Across the professional world, diversity is a work in progress. While awareness of the “glass ceiling” when it comes to gender or ethnicity is growing, another area where diversity matters is class. In 2017, research for the Social Mobility Commission revealed that professional employees from poorer backgrounds were paid almost £7,000 a year less on average than peers from more privileged families. This “class pay gap” is partly explained by the fact that people with parents with professional jobs tend to be better educated and more likely to join bigger firms or work in London – both associated with higher pay.
When it comes to class diversity within finance, things seem to be heading in the right direction. At a Guardian online event paid for by the ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), Bola Lawal, a finance professional and ACCA member, told the panel that while she hadn’t attended university, it didn’t stop her forging a successful career.
With the support of Leadership Through Sport & Business, a social mobility charity that prepares and supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into meaningful roles with major firms, Lawal undertook an apprenticeship that helped to secure her a job at Santander.
The City can be intimidating for anyone, she admitted, but it is potentially even more daunting for people from less privileged backgrounds. “Those buildings alone scare anybody, you walk in there thinking: ‘There must be really smart people here’,” Lawal told the event. “And there are really smart people there. But when you start working in those environments you get a lot of support. You start to believe in yourself. There’s nothing crazy about it, there’s nothing different about it. It’s like every other industry. It’s just from the outset it looks a bit scary because historically there’s always been certain types of people who worked in those sectors.”
Danny Heath’s own experience of entering the professional world without having excelled at school inspired him to found YourGamePlan, which offers courses and training to support students and schools and improve skills in areas such as career planning and workplace skills. “I spent a lot of time working with FTSE 250 companies who were really pro diversity and inclusion,” he says. “But they were just doing that by the graduate cohort, which is predominantly white middle class and not representative of society. Inevitably, if you keep fishing in the same pond you’re going to keep catching the same fish, so it was very difficult for them to branch out and make a more diverse workforce. To do that I felt they had to look more to school and school-leavers and people from different backgrounds.”
It’s something Tim Kelland, ACCA Fellow and assistant director at The Welsh NHS Finance Delivery Unit, who joined NHS Wales 36 years ago with no qualifications, experienced first-hand. “When I went in there, it was full of university graduates, qualified accountants, numbers people. I offered something different. I’m pretty good at communicating, I’m social. I thrived.”
Kelland demonstrated his worth without qualifications, but he admits a time came when he decided to qualify as an accountant through the ACCA “to show other people I was capable of doing the job I was already doing”. It was the same for ACCA member Christina Christoforou, founder and director of CMNC Associates Limited, whose interest in the sector started when she did work experience in the finance team at a law firm. Despite leaving school with a D in maths at GCSE level she returned to the firm as an accounts junior and “learned really early on in the industry that finance wasn’t what people thought”. But despite climbing the ladder, Christoforou found herself “capped” by her lack of qualifications. “I really felt like I hit a ceiling so I decided at that point I was going to become qualified and that’s when I started my ACCA. Luckily there were no minimum requirements to join it, and I’m just so glad.”
The ability to enter the profession and gain qualifications regardless of your background is central to the ACCA’s core values, with inclusion being key to what it does and why it was created. With customers, regulators and lenders increasingly focusing on ethics and sustainability, and innovation linked to diversity representative of its customer base, the organisation takes the view that accountancy and finance professionals who are often at the heart of decision making should embrace the agenda too.
In Heath’s view, diversity should be a “fundamental pillar” of any company’s cultural focus – not only to benefit those seeking to break the class ceiling, but for businesses themselves.
“There’s no doubt that ensuring you have a diverse workforce doesn’t only improve internal culture and variety of thought but also makes you more accessible to a larger client base and a broader range of applicants. So much research shows that applicants are more likely to apply to a company they feel represents them, and by not doing that you’re restricting yourself from hiring some of the best talent in the country.”
While there may still be some way to go in encouraging class diversity in the professional world, there are ways to push things forward, says Heath. He calls on parents to encourage children to pursue career paths nothing like their own. “I think what’s super important for parents is to be bold and be brave and instil that into your kids. It’s about putting your best foot forward and pushing your kids into that confidence.”
It’s also up to students to research what help is available, says Lawal. “There’s so much information out there, and different organisations willing to support young people. It’s about taking the time to go and look for it.” Kelland agrees, advising: “Opportunities will present themselves – you need to take those opportunities.”
But Lawal also urges employers to look beyond school grades when recognising talent. “Grades are important but they’re not the only measure of success and potential in a person. That’s the great thing about the industry right now. I see a lot of employers are opening up to beyond the degree pool. It allows you to have a lot more people apply from different circumstances who have a lot more skills and talent than you would expect. People who are self-driven, motivated, have a strong work ethic, are astute thinkers, fast decision makers and those things aren’t always measured by grades you got in school.”
