Accent Bias and Fair Access in Britain

RATIONALE
Fair access to employment is the cornerstone of a just, equal and socially mobile society. Despite efforts in recent years by government and industry to implement fair access policies, a 2015 report by the government's Social Mobility Commission revealed persistent bias in recruitment and selection processes in elite sectors of the UK economy in favour of applicants from middle-class backgrounds. This bias, which Commission Chair Alan Milburn describes as keeping working-class candidates "locked out of top jobs", results in part from the reliance on subjective and non-educationally-based "talent" criteria, such as a candidate's appearance and communication style, when making hiring decisions. Characterised by the report as "poshness tests", talent criteria such as these privilege middle-class norms and behaviours, such as accent, at the expense of an objective assessment of a candidate's aptitude, and can ultimately impede social mobility.

This project examines the role of accent bias in hiring situations in the legal profession, a sector identified by the Commission report as particularly prone to the use of subjective criteria. Specifically, we investigate whether bias against certain regional and class-linked accents in the UK interferes with employers' objective assessment of a candidate's job suitability. We also investigate sources of bias and test whether different anti-bias interventions are effective. For scholars in linguistics, social psychology and related fields, the project offers an updated quantitative examination of attitudes to accent variation in Britain, and a novel understanding of the real-world effects of accent bias. For legal, HR, and policy stakeholders, the project responds to a key recommendation of the Commission's report about the need to "interrogate current definitions of talent ... to ensure that applicants are not ruled out for reasons of background rather than aptitude and skill" and provides concrete evidence on the efficacy of different types of interventions.

RESEARCH PLAN
The project makes use of survey and experimental methods to examine the effect of accent bias on hiring decisions in law firms. Five accents that differ in terms of region and class will be examined: two Northern (Leeds, General Northern), two Southern (Estuary, Multicultural London), and the nationwide standard (Received Pronunciation).

The project is composed of two phases. In Phase 1, we collect large-scale quantitative data on how the UK public evaluate these five accents in a hiring context. This provides an up-to-date picture, currently lacking, of attitudes to accents in the UK today and how those attitudes vary across the UK population. In Phase 2, we focus specifically on attitudes among lawyers in hiring contexts, given concerns about lack of diversity in this sector. We examine whether a candidate's aptitude and skill may be obscured by their accent. 120 expert evaluators (lawyers) are divided into three groups: one completes the judgement task with no prior information, and the other two first receive different anti-bias interventions. This design allows us to investigate whether accent interferes with the fair assessment of a candidate's suitability for employment, and whether such bias can be mitigated by different possible interventions. We draw on theories of discrimination from social psychology and labour market economics to analyse the origins of any bias effects observed (e.g., personal exposure to accents vs. received attitudes to social groups) and to inform data-driven policy recommendations.

Findings will be disseminated to academic colleagues via conferences, seminars and articles; to stakeholders and policymakers via policy papers, workshops and training materials; and to the general public via the media and an interactive project website.

Impact is integral to this project. Our point of departure is the 2015 call by the SMCPC (now Social Mobility Commission) to identify implicit bias in hiring in elite professional sectors, as a potential impediment to social mobility. Engagement with a diverse set of beneficiaries is built into every level of project design, execution, dissemination, and engagement.

BENEFICIARIES: We focus our impact activities on five major groups: policy-makers in the area of employment discrimination, HR professionals, the legal profession, university students training for elite professions, and the general public. We will engage with these groups through an Advisory Board and further contacts in each group. The Advisory Board includes six key representatives, all of whom have confirmed their involvement: The Social Mobility Commission (SMC); The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD); Chris White (solicitor and founder of Aspiring Solicitors); Louise Bloor (London-based barrister with expertise on employment discrimination); Professor Lizzie Barmes (QMUL, School of Law, expert on Equalities and Employment Law); Professor Jenny Cheshire (QMUL, Dept. of Linguistics, expert on accents and social mobility in UK). Further potential contacts include: lawyers and HR personnel in participating law firms, The Law Society, the City of London Law Society, SEO London (an organisation focusing on career access for people from under-represented and under-served backgrounds), university law departments, career development departments, and students' unions.

IMPACT GOALS: The broadest goal of the project is to provide stakeholders (the government, the legal profession, HR professionals) and beneficiaries (lawyers, students, the general public) with the first specific quantitative evidence of the presence, extent, and sources of bias against various British accents in elite sector employment interviews. Each beneficiary group will have further distinctive interests and concerns. For instance, our preliminary meetings have indicated that lawyers and law firms will be interested in the finer dynamics of regional, ethnic, age, and class differentiation in attitudes across lawyers, as well as careful reflection on both the social reality of such biases and the need for awareness and action. By contrast, HR professionals have expressed more interest in the relative efficacy of different training interventions, which the project tests. University students have a particular interest in better understanding how different aspects of accent, language, and speaking style (e.g. confidence, hesitation) are evaluated and how best to address these concerns. This is relevant to them both as prospective employees and future employers.

USER RESOURCES: We will realise this complex constellation of impact goals in two ways-dissemination and impact resources. First, we will disseminate findings through meetings (with the Advisory Board, participating law firms in North/South UK, and further contacts), workshops, and policy reports. In this set of user engagements, we will promote evidence-based policy recommendations on language-based discrimination to stakeholders through our national-level Impact Partners, the SMC and the CIPD. Second, we will address more specific user-targeted goals through collaboratively-developed training resources targeted at three core beneficiaries: the legal sector, HR professionals, and universities. With users, we will design bespoke, interactive, online training resources for each group. Users will be able to listen to sample answers, explore associated evaluations of competence, and learn about accent diversity, accent change, and social mobility in the UK through simple interactive text and illustrations. We will aim to maintain contact with users (e.g. 140,000+ members of the CIPD, 20,000+ members of Aspiring Solicitors) after the project to track evidence of use, uptake, and change.