The Board’s Commitment to Workforce Socio-economic Diversity
How can Non-Executive Directors keep socio-economic diversity on a busy Board agenda – and what does it actually look like in practice?
That question sat at the centre of a recent Progress Together roundtable for NEDs, hosted in association with the KPMG Board Leadership Centre, where Non-Executive Directors from leading financial services firms discussed how Boards are turning workforce socio-economic diversity from an HR initiative into a strategic priority.
The discussion builds on a year of progress since Progress Together’s first NED roundtable in May 2025, and reflects a marked step change in Board understanding and engagement on the issue.
A Board-level issue
Participants agreed that socio-economic inclusion is increasingly positioned as a Board-level issue. Boards play a critical role by setting direction and priorities relative to their business, asking probing questions about data, progress and outcomes, requiring consistent reporting and metrics from the executive team, and holding executives to account for delivery.
A key theme was the importance of avoiding fragmented initiatives, and instead taking a whole-organisation view that integrates socio-economic background alongside other aspects of workforce diversity and inclusion.
As one participant reflected: “The Board needs to be persistent. It can be difficult to get time on a busy board agenda. Non-executive Directors need to ensure that socio-economic diversity in the workforce is revisited regularly.”
Santander UK case study: from ambition to accountability
The roundtable heard directly from The Rt Hon. the Baroness Morgan of Cotes, Independent Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Board Responsible Banking Committee at Santander UK, a founding member of Progress Together.
Santander has set an ambition of 35% of senior employees to be from lower socio-economic backgrounds by 2030 – an approach built on three lessons from the organisation’s experience.
The first is visible Board-level sponsorship. As Baroness Morgan reflected, people often “cannot be what they cannot see” – colleagues need to see people from a range of backgrounds progressing into senior roles. But representation alone is not enough; it needs to be supported by practical action to understand and address the barriers affecting recruitment, progression and opportunity.
The second is integration into core Board discussions. At Santander, socio-economic diversity is considered as part of wider workforce and talent conversations, rather than as a standalone initiative, with the Board receiving regular updates on workforce data, progress and emerging challenges.
The third is transparency and reporting. Santander reports on social mobility through its wider sustainability and inclusion reporting, with voluntary self-disclosure supported by clear communication about why data is collected and how confidentiality is protected.
Santander’s employee engagement Non-Executive Director also supports the organisation’s Social Mobility Network, providing a structured, consent-led route for the Board to hear directly from colleagues – insight that sits alongside workforce data to inform richer Board discussions on talent, succession and culture.
The organisation’s work extends beyond its own workforce through a five-year partnership with The King’s Trust, running to 2030, with ambitions to support 2,500 young people, raise £1 million, and provide 10,000 colleague volunteering opportunities.
The debate on targets
Target-setting emerged as one of the more contested themes of the discussion. While there was support for the principle that “what gets measured, gets done,” participants also noted pushback against formal targets, with some concerned this could encourage teams to “play to the scorecard” rather than select for talent.
Others raised concerns about potential bias if teams knew colleagues’ backgrounds, though there was broad acknowledgement that the right culture should be in place before targets are introduced. Participants noted that the sector might need to revisit target-setting if progress on socio-economic inclusion stalls over the coming years, drawing a parallel with how gender targets had helped the sector address that issue previously.
There was also recognition that target-setting tends to focus attention on large employers, while the majority of the financial services workforce is employed by small and medium-sized enterprises that may fall outside that scrutiny.
The role of regulators
Participants held differing views on the role regulators should play. Some expressed disappointment that the FCA does not have formal responsibility for socio-economic diversity within the financial services workforce, while others welcomed this and had argued against a formal reporting requirement. There was, however, broad agreement that regulators should take an active interest in the issue.
The group felt that individual organisations should remain responsible for monitoring socio-economic diversity and setting their own targets, while regulators could usefully raise related indicators – such as staff turnover and whistleblowing complaints – in routine supervisory conversations.
Participants cautioned against regulatory overreach, with several noting that their own firms already embed socio-economic diversity within risk management and internal audit frameworks. The consensus was that a firm’s executive team and Board, not regulators, should set the tone for workforce culture.
Storytelling as a route to trust
A further theme was the cultural value of storytelling. Participants discussed how senior leaders from working-class backgrounds sharing their own stories can normalise conversations about socio-economic background and build confidence in disclosing it – though many acknowledged that senior leaders have often spent much of their careers keeping their background private.
Smaller member organisations were noted to have achieved disclosure rates above 90% in some cases, having already normalised the conversation internally – reinforcing the view that senior leaders disclosing their own background plays an important role in driving wider disclosure.
An international dimension
With many Progress Together member organisations now considering socio-economic diversity across multiple jurisdictions, participants discussed the differences in how the issue is framed and measured internationally, including varying indicators of socio-economic background by country and region.
As a result of the discussion, Progress Together will host a separate senior leader roundtable specifically focused on the international dimensions of social mobility and socio-economic inclusion.
Recommendations for Boards
From the discussion, participants made the following recommendations for Boards, Chairs and Non-Executive Directors:
- Make socio-economic inclusion an explicit part of workforce strategy, owned by the Board
- Appoint a Non-Executive Director sponsor for the social mobility employee network, responsible for reporting on and escalating issues to the Board
- Embed socio-economic diversity into annual reporting and disclosures
- Encourage member organisations to raise workforce socio-economic diversity regularly with regulators, to keep the issue on their agenda
- Consider a deep dive session for the Board to understand the scale of the opportunity socio-economic diversity can unlock for the business
