About the Social Mobility Pledge
The Social Mobility Pledge campaign is chaired by Rt Hon Justine Greening, drawing especially on her experience as United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women & Equalities. Justine is a leading advocate for social mobility and the Social Mobility Pledge is the largest business campaign of its kind.
The Social Mobility Pledge is a coalition of 450 businesses globally employing over 5 million people, as well as more than 50 universities representing almost 2 million students. It encourages organisations to being a force for good by putting social mobility at the heart of their purpose. Organisations taking steps to boost opportunity and social mobility is more important than ever as we face the challenges of a growing opportunity gap in the wake of COVID-19.
Our objectives:
1) To engage organisations on social mobility and to grow the Social Mobility Pledge coalition.
Our first objective is to engage an increasing number of organisations on the issue of social mobility and encourage others to make their Social Mobility Pledge.
2) To open source share social mobility best practice and build a mosaic of success.
We work in partnership with select organisations who want to go further in demonstrating their commitment to levelling up by open source sharing their social mobility best practice. The businesses and universities challenging themselves by partnering with the Social Mobility Pledge are creating a powerful and pioneering shift towards being truly purpose-led organisations.
3) To drive action on social mobility and help organisations go further faster and help organisations to play a key role in closing the growing COVID-19 Opportunity Gap.
We work in partnership with organisations to put in place a Social Mobility Opportunity Action Plan and connect them to delivery organisations such as the Sutton Trust and Big Issue.
What is the Pledge?
Making your Pledge represents a powerful and pioneering shift towards being a truly purpose-led organisation committed to social mobility by committing to outreach, access and recruitment. It is a straightforward step that any organisation can take, and you will be joining a coalition of 500 organisations. Organisations taking these steps to boost opportunity and social mobility are playing a part in closing the growing opportunity gap in the wake of COVID-19.
Outreach
We will work to reach out to schools or colleges to provide coaching through quality careers advice, enrichment experience and mentoring to people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances.
The simplest approach for businesses to reach out to schools or colleges is to work through one of the large number of great social mobility organisations - such as Sutton Trust, Big Issue, Speakers for Schools, Inspiring the Future, the Careers and Enterprise Company, Princes Trust, to name a few.
Access
We will work to provide structured work experience and apprenticeship opportunities to people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances.
The gap between what young people want and what’s on offer is huge; a study in North East England showed that 83% of young people there actually thought work experience should be compulsory as part of the education offer. We ask employers to plug that gap and provide work experience either directly or through another body (e.g. local authority or charity).
Recruitment
We will work to adopt open employee recruitment practices which promote a level playing field for people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances.
This could include a ‘name blind’ approach to considering applications which involves replacing names with numbers or adopting contextual recruitment practices such as how you consider the league table performance of academic institution attended, location of home by reference to socio-economic mapping or an individual’s academic performance relative to the average at their place of study.
Ready to make your Social Mobility Pledge?
Questions? Chat to us here: team@socialmobilitypledge.org