Wolverhampton Diversity
Did you know that Wolverhampton is one of the UK’s top ten fastest improving cities according to the PWC Good Growth for Cities report 2019?
The report measures the UK’s largest cities against 10 indicators that the public consider most important in relation to economic wellbeing. Wolverhampton was combined with Walsall and came seventh, despite scoring low on the house prices to earnings, skills and work life balance indicators.
What do you think can help Wolverhampton ROC? Join us in October for a forum dedicated to this subject and the regeneration of similar towns and cities in the UK.
In this short section I highlight an issue that I believe is still overlooked when considering the ingredients that can support town and city regeneration.
Diversity brings many benefits to businesses, including improvements in problem solving and better financial performance. Research by McKinsey published this year shows that gender diverse and ethnically diverse executive teams are likely to perform better than their competitors by 25% and 36% respectively.
The 2020 McKinsey report reconfirms previous research by McKinsey and others that supports the business case for diversity, although it focuses primarily on gender and race from the nine protected characteristics under the employment provisions of the Equality Act 2010.
Wolverhampton remains a richly diverse city. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the city and other changes over time will be clearer from the 2021 census.
The latest Wolverhampton in Profile report 2019 highlights that Wolverhampton’s population of almost 260,000 residents speak one or more of over 88 languages, are drawn from around the world and follow a range of faiths. Over a third of the population is from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. Compared with English averages Wolverhampton has a younger population with a greater overall proportion identifying as disabled.
Nationally the unemployment rate for BAME people is higher than the rate for non-BAME people. In Wolverhampton, however, there is no significant difference in the rates.
In my view employers and policy makers could make greater use of the diverse assets of Wolverhampton to help Wolves ROC again.
And talking of Wolves, even a football widow like me could not fail to mention the huge social and economic benefits of having Wolverhampton Wonderers, a Premier League football team, in the city.
I am proud to live in Wolverhampton and look forward to continuing the debate on how to regenerate our cities.