Sigma Labs has been at the forefront of driving meaningful change for individuals from diverse backgrounds, and the industry, and their efforts have seen them awarded the title of Best Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative at the 2024 DataIQ Awards
Social mobility for data excellence
Graduates from private schools or selective states are 17 times more likely to get into top graduate programmes that still feed leadership. Additionally, 50-90% of boards are from these backgrounds, and this disparity of economic outcomes and wealth is a lingering problem within the data industry. Sigma Labs is a data educator focused on addressing social mobility, following the mantra “Free School Meals to FTSE Board”.
The mission at Sigma Labs is that outcomes should be determined by ambition, effort, and potential, not socio-economic background. The team at Sigma Labs utilises the talent model Hire-Train-Deploy, which takes a proactive approach to upskilling talent, and repurposed it – with two key adjustments.
Firstly, Sigma Labs prioritise applicants from low-income backgrounds and screens out private education.
Secondly, the team explicitly select for and foster high-performance potential, in places and ways that other organisations do not. This is achieved via a combination of hiring strategy, training methodology, and deployment support.
Ultimately, to change the talent profile of the industry, it is not enough to equip people to be juniors; they must be set on a progression path to leadership where they can inspire and influence.
How to achieve change
Through broad outreach, both advertising, and partnering with charities including UpReach and SEO London, Sigma Labs has cast a wide net. The team forgo evidently flawed heuristics that reinforce the status quo, such as university, degree and classification, internships, and experience. The initial filter is based only on candidates meeting Sigma Labs’ socioeconomic and school background criteria.
Techniques like psychometric and situational judgement testing that favour people from certain backgrounds are avoided. Candidates are filtered via two online assessments and two interviews with senior team members. Each stage is designed to remove bias and surface behaviours that, based on proprietary research, reflect the traits of high-performing engineers.
The metrics report on include gender, disability, neurodiversity, social mobility (free school meals, university benefits, household income), and university and degree to uncover bias, and ensure reach is being achieved. At the time of submission, the past 12 months of cohorts from Sigma Labs have been from 52 different UK universities, 38% free school meals, and 76% low income. Partly due to the link between socioeconomics and other characteristics, the cohort has been 58% non-white, including 8% black heritage, reaching far beyond current industry averages.
The second half of the mission is driving high performance which is key to generating lasting change.
Firstly, Sigma Labs develops a personal understanding of every trainee and they invest in a market-leading coach-to-trainee ratio of 1:7, and (unusually in the sector) all coaches are experienced education or industry professionals. Through daily facetime over multiple touch points for 16 weeks, Sigma Labs can practise holistic ongoing assessment and support.
Secondly, many people trained do not have access to role models in tech, or even white-collar jobs. To create equitable footing, Sigma Labs deliver a professional high-performance curriculum, inspired by best-in-class graduate schemes, that makes explicit the behaviours, skills, and professional standards graduates will be held to in the workplace.
Finally, during the 2-year placement, the team invests in rapid development, with one-to-one support from a Management Consultant and Executive Coach, and high-performance mindset coaching from a Team-GB performance psychologist. The aim is twofold: to ensure graduates are supported by business mentors with any query, however minor, about professional work; and to blow open the ceiling.
While Sigma Labs is early in its journey, over the past two years the team has proven 200 times, across more than 35 companies, that excellent education can change outcomes. The team’s initial goal was that within 10 years, more than 75% of consultants would be rated top quartile performers – and this was achieved in year one, at companies including BCG, EY, and John Lewis.
