Stars of British TV show 'The Only Way is Essex', a county which has a negatively perceived regional ... [+] accent

George Bernard Shaw noted it a century ago. It is impossible for anEnglishmantoopen his mouth withoutmaking someother Englishmanhate or despisehim, the Irish playwright observed in his preface to Pygmalion.

The seminal play which was later remade into the musical My Fair Lady and for Hollywood audiences as the film Pretty Woman was Bernard Shaws sharp commentary on the English class system. At its heart was an acknowledgement that the tone of what the English say is a greater predictor of their success and status than the content.

Shaw penned Pygmalion in 1916, and little has changed. At least not according to the evidence of Fiona Hill. In her remarks to the Trump impeachment hearings, Hill, a foreign-affairs expert born and raised in Englands North East region, revealed that shed thrived in the US, in part by escaping the profound accent-prejudice of her home country.

I can say with confidence that this country has offered me opportunities that I would never have had in England, the Harvard-educated PhD said. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America. Years before attending Harvard, Hill had applied to Oxford. At the entrance interview, people were openly mocking her accent, and the way she was dressed. A professor of business who had a most distinguished career in the UK once told me that his native South African accent helped him people struggled to place him by his accent so pursued other avenues.

The island of Great Britain manages to squeeze a huge breadth of accents into a relatively small geographical area. Some accents are beneficial, others detrimental. Research by the sociolinguist Professor Devyani Sharma, from the University of London, reveals that Received Pronunciation (cut-glass Queens English) continues to be a predictor of success. So too does French-accented English and a gentle Scots lilt from Edinburgh and environs. By contrast, ethnic-minority accents like Indian English are a hinderance, as are strong regional accents like Brummie (from Birmingham), Scouse (from Liverpool), Cockney (from east London) and the Estuary English of Essex and Kent.

Sharmas research reveals anecdotal evidence that while accent-bias is less marked in the professional world than at a broader social level, it remains an important factor. This ingrained prejudice in favour of refined accents poses a problem for recruitment. If employers use vocal tone as a cipher for likely performance, they risk exacerbating the already entrenched class divide in the UK and further reduce social mobility.

So what to do? Name and, probably, address free CVs might go some way to stopping accent-bias militating at an early stage against the regionally voiced. But perhaps we need to do more. Ive been sceptical in the past about the use of artificial intelligence in the recruitment process. My concerns chiefly surround the way we train such systems isnt there a danger that we simply teach robots to be as enamoured by posh voices as we are?

The debate on AI should be held. But, in lieu of its conclusions, a critical first step UK employers can take is one of recognition. They must accept that class-bias channelled through the interpretation of accents is deep-seated in British culture; and that bias against the Fiona Hills of this world leads us to lose talent like hers to our international peers.

Americans might find our preoccupation with accents quaint. But it is much more than an English eccentricity: it is actively damaging. Accent-bias is arguably seen as the last forgivable prejudice. Yet in truth it is unforgivable: leaders have a responsibility to convey to our teams how ridiculous such biases are.

Excerpt from:
The English Obsession With Accents Is Bad For Business - Forbes