Portsmouth Football Club is a keen supporter of equality, diversity, and inclusion initiatives.
We are proud to say that we already have a diverse senior leadership team in place in terms of gender and aim towards ensuring all recruitment at the club is promoted to attract a diverse range of candidates, free from discrimination or bias.
Our diversion and inclusion officer has built links with local BAME and minority communities to champion equality, diversity, and inclusion, and is currently participating in a project with the Premier League Community Fund and our head of HR to explore how we attract BAME candidates into football leadership and coaching roles at all levels and remove barriers from our recruitment processes.
Through this collaboration, we are also working on a project to develop a better understanding of the issues, perspectives, and best practices in supporting BAME workforce development and put supporting policies and development programmes in place to develop diverse talent within the club.
We’re keen to commit to the Football Leadership Diversity Code as we recognise the importance of ensuring that discrimination does not exist, on or off the pitch. We want to ensure that our club’s boardroom and leadership reflect the diverse society that we live in and is a club that is free from inequality.
The Football Leadership Diversity Code is a major step towards educating everyone involved about the qualities a diverse workforce can bring.
We believe it will signify a change in culture and ensure the message of racism and discrimination has no room in the sport. The Code will allow us to push forward the response to inequality by making sure that we have the policies and processes in place to assist our club to attract candidates who better reflect the society we live in and the people who play the beautiful game that is football.
Football unites us all, it is the building blocks of our communities across the world, and so we believe it’s important that clubs do their best to inspire and reflect the communities they serve.
We believe that having a clearly defined structure around recruitment procedures, designed to encourage and support further advances in football leadership diversity, is a clear and conscious path needed to be taken by football clubs in bringing a more equal and diverse representation of leadership within our sport.
In turn, as per changes in general society, we can further enhance football by bringing together differing cultures, strengths, and viewpoints that will undoubtedly add to the rich history of our sport.
