By Louise Watkins
Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, Louise Watkins, head of risk strategy and co-chair of the Social Mobility Network at Blackrock, takes the pen to talk about how she broke the class ceiling, and how the City can better support social mobility.
The City’s class problem
Coming from a small mining town in South Wales, I struggled to feel like I belonged in the City. When I joined Blackrock in 2008, I was fortunate to have a boss who understood how my socioeconomic background might impact my sense of belonging at work – how this might hold me back, but also how my experience might drive me forward. I was afforded the time, coaching and sponsorship to develop in a series of different roles. This support has meant that 16 years later I hold a senior position I wouldn’t have dreamed of when I started and feel an enormous sense of loyalty to the firm. I also feel very lucky, as this is too often not the case.
A 2023 report titled Shaping our Economy commissioned by membership body Progress Together highlighted that people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more than twice as likely to be found in senior roles compared with those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The study of nearly 150,000 people also found that 75 per cent of senior roles are filled by people applying from outside the organisation, yet only 25 per cent of these individuals are from working class backgrounds.
The financial services sector has a lot of work to do to level the playing field so that people from all backgrounds can progress their career. This is why Blackrock became a member of Progress Together and has been implementing initiatives to help improve socioeconomic diversity in our workforce, including collecting employee socioeconomic data, starting a social mobility employee network and considering socioeconomic background alongside other diversity characteristics in our approach to talent sourcing and development.
Progress Together now has over 50 members representing a third of the UK financial services workforce, giving me hope that the next generation of people like me will be afforded the same opportunities as I was to progress to a senior role within their organisation on a much more systematic level.
The power of apprenticeships
At school I participated in a German/Welsh exchange program and was intrigued that my exchange partner had opted not to go to university, but rather to do an apprenticeship. In Germany, this seemed to be considered on an equal footing with a classroom-based degree and I quickly became envious that she was not about to rack up decades of debt to further her education.
I was encouraged therefore, when the UK Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in 2017, requiring all employers with an annual payroll of £3m or more to contribute 0.5 per cent of their pay bill to finance apprenticeships. The levy was designed to encourage large employers to offer a more structured transition for young people from education to work, which is a powerful tool to improve social mobility.
While more and more companies are offering apprenticeships as a result, there is more to do. Approximately £3.3bn of unused apprenticeship levy funds have been returned to the Treasury, meaning employers are losing out on tapping this pool of new socially diverse talent.
One way you can help
You can’t be what you can’t see and children from low socioeconomic backgrounds often experience a lack of visible role models and underfunded careers services. My school invited external speakers to come share their life experience with us and those talks were so important in helping me take a leap into the unknown.
One thing we can all do to help remove barriers to careers in financial services is to contact a low socioeconomic school (maybe where you grew up) and offer to provide insight into your career journey and the diversity of opportunities available. At Blackrock we support our employees to do this through our Groundbreaker programme which provides templates and supporting material. But all you really need is the motivation to use your charitable giving days and the nerve to stand up in front of a few hundred teenagers. You won’t regret it!
Quote of the week
“It may be harder now than at any point in over half a century to move up if you are born in a position of disadvantage.”
The key to happiness
Experiencing setbacks in life creates reliance and builds transferable skills which often prove invaluable in our careers. Fans of podcasts will already be aware of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, which is full of tales of success following adversity. In one of my favourite episodes she speaks to Mo Gawdat, author of Solve for Happy about what it is to live a contented life. He states simply that happiness is greater than or equal to your perception of events in your life minus your expectation of how life should be. In a world where we are always striving for more, I come back to this book annually as a grounding force and each time it truly changes my perspective.
