My background
One of the reasons I feel this is so important is from my own experience. Poverty in childhood affected my self-esteem. I didn’t have the cool clothes, the new toys, or the opportunity to do a lot of the extracurricular activities that my friends did as we simply couldn’t afford it. It was made worse as on the surface my family appeared to be well off.
My parents both worked but my dad was an alcoholic who spent all his earnings, leaving my mum to look after 3 kids and a mortgage on her salary and having to attend court on her own for non-payment of poll tax. This fed through into my self-worth and had a big impact on my decisions as I was entering the job market. I spent several years working in casual hospitality and leisure jobs and while I did have a mainly enjoyable experience and learnt some great customer service skills, looking back I don’t feel like I was fulfilling my potential.
It was only after going through a personal crisis involving the death of my father and getting divorced that I really stopped and took a step back to reflect on what I wanted for my future. I identified Skipton as a local employer where I could see people felt valued and had opportunity to progress, so after 3 interviews for various roles, I got my foot in the door and I’m so glad I did. The opportunities that I’ve had since then have been immense and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved over the past 10 or more years, I just wish I’d come to it sooner.
That’s why I feel it’s massively important that we take the opportunity we have to reach out to young people from all walks of life and open the door to a future in our industry. The class divide in our sector is more profound than others, especially as you move through the hierarchy. 39% of the working population of the UK are from a working class background. This reduces to 29% of people employed in financial services across all levels of seniority and even further to 21% in senior management positions.
What do young people think?
I spoke to young people in their final year at a local high school, where there is a higher than average percentage of students on free school meals, about their options for the next few years. I found that the jobs they aspire to were mainly in areas such as construction, beauty or care work.
When I asked them if they had considered a future in finance or even in an office, their responses varied from laughter to confusion with a few asking more questions about what that might mean. This reinforced my own experience, and this has made me more ambitious in opening the door for people from all backgrounds.
What are we doing at Skipton to break the mould?
At Skipton we are collecting data for the first time on our own workforce’s socio-economic background. The purpose of this is a bit of a temperature check to see where we currently are and to use it to measure progress over time. We are working with several local schools, two of which are primary, where the focus is more on supporting with reading practice to help with literacy development and secondary where we talk more about future careers, financial wellbeing and offer experiences such as visits to our head office and interview practice.
My aim is to encourage and inspire young people from backgrounds like myself and to give them the news that there are so many career options open to them, regardless of what their parents do for a living or how much money they have. Hopefully we can help level the playing field through education and make some dents in those numbers as part of our mission to build a better society.