Summary:
The Football League is committed to positively impacting diversity within its 72 member clubs across all three divisions. The areas of diversity being investigated within this project including ethnicity, disability, gender, sexuality, age and social disadvantage within the following thematic areas:
- Player/Coach – developing professional players and coaches from diverse communities
- Business – development of procedures for wider business areas including new suppliers within communities
- Administrative – developing policies and procedures that enables employees to reflect the local community
- Community– using community schemes to access new diverse communities
- Supporter – development of strategies to encourage support from diverse communities
Approach:
Our approach guided the Football League through a process to address the needs of the Competencies in Diversity to identify the key deliverables outlined below:
- Provide advice on the best way for The Football League to achieve its desired objectives.
- Provide The Football League with necessary best practice guide.
- Present findings to Football League Clubs.
This will enable the Football League to meet its objectives of:
- To enable The League to support its clubs in attaining greater diversity across all strands, including: race, gender, sexuality and age in all business areas.
- To develop a Football League package of support to clubs, looking at best practice across The League and selected best practice outside of football.
- To develop a template of initiatives and ideas under each development heading that will enable clubs to develop their own tailored action plan for diversity.
Our approach considered each stage separately and provided sufficient detail and a clear breakdown of the actions and associated costs required for completion. This is carried out in three phases Ask – Shape – Report.
Outcome:
We produced an in-depth good practice guide and recommendations for future action across the whole diversity spectrum.