SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The All-in Diversity Project (All-in), an industry non-profit organisation promoting workplace diversity and inclusivity within global gambling, has published its first ‘All-in Index’ report, detailing insights on the sector’s workforce make-up and dynamics.
The All-in Index is supported by Oxford Brookes University’s ‘Centre for Diversity Policy Research & Practice’, with the aim of developing the industry’s leading on-going knowledge and data resource base for diversity, inclusion and equality metrics.
“This is the first initiative on this topic where the sector has collaborated on a global scale, and we are very pleased with the result,” details Kelly Kehn, Co-Founder of All-In Diversity Project.
“Those who have signed up believe in the need for collaboration and transparency to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce for the future.”
All-in’ has researched 25 organisations within betting/gaming – representing over 100 global brands, undertaking the most comprehensive survey on workforce dynamics, covering areas such as ’employment policy, compensation, HR practices, employee benefits and support’.
Recording data over Q3 2018 (period ending 31 August), the Index identifies a total of 117, 231 employees across the 25 companies surveyed, representing an overall demographic breakdown of 53% male to 46.5% female.
Interesting Index data points are observed with regards to the sector’s ‘gender balance’ within specific workplace disciplines. As anticipated, marketing and training/development functions record an equal balance within most organisations.
Conversely, the least gender-balanced roles relate to – ‘Technology (all aspects), HR & People Management, Strategy and Risk management’.
On face value, All-in details that the data seems to ‘support board legacy assumptions‘ attached to gambling. Nevertheless, at closer inspection the data shows surprising insights, supporting progress on industry diversity and inclusion:
- 18% of ‘risk-related’ roles are identified to females (NB – All-in notes that ‘risk-related’ is a broad terminology that needs a better classification).
- 20% of ‘tech-related’ roles are identified to females – above current UK (17%) & US (19%) tech industry averages.
- More women reported to be working in the disciplines of – Sales & Commercial, Finance and Compliance.
Data on the industry’s career progression from employee to executive positions, the Index reports a close male/female parity (50/50) at ‘entry-level’ and up to ‘team leader/supervisor’.
Moving upwards on career progress the index shows that at levels above Manager status, the sector sees its most significant difference in ‘rate of gender decline’ between Head of Department to CEO/MD positions, dropping 90% from 80 men to 8 women.
However, this executive trend is not replicated at a governance level, where current industry board structures show that 28% of corporate non-executives were reported as female – a figure above US and UK national averages.
For future practice, the All-in Index will research industry ‘tipping points’ referencing employee age, role, location and lifestyle choices to understand trends better and interpret knowledge-gaps on workplace make-up dynamics.
“While diversity surveys per se are not new, this to the best of our knowledge is the very first initiative which seeks to measure all forms of diversity across a whole sector on a global basis. We know there will be challenges along the way, but by choosing to collaborate and share best practice we hope to drive long-term impactful change in our sector, and in doing so perhaps provide a blueprint for other” adds Christina Thakor-Rankin All-in Co-Founder.
________________________
Click on the below tab to read the ‘Q3 2018 – All-in Index’
