicity. Can you tell us about what GoodWork does and why you founded the organisation? 

We support those who haven’t completed higher education, and who typically get screened out of roles due to lower attainment and lack of experience. We believe that how you did at school should not dictate the rest of your life, but sadly we see organisations continually focusing on performance over potential — which for young adults is typically a sign of privilege rather than anything else. 

I founded GoodWork because my own experience in youth programmes, as well as working with social mobility organisations and supporting entry-level recruitment in my job, taught me that a young person’s results on paper are often the worst indicator of aptitude for work. I was (and am) frustrated by how uncreative entry level hiring can be, with talented candidates ignored because they don’t have university degrees or the right grades to access an apprenticeship programme. Talent is abundant, you’ve just got to know where to find it. 

How would you explain social mobility to someone who hasn't had to think about it? What in your opinion is the best way to talk about what can be quite a hard subject to talk about? 

In its purest form, social mobility is simply the difference between your economic status and that of your parents. Of course, that misses a lot of nuances, because to make social mobility happen we have to overhaul entire systems and rethink how we educate, how we transition young people into work and how we ensure that they can thrive when they get there. Social mobility can be a particularly useful metric for DE&I professionals because it’s intersectional — people who are marginalised because of a protected characteristic are also more likely to come from a lower socio-economic background. By addressing socio-economic diversity in your workforce, you tend to reach an inherently diverse group of people with all the benefits that brings. 

While I wouldn’t call social mobility taboo in itself, the need for intersectionality in DE&I efforts is perhaps not frequently talked about or well understood. For example, if your entry level intake is 50% from ethnic minority backgrounds, but 90% of those candidates went to a Russell Group university, you may want to further interrogate your candidate attraction and assessment methods to ensure you’re making your processes accessible. For me, being honest and transparent about the challenges you’re facing in building a more diverse workforce is the only way to approach this issue. Candidates expect authenticity, and this is especially the case with Gen Z. 

While there is some focus on companies attracting a more diverse talent, anecdotally, there appears to be little effort to both keep the talent in the workplace, and allow them to thrive, not just survive. What would you recommend companies do to achieve both aims? 

You have to get the basics in place — good line management, clear progression routes, flexibility and strong benefits — but that is just the start. From a social mobility perspective, the need for social and cultural change is often missed and it’s this that leads to young people feeling out of place and ultimately not being retained. 

It’s not just about having social events that don’t rely on alcohol (though that’s a start). Understanding and appreciating that not everyone has a family who they can fall back on financially, not everyone goes on skiing holidays, not everyone went to a well-known public school (or a university) and moves in the same social circles; these are all foundational things that are so important to reflect on. It’s one of the reasons the expression ‘culture fit’ makes me wince, because it is so often used to hire candidates who are only a social fit with your existing employees.   

If a company has never thought about the link between social mobility and a thriving workforce, how should they start? 

Get rid of your referral programme, it just enables you to replicate your current workforce. Remove any reference to a degree being essential or desirable on your job descriptions. Share the salary on the job ad. Be more creative than just posting open roles on LinkedIn — reach out to your local Jobcentre, engage with community organisations or specialist programmes for hiring diverse talent. Set up your assessments to be genuinely accessible, with structured questions linked to competencies and a solid framework for how you make your decisions. Send candidates questions in advance so that they feel supported and can give you strong answers. A more socially mobile workforce is more diverse, more resilient, more reflective of the population you serve and more appealing to future candidates.