Diverse workplaces are valuable in all manner of ways, so it’s perhaps no surprise that MIT research finds that the more diverse a workplace is, the more profitable it is.  A second study, from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, reminds us that this diversity should go beyond the traditional measures of gender, race and religion, and also take account of class diversity.

The study focused particular attention on what the authors refer to as ‘social class transitioners’, who are people that have managed to progress between socioeconomic classes during their life, and it emerged that those who were able to do that brought particular value to the workplace.

“People who transition between classes can learn to relate to people in a more skilled way, and they are incredibly helpful in groups, as they can understand people from all walks of life,” the researchers say. “However, it can also be an exhausting and even isolating experience for that person.”

Hobbled transitions

Alas, this kind of transition is increasingly difficult to achieve.  A prime example comes via a recent survey from graduate recruitment firm Milkround, which highlighted the greater ease with which students from elite British universities, who are most commonly frequented by upper class students, found work compared to their peers.

Milkround suggested that employers are deploying a kind of tick-box mentality to filter candidates based upon the league position of their university.  This, the researchers suggest, is resulting in employers missing out on the best candidates, and they urge employers to take a smarter, more ethical approach to recruitment.

The survey went on to reveal that among candidates themselves, many would like recruitment to be ‘blind’ so that recruiters are oblivious to the gender, religion or any trait that would help to determine their socio-economic background.

Fairer recruitment

One company that’s attempting to make things better are the professional social networking giant LinkedIn.  Their data highlights the prevalence of what they refer to as the ‘network gap’, which prevents people from accessing the best roles.

The company recently launched a ‘job referral button’, which alerted people to any connections they have at the job they’re applying to. It then encourages them to ask those connections for a referral.

“We know that if you apply for a job at LinkedIn and get referred, you’re nine times more likely to get that job than a non-referred candidate,” Meg Garlinghouse, Head of Social Impact at LinkedIn told me.

This is obviously a great feature for someone that has a strong and robust professional network, but it’s a feature that creates a clear divide between those that have such a network and those that don’t.

Closing the network gap

This network-based disadvantage is profound.  After several months investigating the scale of the problem, LinkedIn found that it was multifaceted.  For instance, if you live in a wealthy neighborhood, you’re three times more likely to have a strong professional network, whereas attending a leading university renders you twice as likely to have one.

To overcome this, the company have created the Plus One Pledge, whereby LinkedIn employees can gift premium subscriptions to the social network to anyone they feel would benefit from it outside of their current network.

“The Plus One Pledge is a concept that you’re naturally going to help your neighbors daughter with help in their career, but we want people to intentionally reach outside of their network to help someone that didn’t go to the same school or lives near you,” Garlinghouse says. “It’s the idea of sharing your time, your talent, and your network with someone that wasn’t born into the same set of opportunities as you.”

To date, the program has seen 60% of the global workforce gift nearly 28,000 LinkedIn Premium subscriptions, with around 500 coaching events held in partnership with 152 nonprofit organizations helping to deepen the relationships between employees and their new connections.

The value to businesses

The importance of this kind of work was highlighted by a recent paper from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, which argues that whilst many organizations today have diversity policies in some shape or form, precious few consider the angle from the perspective of one’s social class.

“Although most organizations now embrace diversity and inclusion practices tailored toward salient individual differences (e.g., race, gender, age), few organizations consider how one’s social class background might affect workplace experiences, especially during the hiring process,” the authors explain.

Part of the problem is that while we often think we want a diverse organization, we tend to prefer other teams to be diverse instead of our own.

That was the finding of new research from the University of Basel, which explored the kind of people we prefer to work with in our team.

The researchers were intrigued to explore how most managers still tend to be white men, despite the majority of organizations lauding the virtues of diversity in their policies and communication.  What causes this dissonance between desires and reality?

Diversity dissonance

The researchers conducted a number of experiments involving several hundred participants to see if there was a difference in how we select people for ourselves and for other people.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that opinions vary considerably on diversity, even within the same individual.  For instance, while it’s common for people to see the value of diversity in terms of the fresh insights and perspectives it can bring, they also believe it could be difficult to connect to someone with very different views or who speaks a different language.

The heart of their perspective on diversity seems to be the decision-making process, as it appears that people question the value of diversity if they’re personally affected by the practical aspects of integrated differing opinions.

In other words, we seem to prefer heterogeneous teams for our own, despite wanting diverse teams elsewhere.  All of which suggests that teams could become considerably more diverse if those charged with recruiting for them were not solely those directly affected by their decision.

So whilst there are clear advantages to having greater socio-economic diversity in our organizations, and the work being done by organizations like LinkedIn is to be commended, it might not be as straightforward as we might think to create more diverse teams in our own organization.

Illusions of greatness

We would certainly benefit from trying however, not least because recent research highlights how upper class people often have a skewed vision of their own abilities.

The research found that people of higher social class tend to have an exaggerated belief in their abilities, especially compared to their lower-class peers.  What’s more, this over-confidence often allows them to bluff their way into positions of power.

“Advantages beget advantages. Those who are born in upper-class echelons are likely to remain in the upper class, and high-earning entrepreneurs disproportionately originate from highly educated, well-to-do families,” the researchers explain. “Our research suggests that social class shapes the attitudes that people hold about their abilities and that, in turn, has important implications for how class hierarchies perpetuate from one generation to the next.”

If we want to create truly meritocratic workplaces, then it seems it has to be a diverse workplace.