Does greater socio-economic diversity in the workplace improve business performance?

The Social Mobility Commission is inviting proposals for research to understanding the impact of socio-economic diversity on performance of businesses from all sectors. This research forms part of the Social Mobility Commission's role to bring forward timely and relevant research that provides new data and insights into social mobility in the UK.

There continues to be no commonly accepted 'business case' on the impact for employers of increasing socio-economic diversity in their workforces. Unlike with the diversity of gender or race little is known or demonstrated, from an evidence based perspective, about the impact on business performance.

Moreover, when it comes to what employers can practically do to make a difference to the socio-economic diversity of their workforces and applicant pools, too few examples of evidence based best practice exist. There will only be change when action delivers results. The Social Mobility Commission wants to understand this better and address the issue by commissioning a research project which aims to answer the following research questions:

1. Is it possible to establish the links between business performance (productivity, profits etc) and greater socio-economic diversity in the workforce?

- if so, what does the evidence show about these links?

- if it's not possible yet, what needs to change for such a case to be built?

2. What qualitative evidence exists from good practice in a range of sectors already?

The key deliverable of this project is to prove what is possible now in understanding the correlation between increasing the socio-economic diversity of workforces and performance. In addition, the project needs to deliver a sample of best practice examples, or indeed a selection of what works and what does not work, in socio-economic diversity in the workforce.

This research will influence future policy recommendations and development of future work with employers. It is intended to provide a broad overview, of academic and practical use, which will set the Social Mobility Commission, and others, on the path to delivering a broader and more representative business case or checklist of activities. This will provide a baseline from which further studies will build upon, as well as moving the current social mobility agenda forward now by answering previously unexplored questions.