A multi-national professional services giant, one of the so-called ‘Big Four’ accounting-firms – has pledged to increase the number of key employees from ‘working-class-backgrounds’.
“As a firm, we’ve been committed to improving social mobility for over a decade.” announced KPMG, which employs more than 11,000 of its 220,000 global-workforce in the UK.
“This includes working with our local communities to raise skills and aspirations, challenging our recruitment and promotion processes and being the first firm to publish comprehensive socio-economic background workforce data (in 2016). This level of transparency has allowed us to understand the barriers that exist and to hold ourselves to account to change.”
“This year, we’re continuing to challenge ourselves to go further by reporting our socio-economic background pay gaps for the first time. We’re one of the first organisations to do so. We’ve worked with experts in the field of social equality, The Bridge Group, to advise us on the chosen method of calculation (parental occupation groups), the reasoning for this, the definition of socio-economic background and the terminology used.
“We know pay gaps are just one part of the picture. What’s important is what we do with that data. That’s why we’re also publishing a social mobility action plan to set out how we’re addressing our pay gaps.
“We’ve also set an ambitious target that aims to see 29% of our partners and directors from a working-class background by 2030. This has been calculated by benchmarking against relevant groups within Labour Force Survey data and compares to 39% of the UK workforce being from a working-class background. Currently 23% of our partners and 20% of our directors are from a working-class background.”
“I’m committed to making KPMG a place where there’s no limit to where your talent, achievement and hard work can take you, whoever you are, and whatever your background.” – Jon Holt / Chief Executive, KPMG in the UK
This isn’t about simply reporting more data. It’s about shining a light on what’s truly happening within organisations, so that targeted action can be taken to help create a fairer and more equitable society.” – Bina Mehta / Chair, KPMG in the UK.
