Read: Equality of opportunity should drive the agenda of every organisation in 2023

Somehow the beginning of 2022 feels like a long time ago, when we thought we had seen the worst that the world could throw at us with two years of the pandemic and all its social and economic repercussions. It’s easy to forget that in the UK we went through a final pandemic restrictions in the initial weeks of the year. Little did we know that 2022 would bring fresh challenges, not least levels of inflation not seen for decades, a cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine and political instability that has affected us all.

As ever, it is the most disadvantaged and most vulnerable in our society that often bear the brunt of the impact of these fresh challenges. It underlines the importance of why tackling social mobility can make such a difference and the importance of all of the work of the Purpose Coalition. Extending more opportunities, fairly, to more people is at the core of how we’ll improve life for those who need it most, and it’s how we help people get control over their lives through being able to use their full potential. 

Purpose Coalition businesses, universities and the wider public sector have reacted to the cost of living challenges looking at how they can support their communities, their customers and colleagues internally. In the case of universities - their students - and shared very different approaches amongst their networks. It’s built on the work many did supporting people through the COVID-19 pandemic, and underlines the hugely positive role business and employers can play. 

It’s been fantastic to work with and bring together such a wide group of organisations from the private and public sector - including NHS Trusts and local authorities for the first time - all focused on driving equality of opportunity and putting in place their Impact Plans to help prioritise what they do and track their progress. 

The social mobility insights produced means the Purpose Coalition has increasingly been able to have wider impact and we have been at the forefront of thought leadership on social mobility - both on what works and on measurement. After our launch of the Levelling Up Goals in February 2021, breaking down the levelling up challenge that Britain faces into fourteen key areas ranging from education, to advice and access to opportunity and removing barriers that get in the way. 

It was fantastic to see, a year later in February of this year, the Government directly use the Levelling Up Goals approach as their template for developing its 12 Levelling Up Missions in the long-awaited Levelling Up White Paper. It’s an important and welcome step forward to see a more systematic approach being taken by Ministers to improving social mobility. We look forward to continued engagement and more Purpose Coalition ideas being adopted by Ministers.

In September the Labour Party Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, Lisa Nandy pledged that Labour would be a Levelling Up Government, a sign that in British politics, the issue of equality of opportunity will remain a key priority from now on. It underlines how 2022 was a year when the levelling up debate truly shifted on, away from whether we need to see a levelled up Britain, but now how we do that.  

For 2023, it’s an exciting year ahead when the Purpose Coalition will have even more impact through bringing more organisations  on board and taking forward new projects to have even more impact for members, and more widely on thought leadership.

The Purpose Business Coalition has companies who have extended apprenticeship schemes to ensure that local people, particularly in social mobility cold spots, have the opportunity to train for skilled jobs. It was great, for example, at bp’s launch event in July, to see them commit to 500 new apprenticeship starts every year. Businesses in the Coalition have offered new ways of ultra-flexible working as a means of developing an inclusive and diverse workforce, and established health and wellbeing practices to support their staff more comprehensively. They are targeting their most vulnerable customers to eliminate the poverty premium wherever possible, or looking at how to ensure that people have access to credit and financial services. 

Members of the Levelling Up Universities Coalition are engaging in outreach in communities where there’s less experience of higher education to encourage people to realise that university can be a path for them, as well as increasingly working through Purpose Coalition employers to linking up their employability and opportunities with the higher education talent from our universities, an exciting project we are working with one of the Purpose Coalition members, the Adecco Group on.

It’s been inspiring to have NHS Trusts, now part of the Purpose Health Coalition, finding innovative ways to address recruitment issues and to better deliver health services into the heart of their communities. Members of the Levelling Up Councils Coalition, at the cutting edge of delivering local services, are working hard to ensure that every community is levelled up, even in more prosperous areas where pockets of deprivation still inevitably exist amongst them. And all Purpose Coalition members are finding innovative ways to forge a path to net zero, a critical challenge that will affect all our lives.

Bringing diverse Purpose Coalition members together for local projects has been fantastic to see steadily developing - Essex County Council is now exploring partnering with both the BBC on early years literacy and with UK Power Networks, extending apprenticeships into communities where the council is especially focused on improving social mobility. 

That work will be extended in 2023 for more real, tangible results. The Equality of Opportunity Coalition, focused on employers tracking socio-economic background of recruits and employees, is gathering strength, with a wide range of organisations, covering over 300,000 employees, already on board, committed to measuring their socioeconomic diversity. They recognise that measuring the socioeconomic background of your existing and potential workforce helps them better understand where to priorities efforts and focus on removing barriers to reaching and retaining Britain's wide talent pool, and will be pressing ahead with that agenda in the new year. Fresh insight from accountancy business KPMG, published this month has shown that class has overtaken gender and race as a barrier to a person getting on at work. What gets measured gets done and employers who are serious about driving equality of opportunity and being an engine of social mobility will want to measure their progress. Of course the wider insights the collective data can give us will be hugely important for policymakers. I’m delighted that both major accounting bodies, the ICAEW and CIPFA will be partnering with us on spreading the campaign to track socio-economic background far and wide across employers in 2023.

2023 may well prove to be another challenging year but it can also be a positive one where we keep building for a better future with fairer access to opportunities. I’m looking forward to working with all of our partners and new ones who are joining the Purpose Coalition to deliver the grass roots change on social mobility that we need to create a levelled up Britain.