Sporting hero on board | Recruiter
In 2016, data collected by Sport England showed that men dominated the boards of sports organizations “overwhelmingly”.
“It was quite a shocking picture,” recalled Phil Smith, Sport England’s director of partnerships. “Sports federations were predominantly male, white males, middle-class white males, middle-class white males who came from relatively affluent backgrounds, and also males ‘of a certain age’.
“As a result, the sports industry missed out on all the wonderful, diverse experiences that the UK and England have to offer… These organisations, many of them national sports bodies, are meant to be for and represent England as a whole. And boards just didn’t do that.”
In the same year, the Code for Sports Governance set out the levels of transparency, diversity and inclusion, accountability and integrity required of organizations seeking and/or receiving UK Sport UK Government and National Lottery funding. or Sports England. The code provided a reason for change and “a mechanism that makes it easy for them to change,” Smith says.
And change is underway, helped by a partnership between Sport England and global headhunting firm Perrett Laver. Since the dates and the new Code emerged seven years ago, the partnership has resulted in 53 highly qualified and diverse professionals taking on non-executive board positions at sporting organizations in England. And in the first quarter of 2023, these 53 belong to a network of 285 highly qualified and diverse professionals, led by the partnership, which can be opened up for future such positions.
“That’s 285 employees with an amazing diversity of skills, expertise and experience in their own chosen industry,” says Smith. “People who work at a highly skilled level in professional fields and have expressed a desire and interest to serve on a sports committee.”
Imogen Baird leads the sporting practice at Perrett Laver, whose sporting clients include the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), The Football Association, Invictus Games and Yorkshire Cricket Club, among many other national governing bodies, teams, clubs, foundations and charities in the sports sector as well as events and rights holder rooms “across the sports landscape”.
And Baird, herself a former competitive athlete, is among the heroes of this work with Sport England as one of the architects of the project to diversify sport’s board membership.
Sport England called and realized there was a problem.”
Speaking of the relationship with Sport England and UK Sport, which continues this year, Baird says: “We are really passionate about continuing the journey of professionalising sport governance. We were very happy to secure the work.”
Baird explains how it all started, saying Sport England “made a call and realized there was a problem… The boards at the non-executive level were really quite a poor representation of all the protected characteristics, so a real lack of diversity.” She [Sport England] wanted to counteract that.”
The original concept was to create a pool – now known as a network – of suitable candidates to propose when board positions in a sports organization become vacant. Such candidates are unlikely to come from the sports industry, but are “interested in non-executive leadership positions in the industry that have the right credibility, the right skillset and diverse backgrounds,” says Baird.
After winning the pitch, Perrett Laver reached out to potential candidates and training providers, leveraging existing connections and forging new ones to begin building a solid platform for a network. Training providers helped create and deliver learning modules to guide candidates through the requirements and requirements of serving on boards of directors and ensuring candidates fully understood the commitment they would be making. (Non-executive board positions are typically unpaid, with those who fill the positions donating their time and expertise a few times a year.)
Next, “we started introducing ourselves pretty quickly, approached national governing bodies and said, ‘We want to know when you have a vacancy.’ And there were very few early adopters,” says Baird.
Sports organizations were soon knocking on Perrett Laver’s doors, asking for her help in finding the right candidates for their board positions. “We’re giving them now [the organisation securing the board member] also a bit of advisory support – what does the candidate package look like? What is the type of process they are designing? Is it convincing? is it inclusive So it’s a pretty holistic support package that we’re offering people now,” says Baird.
In 2023, says Baird, network members can look forward to “including events and other opportunities to network with each other and of course with partners and decision makers from across the industry, as well as more training workshops. Crucially, exposure to non-executive positions continues to be circulated across the sector, with ample bespoke support available for applications.”
For these candidates themselves, the salient benefit is the opportunity to network with each other, along with the opportunity to learn about different organizations and be considered for board positions. Sport England’s Smith says: “They meet occasionally both on screen and in person [with each other] because their experiences are of course very useful for each other. We learned a lot from listening to all the candidates. We learned a lot about their experiences in other industries, the barriers, the rejection they faced, their motivations.”
But the key to successfully inducting candidates is cultural assimilation not only into the organization they are joining, but most likely into the sports industry itself. “If you come into the sports industry from outside, you won’t get it on day one”, says Smith. “And likewise, you won’t be able to put in your best board performance on Day 1. Yes, you recruit amazing people, but you have to give them the chance to be successful.”
He continues: “I’ve never worked in any other industry, but it has to be different everywhere. You have to understand the language and the norms, the do’s and don’ts, and learn the acronyms. This is a big deal and it takes time. So we were very aware that bringing in people from outside the industry is an extra layer of induction and learning that people need, and not just that they’re not the historical demographics of people on the boards. “
The stakes are high, Smith emphasizes. “I’ve seen the odd occasion where a brilliant person from another industry has walked in. And because there was an assumption on the recruiting board that this person would just arrive fully formed and brilliant, they almost spat her out [a candidate].
“You can’t put the burden and expectation on the new board member to bring himself up to speed – you have to help him and you have to listen to his concerns.”
We have more work to do for people with disabilities and that is our next big focus.”
blacksmith (pictured above) points out that being part of this talent network doesn’t necessarily lead to a role quickly or not at all: “There have to be vacancies, and a lot of bodies in sport have their vacancies on rotation, so the vacancies only come up every so often. But we’re at a good point now where when a sports bodyboarder is looking for a new recruit, their first port of call is now this pool of 285 people, not just because they have different people… but they have highly qualified people. “
Organizations looking to diversify their boards also face hurdles, many of which have to do with timing. When asked what companies typically can’t handle in a headhunting situation, Baird says that “recruiting well takes time and we really need to question the job from the start, not just ‘We need to fill this position really fast.’ I think there’s a real pressure to act quickly and make changes quickly.”
Smith says the biggest achievement to date in diversifying boards has been the improvement in gender balance, “which has been fantastic” from under 20% in the early days of the initiative. “Our next big focus is on other protected characteristics…
“We have more work to do for people with disabilities and that’s our next big focus. We need more people who have experience with disabilities… In the most recent census data for the population, the percentage of people who have a disability is almost 20%. So we are a bit underrepresented.”
Smith acknowledges that “diversity in itself is not a solution to a dysfunctional organization.” Great skill is required, as is leadership.
“No matter how skilled your people are, whatever their background, you need to get the best out of them, and that requires leadership.”