About

The Equality of Opportunity Coalition is a group of organisations that are part of the Purpose Coalition and have committed to going further faster by working with us to measure their socio-economic diversity, and set Equality of Opportunity Targets for socio-economic diversity.

The coalition is co-chaired by CEO of Aldermore Group and former Social Mobility Commissioner Steven Cooper CBE,  Vice-Chancellor of UWE Bristol and former President of Universities UK Professor Steve West CBE, and former Secretary of State Rt Hon Justine Greening, who as Minister for Women and Equalities implemented Gender Pay Gap Reporting in 2017.

Under Justine’s leadership the UK became one of the first countries in the world to require gender pay gap reporting. Voluntary, private and public sector employers with 250 or more employees were required to publish their figures by April 2018. The regulations cover approximately 9,000 employers with over 15 million employees, representing nearly half of the UK’s workforce.

The Equality of Opportunity Coalition is now working together with Justine to develop socio-economic measures, targets and reporting. 

Measuring the socio-economic background of your employees and potential recruits helps organisations better understand what needs to be done in order to improve their socio-economic diversity and identify progression challenges. 

Through the Social Mobility Pledge we have worked closely with the Social Mobility Commission and others to shape some key questions on which information organisations should collect.

Asking your workforce, apprentices and applicants just four key questions will give you a firm basis on which to develop an informed strategy for improving social mobility.

An increasing number of organisations are now also setting Equality of Opportunity Targets. Examples include the BBC’s goal for 25% of the workforce to meet working class criteria, which is based on the primary household earner’s occupation held when an individual was 14. 

If your organisation would like to begin measuring socio-economic diversity or set an Equality of Opportunity Target get in touch here.