The Football Association’s new diversity code aims to ensure more candidates from ethnic minorities can land top jobs.
The Football Leadership Diversity Code will ask clubs to hit targets in coaching positions as well as senior management roles.
Here, i looks to answer some of the key questions raised by the initiative.
Q: What are the aims of the code?
A: The FA says the diversity code has been “developed in collaboration with club executives, players, coaches, HR directors, media and leaders across the game to ensure English football better represents our modern and diverse society” and is viewed as “a starting point towards greater diversity”.
Q: How will those aims be achieved?
A: Participating clubs will have to commit to making 15 per cent of new executive positions available to people from minority backgrounds. There will also be targets for gender diversity, with a plan for 30 per cent of new appointments in senior leadership positions to be female candidates. Women’s football clubs will also have to commit to having 50 per cent female coaches, while at men’s professional clubs 25 per cent of new hires will be black, Asian or of mixed heritage.
Q: Have all clubs signed up to it?
A: The code is voluntary so not every club has to implement it. So far, 42 clubs from across the Premier League, English Football League, Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship have signed up – Southampton are the only Premier League club not to do so.
Q: Why are Southampton against it?
A: They are not, in principle. They say they have achieved the Premier League’s Advanced Equality Standard and plan to wait to see “how a revised Premier League Equality Standard and the Football Leadership Diversity Code will work together and complement each other before revising our recruitment targets and already established processes.”
Q: Who has been the driving force behind delivering the code?
A: Former Chelsea and Celtic defender Paul Elliott, head of the FA’s inclusion advisory board, has been key to the new code and said it will boost diversity in football and “signal a long-term change for the English game”.
Q: Can grass-roots clubs sign up?
A: Yes, from next year. The FA is keen for all clubs across the country to adopt the voluntary code and are planning to launch an adapted version, following the same principles, for the National League and non-league clubs in 2021.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2HEdP6X
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