What is your diversity tech initiative? Please provide an overview.
Zero Gravity is a tech start-up driven by the vision that talent is spread evenly, but opportunity is not. We’re changing this by driving social mobility at an unprecedented scale across all four corners of the UK. Zero Gravity empowers students from low-opportunity backgrounds to defy the odds, mentoring them to top universities and further propelling them into high-flying careers. We harness the power of technology to democratise access to opportunity, shattering barriers of background, geography and network to ensure wherever talent is, opportunity will follow. Since our launch, we’ve supported 8,000+ socially mobile students into top universities through three key components; mentoring, masterclasses and a managed community, all housed within our proprietary tech platform. We’re now replicating the successes of our ‘into uni’ product to accelerate socially mobile students into top careers through our innovative ‘into work’ product.
Our ‘into work’ product has propelled our community of 15,000 socially mobile students into roles at JP Morgan, Herbert Smith Freehills, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Fidelity International – industries previously dominated by graduates from private schools with access to a broad professional network. To date, we’ve generated a cumulative increase in lifetime earnings for students of £270m since our launch.
How did your initiative come to fruition?
Socially mobile students often lack the network, knowledge and support to break into top graduate careers. Zero Gravity’s Gap Zero Report shows that state school students are more than twice as likely to have ‘no professionals’ in their life to support career growth than private school students. This makes it incredibly hard for socially mobile talent to break into careers and compete against students who can utilise their professional network to gain access to opportunities and tailored support. The playing field isn’t – and never has been – equal. HSBC and Zero Gravity partnered to change this.
HSBC is on a mission to create diverse and inclusive teams. Yet reaching socially mobile talent from across the UK can be hard. We forged a partnership to use our technology as a disruptive force for good, leveraging our proprietary tech platform and ‘into work’ product to give HSBC access to unreachable talent from all four corners of the UK. Through our partnership we sought to bring access to opportunity for our members at unprecedented scale, equipping them with the skills and confidence to break into roles that may have otherwise felt unreachable. Together with HSBC, we formed a united objective: To open up a world of opportunity for socially mobile students and propel them into high-flying careers.
By harnessing Zero Gravity’s proprietary technology, we were able to develop an innovative student recruitment strategy to break down barriers to entry for students from all four corners of the UK and heighten HSBC’s visibility. Yet access to opportunity is only one part of the challenge. Through our partnership, we could easily promote HSBC’s opportunities to our community, but we needed to ensure that students had the skillset to actually secure the roles being promoted. This is where our three core platform components came in; mentoring, masterclasses and a managed community. Together, these three components sought to provide socially mobile students with the knowledge, confidence and insights to set them up for career success, both now and in the future.
Why do you think you have been nominated for this award?
Zero Gravity and HSBC should be considered for this award due to their unwavering commitment to levelling the playing field for socially mobile students, using technology as a disruptive force for good to transform outcomes and open access to opportunity at unprecedented scale. Utilising Zero Gravity’s into-work product, Zero Gravity and HSBC developed a digital initiative to open up a world of opportunity for socially mobile talent, supporting 131 first-year students with access to unique insights, upskilling opportunities and confidence-building over a 16-week period. Zero Gravity and HSBC recognise the value of having a broad professional network and how this can help nurture career success. Socially mobile students often lack these professional networks, with Zero Gravity’s research highlighting how private school students are more than twice as likely to know an accountant, four times as likely to know a lawyer and seven times more likely to know a banker compared to state school students.
To combat this, Zero Gravity’s unique proprietary algorithm matched each student with a HSBC graduate mentor based on data-driven shared interests such as business lines and backgrounds. Through weekly mentoring sessions, students gained an essential industry contact and the opportunity to grow their network, gaining unique insights and bespoke guidance and support. Students also attended weekly live masterclasses, where industry experts from HSBC shared insights into the banking world, and students developed soft skills to build their confidence. Students also accessed a community filled with supporting content and a networking space. These key components were all accessible on Zero Gravity’s platform at the click of a button, creating a seamless user experience to support and nurture our members on their career discovery journey. Together, these components upskilled socially mobile students and gave them the step up they needed to achieve their ambitions.
