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Class hasn’t had enough attention in the drive for workplace equality. Perhaps thanks to a British preoccupation with this topic, the UK arm of accounting giant KPMG is addressing the deficit. The firm has been analysing its workforce by nosing around what employees’ parents used to do for a living. It’s a legitimate inquiry. The tricky issue is what to do with the answers.
Socioeconomic status matters to diversity initiatives. The UK and US perform poorly in global social mobility rankings. Data suggest it’s generally hard for many people in supposedly advanced economies to break out of the socioeconomic circumstances in which they grew up.
Businesses can’t pretend this is an issue for government alone. The education system is not the leveler it should be. Even possessing a degree doesn’t automatically unlock social mobility, and employers can perpetuate inequality in the way they hire and promote staff.
The onus on the oligopolistic financial sector is greater still. Its high pay contributes to broader income disparities. If the opportunity to make big bucks isn’t seen to be available to anyone with talent and drive, lawmakers will ask why some parts of financial services are allowed to run a semi-closed shop, and government will make life harder through regulation and taxation.
KPMG LLP has particular reason to address a socioeconomic skew in its workforce. The British firm audited collapsed construction company Carillion and stands accused of misleading the UK accounting watchdog. This raises doubts about the strength of its culture and capacity for internal challenge.
The organisation has published workforce class composition since 2016, but it’s now setting a target that working-class representation across director and partner grades should be 29% by 2030. Currently, the measure stands at only 21% for the entire firm, rising to 23% among partners. That’s barely more than half the level in the wider UK population. KPMG concedes its middle ranks are currently even less representative of society than its top tier.
—Bloomberg