Social mobility

We're working to break down barriers and create opportunities for people from all socio-economic backgrounds, supporting colleagues, customers and communities to reach their full potential.

Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. At Lloyds Banking Group we are committed to ensuring that people’s potential, not their socio-economic background, shapes their future.

Improving social mobility is both a societal and business imperative. Research shows that removing barriers to employment and progression could unlock up to £19 billion for the UK economy, while helping businesses access wider talent pools, strengthen productivity, and build more innovative, representative workforces.

Across the Group, our work focuses on removing barriers to entry and progression, creating fair access to skills, careers, and building an inclusive culture where talent can thrive regardless of socio-economic background.

For Lloyds Banking Group, this is key to our purpose of Helping Britain Prosper. By expanding opportunity, widening access to skills and meaningful careers, enabling fair progression, and investing in communities, we can better reflect and understand the customers we serve, unlock untapped potential, and create lasting opportunity across Britain.

How we're supporting and empowering colleagues

Project Hope

Project Hope is a programme that creates a pathway into work for care-experienced young people.

The need for support is clear: care-experienced young people are three times more likely to be not in employment, education or training (NEET) than their peers, with more than 4,300 care leavers currently facing homelessness, a figure that has increased by 54% over the past five years.

Since November 2024, the programme has supported the recruitment of c.40 colleagues across Leeds and Belfast, with numbers continuing to grow. Through partnerships with the Care Leaver Covenant, Homewards and the Financial Academy, Project Hope is helping care-experienced young people gain the skills, confidence and support needed to build long-term careers.

Beyond individual outcomes, the programme is driving wider change by encouraging organisations to recruit from underrepresented talent pools and mobilising the Lloyds Banking Group supply chain to create more opportunities for care-experienced people.

This collective approach of Project Hope is helping to tackle some of the challenges facing care leavers, including higher rates of unemployment, homelessness and financial exclusion, while creating a more inclusive workforce for the future.

Colleague network: Boost

Boost, our social mobility colleague network, helps create a culture where talent, ambition and potential are not limited by background, circumstance or geography.

Through mentoring, work experience and volunteering, Boost brings members and allies together to turn awareness into action.

Awards and recognition

Photo taken at Care Leavers event
Speaker at a Lloyds event
Lloyds boost network - about 20 people at a Lloyds event

Improving social mobility in communities

Championing social housing

We believe everyone deserves the security of a safe and affordable home.

That’s why we’re working with partners across the UK to build more social housing and create stronger futures for families and communities.

Social housing

Investing £100 million in future skills

In 2026, we announced a £100 million investment to build future skills.

We're aiming to support more than 600,000 young people through skills, careers, employment and financial education programmes by 2030.

The ambition reflects the growing importance of helping young people develop workplace skills, gain experience and access opportunities that can support long-term careers.

Supporting the next generation

£800m donated through our Charitable Foundations

In 1985, we founded four charitable Foundations to help tackle social disadvantage in the communities that need it most.

Since then we have donated more than £800m and supported nearly 70,000 small charities. 

Foundations

Creating opportunity across the UK

We're helping unlock jobs, investment and economic opportunity across the UK by supporting regional regeneration, local businesses and community development.

Regional development

Crisis partnership

We’re partnering with Crisis to tackle homelessness.

Since the partnership began in 2023, more than £5 million has been raised, with colleagues contributing to over 11,000 volunteering hours.

Social housing

Maple Review

We’re proud to be Steering Board Members of the Maple Review, an independent, government-backed review that seeks to identify and dismantle barriers to entrepreneurship caused by economic deprivation.

Related content

Why join us?

A career at Lloyds Banking Group could take you anywhere. Yes, anywhere. Whether you’re developing the code behind our latest app feature, analysing data across our 28 million customers, or helping to change customers’ lives day to day, there is a role here for you. 

Why join us?

Inclusion at Lloyds Banking Group

As a Group, we’re guided in how we do things by a clear set of values. A key part of how we seek to live these values is to create a fully inclusive environment for all our colleagues, customers and communities; one that is truly representative of modern-day Britain.

Inclusion