Zero Gravity and HSBC forged a strong working relationship whilst collaborating on this initiative, whereby engagement from stakeholders was pivotal to the success of the partnership. Zero Gravity worked directly with the Global Head of Emerging Talent & Global Banking and Markets Head of Development, and the Global Graduate Recruitment and Development Manager at HSBC Global Banking and Markets to design an initiative that fit with HSBC’s values and core skills. The cross-functional support from HSBC led to a wide range of long-term benefits. Firstly, the initiative had a transformative impact for the students taking part by channelling them into HSBC opportunities. Secondly, the initiative supported HSBC as a business, both through upskilling their graduate cohort and giving them access to top socially mobile talent. Finally, the initiative supported social mobility on a national scale, opening up a world of opportunity for students to secure roles at other leading organisations, such as Morgan Stanley, Fidelity and the Civil Service.
What impact you have had on your target audience?
A key partnership aim was to propel socially mobile talent onto HSBC’s Head Start programme. This aim was achieved, with Zero Gravity students being 2x more likely to secure a place on HSBC’s Head Start programme. This is particularly impressive when considering that Zero Gravity students were competing against students who may not have come from socially mobile backgrounds and faced the same barriers to opportunity. Our technology was therefore successful in equipping our members
with the competitive edge they needed to secure a position on a highly competitive programme with HSBC. As a result, almost one in five students on HSBC’s Head Start programme are Zero Gravity members from socially mobile backgrounds.
Our into-work product and tech-driven solution with HSBC was highly valued amongst our members, with a ‘world class’ NPS score of 78. We also achieved a mentor rating of 9.0, 790 hours of masterclass watch time, 372 mentoring hours and 6,755 messages shared on the platform in total. It also improved students’ understanding of HSBC as a business, with a 69% knowledge increase of HSBC’s brand values and mission. Enhanced brand affinity was also apparent, with many students citing HSBC to be their employer of choice.
Zero Gravity and HSBC are now building on the success of our partnership, leveraging the power of technology to further support socially mobile talent at different stages of their discovery journey, exploring the opportunity to create three brand new HSBC programmes exclusively for Zero Gravity members, whilst simultaneously super charing mentoring across the business setting the ambitious target to recruit 500+ HSBC mentors to support the next cohort of undergraduate students into the organisation. Through this unique partnership, we’re breaking down barriers and levelling the playing field like never before.
Please provide an endorsing statement from someone who can support this nomination (Max. 500 words)
“At HSBC, we are extremely passionate about supporting students to recognise and develop their full potential regardless of their background. Our partnership has allowed us to help demystify career opportunities, build confidence and develop key skills – opening up pathways which may have previously seemed off limits. I’m extremely excited about how this will translate into both academic and career success for all those that participated and look forward to growing our partnership with Zero Gravity further.” – Mindey Dhillon, Global Graduate Recruitment and Development Manager at HSBC Global Banking and Markets
“The mentoring has given me confidence, which I was lacking beforehand. My mentor has been monumental, supporting me with the application process. I didn’t really have any idea what I wanted to do so it gave me a lot of pointers of what I should be looking for in careers and looking ahead to when I graduate. In interviews I get flustered and my mentor is good at calming me down and giving me actionable steps to stay relaxed. He’s also really helped me with interview and CV prep that I’d never known about before.
The masterclasses have given me a vital resource bank. Before this, I didn’t know too much about banking and careers. I’ve also learnt loads about commercial awareness and general knowledge that I didn’t have before so when I go into interviews I feel so much more confident. I’ve also realised that people at HSBC are really nice and that there’s a really diverse group of people there too. In interviews, people ask me about this initiative from my CV and it looks really good. It shows that I’m willing to develop myself, which companies value a lot. Overall, It’s been a really powerful opportunity and I’d recommend it to anyone.” – Yasir Ali, Zero Gravity Undergraduate Mentee
“This initiative has challenged my perceptions and corrected my misperceptions that I had about the financial services industry. Learning more about the sector from the masterclasses and my mentor has given me the knowledge and confidence to hopefully enter the industry in the future.
I’ve really enjoyed working with my mentor. She works in investment banking which is the sector which I’m hoping to go into, so it’s been really nice to get a realistic perspective because she’s able to
tell me more about the day-to-day life and in-depth insights which you can’t get from researching online or from uni societies. Even general advice has been really helpful, like what to wear to Spring Weeks, because you can’t really find this online.
The masterclasses have built on both my industry understanding and my personal development as well. This has been really helpful not only for my career development but also for university life too.
I’d definitely recommend this experience to anyone. You gain so much more than just learning about the industry. You develop yourself and your personal skills. Your career development will really benefit from taking part.” – Olivia Moynihan, Zero Gravity Undergraduate Mentee
