Employee loyalty is not always a good thing. If someone blindly sticks with their employer without developing or progressing, neither party is likely to benefit in the long term.
Yet, as recent Accenture research on UK workers has shown, despite advancing less quickly than their peers, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds (SEB) are no less loyal to their employer and no less satisfied with their career progression than others.
We call this the “progression paradox”. It's one of three major challenges (alongside socio-economic taboo and cultural inertia) stifling social mobility in the UK that are explored in Accenture Research's recent report, A fair chance to advance: The power of culture to break socio-economic barriers in the workplace.
It's worth a closer look. The UK workplace is not a level playing field. The higher someone's SEB, the faster they tend to progress up through the ranks. For example, people from a lower SEB are 28 per cent less likely to hold management roles. Our survey of 4,000 UK employees confirms this trend: we found that, on These figures mean that an estimated 700,000 people from this demographic have missed out on promotion opportunities with their current employer.
