Why Income Must Factor Into Your Diversity Strategy

When it comes to workplace conversations, the topic of money can be a third rail. 

While once-taboo topics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation have become more common as companies have ramped up diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in recent years, conversations about class can still make employees and employers uncomfortable. Not having these discussions at all, however, can be detrimental to your business. If you want to effectively recruit a diverse set of employees, retain them, and empower them to thrive, issues related to money–aside from salary–should be part of the conversation.

That’s according to Ruthe Farmer, the co-founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, a nonprofit that’s working to diversify the technology and engineering fields by supporting low-income undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds. Farmer recently addressed the topic of workers from low-income backgrounds during a panel conversation at the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference for women and nonbinary professionals in technology and computing.

“This is the largest pool of untapped talent in the U.S., and it is growing,” Farmer said. “Socioeconomic status is largely left out of the conversation about DEI. It’s kind of taboo to ask about.” 

People from low-income backgrounds make up a significant portion of the labor market. The number of young adults in the U.S. who attend college has grown by more than four million compared to 20 years ago-growth fueled almost entirely by students from minority and low-income families, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data. And of the 20 million U.S. undergraduates, a third fall into the low-income category.

“Some of the things that you’re doing as an employer…might be leaving out a really, really large pool of really talented people, because you’re looking for the wrong things,” said Farmer. Living as a low-income person requires persistence and resourcefulness, she added, skills that can be very effective traits in the workplace. “Those are valuable things, but we don’t value those in the hiring system.”

Here are some strategies to implement to make both your hiring process and employee experience more inclusive.

When companies find a reliable source of talent, hiring teams can become complacent by repeatedly looking at the same list of specific schools or competitors, according to Rian Walker, co-founder of the Last Mile Education Fund. Walker, who graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in software engineering in 2018 and now works in information security at Bank of America, experienced this bias firsthand, as many corporate recruiters skipped visits to MSU, a public university in the poorest state in the country.

“It’s easy to go and grab the top ten schools in your area,” Walker said at the Grace Hopper Celebration. “But does that necessarily mean the top ten talent for your company or your role is there?”

While some job candidates will be familiar with the culture of your company or industry, others won’t, including prospective hires from low-income backgrounds, according to Daniel Chait, the founder and CEO of the talent acquisition software Greenhouse. By over-communicating with candidates at each step of the hiring process, even about small details such as dress code, employers can help potential hires feel more at ease. Chait recalled a story about a tech startup with a casual dress code that was trying to diversify its talent pool by reaching out to workers from lower-income backgrounds without four-year degrees. When a potential new hire walked into an interview wearing a suit and tie, the initial impression was that they didn’t fit in, Chait said. 

“In their attempt to try to really show that they cared, it was really important to them to dress up in their best outfit,” Chait said. “That was perceived incorrectly by the interviewer.”

One of the simplest ways for employers to be more conscious of socioeconomic status is to make sure that employees and prospective hires don’t have to pay out of pocket for anything work-related. Farmer says companies should not expect employees to shoulder costs such as air travel, ground transportation, hotels, and moving expenses and wait to be reimbursed.

Instead, she advises employers to utilize prepaid credit cards and special codes for ride-sharing services so that upfront expenses do not knock qualified, low-income workers out of contention. “Level the playing field,” she said, adding that this policy shouldn’t stop once an employee starts receiving their paycheck. “You should be supporting all recruits, interns, interviews, new hires, door to door.”

In some cases, employers should lock down new hires by advancing their signing bonus or even paying for their last semester at school, Farmer said, noting that tuition support is tax-free if constructed as a scholarship.