The Football Association has published its Football Leadership Diversity Code for the 2022/23 season.  

The Code was first introduced to the English professional game in 2020 as an intervention to encourage football to collectively tackle inequality across senior leadership positions, broader team operations and coaching roles.

This year, for the first time, participating clubs provided their actual workforce data, including LGBTQ+ and disability data, which provides a much clearer picture of the diversity of the professional game.  

Within the 53 club signatories, 21 per cent of senior leaders and 29 per cent of team operations are female and seven per cent of senior leaders and nine per cent of team operations are Black, Asian or Mixed Heritage.

Across the coaching workforce, 13 per cent of coaches and 11 per cent of senior coaches are Black, Asian or Mixed Heritage.   

The Code shows that Brentford has continued to make progress in most areas. Among new hires at the club during the 2022/23 season, Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage people made up 15 per cent of senior leaders, 18 per cent of team operations staff and 25 per cent of coaches. 30 per cent of new hires among team operations were also women.

While we fell short of meeting the target to hire more women in senior leadership positions with 23 per cent being female, this was a significant improvement from last season.   

A key area for us to improve is the number of Black, Asian and Mixed heritage people being hired as coaches which remained at zero per cent. This is an area we are aiming to improve as we engage in new initiatives to attract more Black, Asian and Mixed heritage people into coaching positions.  

The full 2022/23 report for the Football Leadership Diversity Code can be found here.  

A Brentford FC club spokesperson said: “This was our second season in the Premier League, which has seen a huge period of growth in many areas of the club. We have again seen high volumes of recruitment, but we want to ensure we encourage internal progression and development too and will continue to invest in our people.   

“This year we made further improvements to our internal HR systems to collect diversity demographic data securely.

"We have also moved to a more secure recruitment platform, where we collect anonymised data on candidates, and will work with the provider to access the data required for the next period.

"We continue to make sure our recruitment process is fair and equitable so that we’re truly hiring the best person for each job. We aim to attract a more diverse range of candidates, through reviewing language in our job descriptions and advertising roles on different channels, to ensure we are more representative.

"We continue to align with best practice hiring methods, including the use of anonymous recruitment, and providing our people with development opportunities to enable them to make better hiring decisions, and we are hopeful that this will be reflected in our data going forward.   

“We are proud to have made a number of significant hires in coaching roles and recognise the value diversity brings in this space. This is key in the development of our academy, and we are also proud to be participating in the Premier League Coach Diversity and Inclusion Programme.

"Diversity is only one angle of our work in this area. We want our people feel welcomed and valued at Brentford FC, so that we can develop and retain our talent. The club will continue to place inclusivity at the heart of everything we do, and this will be central in our new EDI strategy.”