How We’re Approaching Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

In June, we made a commitment: we’re not just sticking to sports anymore. Fighting against systemic racism and injustice is everyone’s responsibility, including ours. However, we’re definitely new to this fight, and we have a long way to go to get better at it. 

We’ve worked over the summer to put together and start acting on a plan, and we’d like to share our progress to keep you in the loop and to keep ourselves accountable. These three focus areas are just the start, but we’re excited about the change they’ll bring—both at Hudl and in the broader sports community.

We’re starting with us.

The first step we took was to look inside our own house and complete our second diversity report. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” And based on our results, we know we need to do a lot. 

Hudl is currently 71% male and 89% white. These numbers don’t reflect the global and diverse environment we want to create for our employees—and they certainly don’t reflect the diversity of our broad customer base of coaches and athletes. But perhaps most importantly, these numbers indicate that we aren’t as welcoming and inclusive as we could be. We need to change—so we’ve set some goals. The full details are in our diversity report, but here’s the quick summary:

• We’re setting aggressive and specific quantitative goals when it comes to the diversity of our workforce—and we’re going to actively incentivize and monitor reaching those goals so they don’t fall by the wayside. 
• We’re overhauling our internal recruitment, interview and hiring processes. We’ll train our entire team on the reality of unconscious bias, implement structured interviews for every open job and continue to insist on a diverse pipeline of talent.
• We’re creating and formalizing more spaces and opportunities to celebrate our diversity and cultivate a sense of belonging among our employees—and to educate ourselves and each other on the issues. This includes creating Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), further investing time and resources into our Hudl Together task force, providing DE&I training opportunities, and holding monthly roundtable discussions where everyone is welcome to share thoughts and learn about a variety of social justice topics.

We’re putting our money where our mouth is.

Diversifying our workforce is an important step for us, but we’re also actively investing in underserved and minority communities outside our own four walls. That means opening up our wallets—individually and as a company.

In the weeks between George Floyd’s death and Juneteenth, we donated over $86,000 from our employees, leadership, board members and investors to organizations dedicated to dismantling white supremacy and fighting for racial justice and equality. Among those were the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and the NAACP. 

We’ve also created a new grant program. Our first round of grants gives over $30,000 in Hudl products and services to these three fantastic organizations:

• TEAM Inc.
• Football for the World
• The Keys Foundation

We’re thrilled to be working closely with them, and we’ll share more about our collaborations soon!

We hope you’ll take this journey with us. 

We’re grateful to work in sports—an industry that understands the value of a fair and level playing field. As we move forward, we’re committed to listening, learning and adapting our approach. This is just the start, and we have a long way to go. 

We’ll continue to share updates on our progress, but we’re eager to hear what you’re doing, too. How are you promoting DE&I in your organization? What conversations are you having with coaches and athletes? How are you using the power of sports to unite your community? Please connect with us at communitychampions@hudl.com and share your DE&I journey.