The King's Award for Enterprise - Promoting Opportunity (through social mobility)

The King’s Award for Enterprise in Promoting Opportunity (through social mobility) recognises businesses that are helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds develop the skills, confidence and experience needed to access employment and progress in their careers.

Whether through mentoring, work experience, careers advice, inclusive recruitment practices, or interview and job-readiness training, successful applicants must demonstrate at least 2 years of sustained impact and show clear benefits for the individuals supported, their organisation, employees and the wider community.

This award celebrates businesses that are breaking down barriers to opportunity and creating lasting positive change through social mobility.

Criteria

To apply for this award, your organisation must have a programme that supports people from disadvantaged backgrounds in improving their job skills and their chances of finding work.

This includes doing one or more of the following, for at least 2 years:

providing work experience or careers advice
mentoring
offering interview and job-related training
making sure your recruitment process is open to everyone

You’ll need to prove the benefits for:

the people you’ve supported
your organisation
your employees
the wider community

You cannot apply if social mobility is the main focus of your organisation.

If you’re a training provider or educational organisation, you can only apply if you do one of the following:

apply with a business
have a social mobility initiative for your employees

For organisations that help people who face barriers to employment, progression or opportunity

This is open to:

businesses
charities, social enterprises and non‑profits
training and educational organisations
subsidiaries with a dedicated social mobility mission

Advice for applying

Strong applications include:

a clear explanation of who you support and why they need help
a detailed description of the programme or intervention – its purpose, design and delivery
evidence of impact on individuals, supported by KPIs and progress tracking.
a narrative showing how the programme is transformative for participants – and often for the organisation itself