Perfect Stormz: Making Diversity and Inclusion in Football a lot less Merky ⚽️
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Perfect Stormz: Making Diversity and Inclusion in Football a lot less Merky ⚽️
Merky FC can provide organisations with an alternative platform from which to source candidates, as well as raising awareness of the different roles in sport to a new audience, but education is key.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
🗒 Special thanks to Chaj Arunasalam for his feedback and support on bringing this article to life.
BIG IDEA
Earlier this month, Stormzy and adidas announced an extension of their partnership on Merky FC, with the aim of promoting diversity within the football industry.
Backed by data revealing that, despite 56% of young black individuals aspiring to work in the industry, only 6.7% hold senior roles, the initiative was initially launched in 2022 by the musician to set the record straight.
To address this disparity, eleven leading brands from across the football industry committed to providing placements to drive change, including giants like Sky Sports and Manchester United.
In 2023, this has expanded to 27 brands, with influential names like EA Sports and ITV joining the effort, offering 50 roles across the business of football.
The results from the program's last year have been highly encouraging, attracting thousands of young applicants and assisting employers in hiring top black talent. Many of those who received placements have transitioned to secure full-time employment such as Tyler Larbi, who joined football media publisher VERSUS.
While stories like Tyler's are inspiring, Tobi Ogundipe, the founder of DIVERSE, emphasises that the benefits extend beyond the young people involved, with employers standing to gain the most from greater representation within the industry.
"The best things are going to happen when you have teams with different perspectives and different experiences. To have that in the building is super valuable. That leads to the best results,” said Ogundipe, who is collaborating with Merky FC to select and support the recipients of this year’s placements.
As Ogundipe highlighted, the importance of representation and diversity in the workplace cannot be overstated.
There are even a number of studies from the likes of McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group touting the financial returns of companies implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives (DEI). However, such studies do come with an asterisk attached.
* It can’t just be about hitting quotas.
In order for DEI to have a real impact, organisations must understand the ‘learning-and-effectiveness paradigm’ - a term coined by researchers Robin Ely and David Thomas.
Ely and Thomas argue that cultivating a learning orientation toward diversity - one in which people leverage their personal experiences within specific identity groups to rethink tasks, products, business procedures, and organizational standards - enables companies to increase their effectiveness.
Something that has rarely happened to-date when it comes to many DEI schemes.
Organisations have largely failed to adopt a learning orientation toward diversity and are no closer to reaping its benefits. Instead, business leaders and diversity advocates alike are advancing a simplistic and empirically unsubstantiated version of the business case. They misconstrue or ignore what abundant research has now made clear: Increasing the numbers of traditionally underrepresented people in your workforce does not automatically produce benefits. Taking an “add diversity and stir” approach, while business continues as usual, will not spur leaps in your firm’s effectiveness or financial performance.
Increasing diversity does not, by itself, increase effectiveness; what matters is how an organisation harnesses diversity, and whether it’s willing to reshape its power structure.
Educating ourselves is the first real step in this process.
For example, ask yourself, where does your organisation advertise jobs? You may notice the platforms and language used is more geared toward a specific demographic. And if this is the case, how could your organisation find ways to also appeal to candidates from other backgrounds in future?
Larbi, whilst working with VERSUS, played a crucial part in their partnership with Chelsea FC to launch the Blue Creator Fund, a project aimed at empowering the next generation of creators from under-represented backgrounds.
Interestingly he noted that accessibility played a crucial part in how they thought about the application process:
“If writing isn't your best suit to showcase yourself, you can make a video and you can just talk, or you can make a drawing,” said Larbi. “I think [that] in the world that we live in, we've gotten so used to things being the way they are, we forget that not everyone expresses themselves through the norm. Some of the most creative people I know actually find it difficult to bring their ideas to life [through written communication].”
This is where programs like Merky FC can offer a lot of value to the wider sports industry, which has typically recruited from a small sample of the population and through rigid means.
Merky FC can provide organisations with an alternative platform from which to source candidates, as well as raising awareness of the different roles in sport to a new audience. But the biggest impact for Stormzy-backed program is as an educator to both sides.
Ultimately, in a time where the world feels more divided than ever, increasing our awareness and compassion of one another, our strengths and our differences, is a message and a goal that we should all be striving towards. However, it's essential that above all, this comes from a place of authenticity, or very little will truly change.
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