At his first job dinner as a junior consultant at McKinsey’s, Ferry Grijpink felt unequipped to contribute to a conversation about “wine and poetry.” It wasn’t just my familiarity with Sanserre and Yates. “I still didn’t understand the informal rules about how to belong, how to build trust, or how to let me know that I’m ‘one of them’,” he recalls.
Grijpink’s parents met while working in a hairdresser’s salon, and he was the first to go to university. He reflects that for people like him, new to the white-collar world, the most important hurdle may be “cultural codes – implicit norms about how relationships can be linked and constructed.” This “makes it difficult to network, look, and navigate the early stages of my career with confidence,” he says.
Employer diversity programs traditionally focus on race and gender, neglecting socioeconomic aspects. Last year, a report from advances promoting socioeconomic diversity in the financial services sector found that people from favorable backgrounds are promoted by an average of six months faster than those of the lower socioeconomic bracket.
When workers raise the career ladder, class diversity decreases. Lee Elliott Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, says there is an increasing demand from global employers to advise on socioeconomic inclusion, partly due to their desire to expand the pool of talented staff. “We recognize that many invisible but powerful class barriers to choice and promotion, the accent, to silent, implicit middle class rules, such as defending ourselves or navigating office politics, often dominating everything.”
This could be exacerbated by the impact of AI, Sophie Hulm, CEO of Progress Together, said Sophie Hulm, as traditional routes to financial services have been suspended, particularly through Cashier’s role and contact centres. Recruitment tools that use AI to evaluate CVS or video interviews can discriminate against background or accents.
A recent report from McKinsey found that fighting the employment barriers faced by a third of Europeans due to socioeconomic backgrounds could increase recruitment, retention and productivity, and add 9% to the continent’s GDP. The consulting firm says, for example, they have expanded their employment strategies to attract candidates from non-business backgrounds to encourage candidates to demonstrate problem-solving skills without prior business experience. There is also a community (PRISM) that supports staff with lower socioeconomic backgrounds and mentorship.
However, employment experts say that businesses in the US, particularly in the United States, appear to be hesitant to make efforts to support “first generation experts.” The family members have gone to higher education and have gone to white-coloured jobs.
Joan Williams, author of Autclassed: Autclassed: The Left Loses Working Class and Wins, says that many employees “don’t want to identify as the first generation (why) that’s not a great career move.” According to a report from professional service company EY, the aspects of life that people find most uncomfort to disclose at work are family socioeconomic status, religion and political parties.
Another reason is that businesses are nervous that they appear to promote diversity following the Trump administration’s executive order banning such initiatives. Many US companies, including Target and Meta, have rolled back programs to improve race and gender equality.
“Social class was a dimension that lacked the impulse of employer diversity,” says Elliot Major. “In hindsight, there is a big, unique goal to spread them to the repulsion we are seeing right now.
Last year, Andrea Lucas, chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, said employers should consider programs aimed at first-generation professionals, such as “providing additional training,” “employee resource groups. or first-generation internships.” Such opportunities “must be racial and sex-neutral, but often lead to your social mobility goals.”
Massimo Giordano, one of the authors of McKinsey Report, said that he will “expand the array of people he interviews and help him monitor and move forward.”
Despite efforts by some companies to level the playing field among people from various socioeconomic backgrounds, there is a tough class of division in the role of professionals. For example, among UK financial services workers, 89% of senior employees have a higher socioeconomic background due to parent occupation. A quarter of private schools receive education, more than three times more than the average population.
Samfriedman, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics, says how class dynamics in the workplace is culture-related. In the UK, “We’re uncomfortable with it, but we’re fascinated,” and the class and “we have a language we talk about.” It also shapes the attitudes of workers. “Take risk is class-based,” Friedman says. “If you are facing economic uncertainty, you cannot afford to take the same risk as someone with a financial cushion from your family.”
According to Louise Ashley, an associate professor at Queen Mary University in London, one of the most common holes in corporate social mobility programs has traditionally “focused on access rather than progress.” This is beginning to change, but “progress remains in the realm of benefiting from more attention.”
This year, Zurich released pay data for UK staff, along with eight steps to improve social mobility for insurance companies. Steve Collinson’s Chief Human Resources Officer says many people spent more time considering whether to disclose their parents’ occupations when they were 14 years old (a typical measure of socioeconomic background) than other personal information. To reassure staff, Collinson said:
He “prefers to talking about our will” rather than meritocracy. Zurich’s program to improve social mobility includes skill-based employment and senior leaders sponsoring new starters without corporate experience.
Friedman welcomes corporate social mobility efforts, but he is concerned that the class will “be deployed as part of the top Trump of inequality. Ashley said, “It is very difficult for an organization to assert its commitment to mobility and equality so that it can be trustworthy. For example, the internal pay ratio between the highest and lowest earners remains fairly extreme.”
For GrigiPink, now a senior partner at McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, a “life-changing” moment has come to his first job for a year. The senior vice president took him under his wings, became a “true sponsor,” invited him to a business dinner, joined influential people, and created opportunities on high-level projects. “I don’t fully know what caused it,” he says.
