Premier League and EFL clubs were required this year to report details of their workforce diversity data for the first time under a new Football Association regulation. This was aimed at promoting greater equality of opportunities, but even people working in football are hard-pressed to find the numbers.
The clubs published the results of their internal surveys on 1 June, other than Manchester United owing to a website glitch corrected a few days later, but the silence from the sport regarding the findings has been deafening. None of the FA, Premier League or EFL commented on the data or published a summary of the findings, indicating that the drive for greater transparency has its limits.
In one sense, the silence is unsurprising. Analysis of the data conducted by Kick It Out paints a depressing picture of a sport sorely lacking in diversity, with the staff at most clubs not reflecting the ethnic makeup of their local communities.
In the Premier League, 78% of clubs’ workforces are white compared with an average of 66% among the local populations and although there is 13% ethnic diversity in the coaching staff, only two top-flight clubs reported having Black, Asian and minority ethnic coaches in senior roles.
Staff at EFL clubs appear more representative, with 87% of their workforce white compared with an average of 80.8% locally, although clubs in the lower divisions were not required to provide detailed breakdowns of staff roles so the figures for coaches are unclear.
Kick It Out’s chief executive, Samuel Okafor, welcomed the publication of the data, although there was no disguising his disappointment at the findings. “For many years we as an organisation have been calling for the game to be more transparent and bring more data into the light,” he said. “It’s really positive the FA have brought out a new rule that means all 92 clubs have to publish their workforce data.
“What the data has shown us is probably not a surprise to us or to many people. When we look at Black, Asian, ethnically diverse staff, whether that’s in boardrooms, in senior leadership roles, in coaching or senior coaching, you can see there’s a huge lack of representation. When we look at women in boardrooms and senior leadership roles, in coaching, we can again see there is a huge underrepresentation. Representation of LGBTQ people and those with disabilities is very low.
“Some of these data points will not be a surprise to many, but having it in the light is positive for driving change and accountability.”
Okafor has been at Kick It Out for just under a year after replacing Tony Burnett, who before retiring last summer called for sanctions for clubs that failed to meet diversity targets.
The FA created the new rule after mixed results from the Football Leadership Diversity Code, a voluntary reporting requirement introduced in 2020. Fifty-three clubs had signed up by last season and none had met the eight hiring targets to increase diversity among staff.
FA sources indicated they were in the process of analysing the data. The governing body plans to submit a report to all stakeholders, including the Premier League, EFL and Kick It Out, before discussing the issue publicly at a Football Leadership Diversity summit in the autumn.
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Okafor regards mandatory publication as a step forward, but there remain concerns over a lack of transparency. Many of the Premier League clubs reported high rates of “prefer not to say” regarding ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability and did not report data for roles with fewer than 10 staff members, leading to a lack of visibility regarding coaching posts. Many clubs also use the catch-all “under 10%” rather than giving exact figures, making it hard to accurately assess representation, especially for smaller demographic groups.
Okafor spent 20 years in the banking industry after a playing career that peaked with Colchester in League One, most recently as a director at the private bank Coutts, and believes football lags behind in terms of recruitment practices. EFL clubs have had access to an anonymised recruitment platform, iRecruit, for two years but it is unclear how widely it is used.
“The banking sector is ahead when it comes to transparency, when it comes to target setting,” Okafor said. “There’s still a massive way to go in terms of getting the right level of representation across the game.
“There’s also an opportunity to look at some of the best practices that happen in other industries and how do you bring them into football. We need diverse shortlists and interview panels, all those inclusive practices, so it’s not the select few that are getting those jobs.”
Okafor is eager to make the economic case for having a diverse workforce. “We will continue to talk about the moral case for change, but there’s a real commercial benefit when you have a diverse workforce, when you have a diverse leadership team that looks like the club’s community, and when you have a diverse coaching staff … You can’t just have EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] over on one side and financial sustainability on the other side. You really need to bring the two together.”
