How might design be affected by and affect social inequality in the workplace?
How might design be affected by and affect social inequality in the workplace?
Increasingly organisations are integrating design into their business model to develop products and services for their service users. But what if organisations adopted design approaches to improve employees' development too?
For the past three months, I have been doing a placement at the Bridge Group as the Communications and Design Officer. The placement has been sponsored by the London Arts and Humanities Partnerships Placement Scheme. I undertook it part-time, alongside my PhD in design to support/prevent intimate partner violence at the School of Design, Royal College of Art. As I near the end of the placement, I reflect on my learnings and explore how design could intersect with the social equality* agenda. In this blog I will explore not only how design might help to advance social equality, but also how design is affected by socio-economic diversity in the design workplace. Such diversity can affect what forms of designs come into the world.
To begin we may ask, what is design? Often synonymous with creativity and innovation, design has multiple definitions and understandings. Design is turning ideas into reality, into something functional to be used. Design is the collaborative creation of interventions. Design is shaping the world (Design Council). As such, design is constantly changing our behaviours and surroundings. Yet, how design might help create transformative changes in support of social equality in the workplace is under-explored. Furthermore, too little is understood about designers' socio-economic backgrounds, which in turn may affect how design is able to create interventions.
*The Bridge Group's vision of social equality is a fairer higher education system and labour market where outcomes are determined by competence and hard work, and not by socio-economic background.
Socio-economic diversity in design
The recent Design Economy Report (2022) from the Design Council found that 13% of designers are privately educated, which is almost double compared to the UK workforce where it is at 7.5%. In addition, over half (53%) of the designers in senior roles attended a fee-paying school. Less is known about the progression of employees from lower socio-economic backgrounds (SEBs) within the industry.
When it comes to education, between 2010 and 2021, we have seen a decline of 68% of people opting to study GCSE Design and Technology (D&T), a potential pathway into a career in design. In line with Bridge Group research, which looked at the engineering sector, there has been a drop in the perceived value of the subject for further study or employment which has led to the Government spending less. The decline of D&T becomes even more severe in areas with socio-economic disadvantage where factors, such as Government spending and perceived value in the subject, are intensified. This reduces the available pathways to design, which can intensify the diversity divide.
Pathways into the design sector are under further constraints when we consider the rising cost of living. A survey from graduate career websites, graduate-jobs.com and GradTouch, highlighted that graduates are now putting finances over passions, where 30% now wish to move away from the creative and design sector that they originally wanted to work in.
Yet design as a discipline increasingly takes on issues that affect our society. As such, the industry should better reflect the diversity of the UK population if it is to understand the needs of our society and successfully address them. The Bridge Group has conducted a number of research projects that can help inform this: recommendations could include design organisations collecting and analysing data on SEBs, exploring progression routes for their workforce, and widening work experience opportunities for young people.
How might design help advance social equality
Design has the potential to bring into reality interventions that fit the needs and desires of organisations’ service users. When looking at social equality in the workplace, we could flip this perspective to focus on organisations’ employees instead of service users, specifically those from lower SEBs. By employing design research skills that are often embedded in any design process, it would be possible to explore the situation, ideate, prototype, test, and develop interventions alongside employees, through methods such as co-design. As such the interventions implemented would be designed by the people who will use them, who are best suited to understand their experiences, which may lead to higher adoption.
Below I explore how two approaches of design could help contribute to progress the social equality agenda.
Content and website design
Organisations’ websites and channels communicate not only to their service users but also prospective employees. The Social Mobility Commission in their research report, looked at how we may increase the use of online careers advice services by less advantaged young people, and highlighted how socio-economic factors influence how career advice platforms can be experienced. The same could go for websites of organisations, recruitment platforms and more, where the content and navigation design might inadvertently exclude people from lower SEBs. For example this may include elitist messaging or images that reflect higher socio-economic backgrounds. Organisations could consider engaging with content designers to create content targeted towards those from lower SEBs.
See Content Design London for more information.
Service design
Service design is often leveraged in companies to design the end-to-end journey of a service and help organisations meet their service users needs. The aim is to arrange entities within a service (organisation), in relation to the experiences of their service users through thinking about the organisation’s ‘touch-points’ (where a service user interacts with the service). In pursuit of social equality, to support and create opportunities for employees from lower SEBs, the service design process could be flipped to focus on the journeys of employees from lower SEBs up the employment ladder and what experiences they have at different touch-points in the workplace (i.e accent bias and lack of networks). Services such as internal mentoring and network programmes could be designed as a result.
See This is service design doing for more information.
Reflection and next steps
I believe that there are still a lot of possibilities to explore design potential in the area of social equality. Although the Design Council in their Design Economy report has begun to explore socio-economic diversity in the industry, a deeper analysis may help understand the full extent of the situation at hand. Collaborating with organisations such as the Bridge Group may help analyse the situation and suggest actions. At the same time, design also has the potential to support organisations across industries (for example: law, finance and engineering) in developing actions that fit the needs of their employees. Organisations should reach out to design consultancies and design research centres to explore this potential. In addition, in design academia I think there is also a gap for further research exploring the nexus between design and social equality. Among questions that could be further explored are: How might design support social equality in the workplace? What new approaches are needed to design for employees' progression? And then, how may we achieve social equality in the design industry?
Rute Fiadeiro, PhD Candidate at the School of Design, Royal College of Art
Rute’s doctoral study and placement were kindly supported by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership.
Rute’s research explores the use of design practice in intimate partner violence interventions, such as preventative programmes with men to rethink their masculinities. Email: rute.fiadeiro@network.rca.ac.uk