The Brokerage The Overlooked Advantage - Flipbook - Page 12
These findings are consistent with broader literature on the relationship between cultural diversity
and higher creativity in teams.[23] For example, one employer described how a more creative
solution - designed by The Brokerage interns - allowed the company to appeal to a more diverse
talent pool through new ideas about attracting, recruiting, and retaining young people with similar
experiences and needs:
“We did a workshop to target aspiring mathematicians [with our career offer], teaching them
the basics of insurance. Our interns went through the workshop themselves and brought the
whole new perspective to it. They came up with much more engaging activities, such as “code
breaking”, as a sort of a quest where pupils applied their GCSE-level maths to find out about
our sector. They also included tips and advice to children on how they should focus their effort
when going through it.” - Employer
Combined with emotional and cultural intelligence, creativity and innovation skills of young people
from disadvantaged backgrounds can help employers foresee and mitigate the negative impact of
their products and services on diverse groups. For example, companies are now recognising that
workforce diversity is a critical factor in a more equitable design of technology solutions.[24] In one
example, a Brokerage candidate’s input helped make a decision about launching a new product:
“One of my clients was looking to develop an app that would be used by people living in council
houses. He comes from a very middle-class background and didn’t know how that environment
works. And I was able to leverage my background and experience of growing up on a council
estate to advise on how to develop this product. And in fact, we realised as part of this work
that it wasn’t the use case we thought it would be.” - Former Brokerage Candidate
5. Resilience
In 2020 resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility were identified as new additions to the Top Skills
for 2025 by the World Economic Forum.[25] These so-called “self-management” skills were ranked
highly by employers across sectors and geographies, and their increased importance is a direct
response to the shock of the pandemic and the ever-accelerating pace of change in new
technologies and ways of working.
These are also the skills that young people participating in the research linked closely to their
experience of growing up with a disadvantage. They reflected on their attitude to setbacks,
explaining that difficult circumstances prepared them for facing workplace challenges with greater
resilience. In the words of The Brokerage alumni and employers:
- Former
Brokerage Candidate
[23] CIPD. (2018). Diversity and Inclusion at Work. Facing Up to the Business Case. London: Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development.
[24] The Catalyze Tech Working Group. (2021). Action to Catalyze Tech: A Paradigm Shift for DEI. Available at:
https://actreport.com/about/
[25] World Economic Forum. (2020). The Future of Jobs Report 2020. Geneva: World Economic Forum.
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