Socio-economic background has the strongest effect on an individual’s career progression, compared to any other diversity characteristic, according to ground-breaking research published by KPMG UK.
In the biggest ‘progression gap’ analysis ever published by a business, experts from the Bridge Group analysed the career paths of over 16,500 partners and employees at KPMG over a five-year period. The team examined the average time it took individuals to be promoted, looking at their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation as well as socio-economic background.
The data showed that socio-economic background, measured by parental occupation, had the strongest effect on how quickly an individual progressed through the firm. Individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds took on average 19% longer to progress to the next grade, when compared to those from higher socio-economic backgrounds.
The research has enabled the firm to pinpoint the bottlenecks employees face at different points in their career and take additional action. It found that its senior and junior colleagues are its most socio-economically diverse cohorts, but middle management grades are comparatively less diverse, suggesting colleagues from a low socio-economic background face a bottleneck as they try to progress to middle-management roles.
Using the insight from the data, the firm is launching a targeted plan to:
- Review the firm’s approach to work allocation, by providing stretching, developmental opportunities which bolster an individual’s expertise
- Enhance the data insights relating to the progression of the firm’s talent, using new reporting technology which will enable employee data to be analysed in an intersectional way.
- Tackle the bottleneck through piloting a new promotion readiness programme designed to support individuals at a manager grade, who are from historically underrepresented groups and have been identified as ready for promotion in the near-term.
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