Can Firms Ask What Your Parents Did For a Living?
KPMG wants more working-class staff. That means asking some personal questions, but more importantly, being responsible with the answers.
Can they ask me that?
Photographer: Ming Yeung/Getty Images EuropeClass hasn’t had enough attention in the drive for workplace equality. Perhaps thanks to a British preoccupation with this topic, the U.K. arm of accounting giant KPMG is addressing the deficit. The firm has been analyzing its workforce by nosing around what employees’ parents used to do for a living. It’s a legitimate inquiry. The tricky issue is what to do with the answers.
Socioeconomic status matters to diversity initiatives. The U.K. and U.S. perform poorly in global social mobility rankings. Data suggest it’s generally hard for many people in supposedly advanced economies to break out of the socioeconomic circumstances in which they grew up.