Launching the Tech Future Taskforce: a collective mission to advance socioeconomic mobility in UK tech

Inside the launch event of the Tech Future Taskforce on Social Mobility

The UK has one of just three trillion-dollar tech ecosystems in the world. But only 9% of the UK’s tech workforce comes from lower socioeconomic backgrounds – “worse than banking”, as Sutton Trust CEO Nick Harrison puts it. Happily, that might be about to change.

Nick was speaking at the launch of the Tech Future Taskforce on Social Mobility on March 12th. Led by the Sutton Trust, The Hg Foundation and Social Mobility Ventures, the taskforce is an industry-wide effort to improve socioeconomic mobility in the UK’s tech industry.

The launch event, held at Google’s London headquarters, brought together entrepreneurs, investors and operators from tech, government and social enterprise to plot a path towards improving access to the tech industry for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. While there will always be room for broad-based diversity and inclusion policies across UK industries, “the taskforce is not about diversity for diversity’s sake,” as Nick said in his opening speech. “It’s about levelling the playing field and removing barriers,” so that the UK can benefit from everyone’s skills and experience, no matter their socioeconomic background.

David Houghton, founder of Social Mobility Ventures, agreed in his address to attendees that tech’s socioeconomic mobility crisis “is an innovation issue.” So how can the public, non-profit and private sectors work together to drive change? To talk this through, David was joined for a one-on-one conversation by Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Peter described some of the ways in which the government is laying the groundwork to incentivise investment from the tech industry in communities right around the country, from reforming planning regulation to speed up new infrastructure developments, to mitigating the pressure of energy price rises for businesses.

Peter also shared examples from his experience in early life, where he left school without qualifications and was only later diagnosed with dyslexia. He reflected that even though “no-one explicitly rejected me,” the education system didn’t focus on giving him a taste of the full range of paths available to a young person from a lower socioeconomic background.

The technology sector can still feel like an intimidating prospect for children and young adults. Partly, that’s because lots of tech outreach focuses on graduates. Participating in a panel session as part of the launch event, Marie Hamilton, government strategic partnership director at Microsoft, pointed out that emphasising graduate skills excludes the large numbers of young people who opt not to go to university – a cohort of people with diverse experiences that could potentially add value to all kinds of tech businesses.

On the panel alongside Marie was Mabel Ellingham, a business apprentice at Google. Mabel observed that as she didn’t want to go to university after leaving school, she didn’t feel that a role in tech was a feasible option. Having signed up with skills and apprenticeships platform Multiverse, she was connected with an opportunity at Google. To Mabel, the issue for tech companies is clear: “Everyone uses technology, so how can tech be equitable if it isn't built by all of us, for all of us?”

It’s a perplexing question – why does tech appear unreachable and opaque to many young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, even though they are likely to be interacting with tech products and services in some form every day? Panellist Bianca Caravtov shared her experience as a secondary school pupil newly arrived in the UK from Romania, and later at university after she expressed interest in moving into the tech sector having studied law. Bianca observed that those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are told all too often that “people like us are not made for jobs like this” (referencing her role in cloud sales at Microsoft).

That kind of message might be communicated explicitly or implicitly, but the impact is similar: people from disadvantaged demographics are not inspired to take action, explore their options and take risks. Alongside the public sector, the tech industry has a vital role to play in opening up more choices for young people, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The Tech Future Taskforce is designed to harness the power of the tech sector and other stakeholder groups to ensure that everyone can share in the successes of UK tech.

Want to engage with our work, join upcoming events and learn about what the taskforce hopes to achieve? Find out more on LinkedIn. Interested in supporting Social Mobility Ventures? Join the community.