Sector Focus


Sports The Business of Sport


This month Chamberlink launches the Business of Sport, dedicated to looking behind the scenes at how business has become so important to sport and how both sides can take advantage – or not! In this issue, Léa Cléret, deputy chair of the Leadership Trust and a specialist in sports ethics, examines the darker side of sport.


In the past few years, scandal after scandal has hit sport organisations, from doping to corruption, match-fixing to child abuse and even people trafficking. Sport organisations are similar to business, being composed of people


working together. Even though sport organisations are often set up as not for profits, in many cases, they are now event organisers in disguise. Take FIFA - it is set up as a Swiss not-for-profit company and benefits


from generous tax-breaks. It is also under less scrutiny than if it were a FTSE company. FIFA was hit with a massive bribery and corruption scandal, thanks to


the tireless work of the US government, looking at tax evasion and fraud at board level. The damage caused by this would have inflicted some lethal punches to


any other business. However, lucky for FIFA, the World Cup is a huge cash cow protected by its monopoly position. The rest of us just cannot afford the scandals which have hit the likes of


FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, the International Association of Athletics Federation and others. Our customers are ever more demanding and the competition ever


fiercer. Ensuring that our companies are exemplary is no longer a nice to have, it is an essential part of safeguarding the future. Let’s not forget that institutions we all believed to be eternal, such as


Barings or Lehman Brothers, sank on the back of scandals. Closer to home, Volkswagen has set aside 18 billion USD for the diesel scandal, and it is estimated it could cost the company up to 80 billion USD.


How resilient is your team?


According to the Health & Safety Executive, one in four people in the UK will experience some sort of mental health illness this year. Stress and other mental health factors are among the primary causes of employee absenteeism, quality and output issues at work. At ORL, we take the importance of workplace resilience, productivity and wellbeing seriously. We’ve used our experience and expertise in these critical areas to create a bespoke resilience and wellbeing programme called ‘Fit for Purpose’.


‘Fit for Purpose’ is a blend of wellbeing best practice combined with the practical application of skills to support leaders and employees in developing great places to work. Exactly the sort of environments that increase employee engagement, retention and productivity.


If you’d like to find out how we can help your business, we’d love to hear from you!


So what can we learn from the sport scandals?


Two issues seem to crop up consistently. One is the lack of governance (as in the set of rules and processes which structure a group) and the other one is the lack of employee personal development. Any one of us, today, as employers in any sector,


has the power to ensure that proper rules, policies and values create a firm structure and employees need to understand these rules and embrace them. They also need to be able to express concern should they have any, both because the processes are in place for safe whistleblowing, and because as a person, they have the skills to be able to do so, hence ensuring a proper people development plan in is place. These top-bottom and a


bottom-up approaches are a great way to ensure best practice at all levels. Strong governance as well as employee development are the two cornerstones of a healthy company. They are not optional.


56 CHAMBERLINK February 2017


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