The Football Association (FA) released its second annual report on the Football Leadership Diversity Code on Friday (28).
While it indicated that the game as a whole achieved progress toward the Code’s aims over the same season, much more has to be done.
According to a press statement from The FA Group, more diverse male applicants as well as more Black, Asian, and mixed heritage female candidates were included on recruiting shortlists.
In terms of employing Black, Asian, and people of mixed heritage as top coaches in both men’s and women’s football, it saw progress as football clubs collectively exceeded goals.
On the other side, fewer women, and people of Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage were hired for top management positions during the 2021–22 season. In addition, the recruitment of female coaches for women’s football and non-senior varied coaches for men’s football fell short of goals.
It’s possible that some signatories were more successful than others because they were able to recruit from more varied populations, but it’s also probable that differences were caused by the fact that certain clubs had better-developed equality, diversity, and inclusion [ED&I] and recruiting frameworks.
All clubs should soon have the resources to guarantee they are hiring the greatest personnel from diverse shortlists with the Premier League’s ED&I standard upgraded in 2021 and the English Football League (EFL)’s ‘Together’ strategy announced this autumn.
The three organisations that oversee English football achieved both goals and made sure that 38.5 per cent of their new hires were female.
Key highlights from the reporting period of 1 August 2021 to 31 July 2022 include:
FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said, “I would like to thank everybody involved for supporting the Football Leadership Diversity Code, as part of a collective desire to create meaningful change. This year shows some signs of progress, with a shift in recruitment processes that will start to change the game and the three governing bodies exceeding seven out of eight targets.
“However, while we saw clubs exceeding diversity targets for senior coaches in the men’s game and coaches in the women’s game, there is still a huge amount of work to be done across the game. We understand that substantive change will take time, but a number of clubs have already made progress, and we expect to see more clubs follow that lead in years to come.”
Kick It Out’s Sanjay Bhandari said: “The results on recruitment of Black, Asian, and mixed heritage coaches in both the men’s and women’s game, and the achievement of targets by the football authorities, are encouraging.
“There is also plenty of room for improvement in other areas such as senior leadership and the recruitment of female coaches. Two years into the process, now is a good time for pause and reflection across the industry, to share learnings and best practices. Collectively, that will enable us to increase the pace of change.”
The code was created in 2020 to enhance equality of opportunity and support the recruitment of diverse talent across senior leadership teams, team operations, and coaching set-ups.
According to the statistics, there are now 60 clubs that have endorsed the code, including all 20 Premier League teams. However, just 32 of the EFL’s 72 clubs have signed on. Also, the Barclays Women’s Super League, and Barclays Women’s Championship, of which are committed to eliminating injustice and implementing more diversity in the long term.
In 2021, The FA established a careers portal to offer better transparency of positions available within English football and to enable clubs and groups to contact a more varied audience of applicants.
All Code signatories are permitted to post job openings on the site, which has had over 13,500 applications and over 2,600 job postings since it launched.
Of these, 40 per cent of applicants were from a Black, Asian or Mixed Heritage background, while 19 per cent were females. All candidates said they would recommend the platform to their network.
The FA continues to encourage those who want a role within the game to register their profile on the platform to receive alerts and to search for roles relevant to them.
[Source: EasternEye, SkySports]
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