SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
William Hill Plc is the highest-ranked gambling firm to feature in the Financial Times annual ‘Diversity Leaders Index’, which tracks the progress of corporate inclusivity directives amongst Europe’s biggest corporations.
Composed by research partner Statista, the FT’s index measures employee perception of companies’ inclusiveness and effectiveness in tackling complex issues in improving corporate diversity with regards gender balance, openness to sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age and disabilities.
The FT stated that its 2020 index had received significant public interest following the events of an unprecedented year in which workforces had been required to work from home en masse and global social justice movements placing inclusion and fair representation at the forefront of corporate and political agendas.
Registering a score of 7.58, William Hill ranked as the highest placed European gambling incumbent, indexing 150 out of 15,000 companies with over 100,000 employees surveyed.
Meanwhile, FTSE competitor GVC Holdings’ UK subsidiary Ladbrokes Coral was the only other gambling firm to register on the index ranked 793, having registered a score of 6.98.
Leading its research, Statista revealed that it had specifically targeted the views of ‘under-represented’ groups in working environments, including women of colour and the disabled who ‘were given more weight in the survey’.
This November, industry diversity and inclusivity non-profit the All-in Diversity Project (AiDP) published its second annual report analysing the workforce make-up and leadership composition of the global gambling sector.
Analysing 2019 data from 26 gambling firms, AiDP underlined that boardroom-level female representation had declined and the sector faced issues of pay parity as “without exception, every salary band shows males earning more than females”.
