2022 Hudl Diversity Report: How Small Steps Are Preparing Us for Big Gains

We refuse to Stick to Sports. We’re committed to maturing our approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. In last year’s 2020 Hudl Diversity Report, we detailed ambitious goals towards this effort. Today, we’re sharing the progress towards those goals and where we still need to improve. Our 2022 Diversity Report outlines updated data collected from 2021 and highlights what we’re committing to for 2022. 

As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” That’s why we report on and share this data. Sharing it across our company ignited conversations and respectfully blunt insistence that we continue to create concrete change supported by clear outcomes. Below, we highlight the data we are tracking to help measure the impact of our efforts. 

To us, success means:

• Globally, women and gender non-conforming individuals make up at least 40% of the company population. It was 27.6% in 2020 and 29.6% in 2021.
• Global employee racial/ethnic diversity index is at least 45%. It was 22.6% in 2020 and 24.6% in 2021.
• Global gender and racial/ethnic diversity at the leadership level is at least on par with total company metrics. The tables in our report show how we’re doing on this goal.
• Our performance and management frameworks include a well-defined set of inclusive behaviors on top of the bedrock of Hudl’s core values. Our report outlines efforts and progress in this area.

As we reflect on where we are today as a company, we recognize the impact that current events have had on our team and the new playing field where we now compete. We know that COVID-19 led many U.S. women to leave the workforce, and that the “Great Resignation” has been fueled in part by a desire for better work-life balance. Hudl, despite these trends, has been able to increase the representation of women by about 2 percentage points.

Our U.S. racial/ethnic diversity index (the probability that any two randomly chosen U.S. employees would be of different races or ethnicities) remained mostly stagnant, increasing slightly from 18.5% in 2020 to 19.3% in 2021. The increase was primarily driven by a 10 percentage point increase among remote employees. In 2021, our CEO and co-founder David Graff shared his vision for the future of work at Hudl that expanded our focus on remote hiring and workplace flexibility. His vision, combined with the significant increase we made in hiring remote employees, gives us the confidence we’ll make bigger strides on our index this year. 

That said, remote hiring can’t carry the weight alone. We continue to see the value of in-person connection at our offices, and remain bullish on our unique workspaces as a differentiator and important part of our culture. To us, the future of work is a hybrid environment—meaning we need to ensure our offices also reflect the diversity of the communities in which we live and the customers that we serve. 

It’s clear we still have a long way to go, and these macro-level changes have revealed gaps in our game plan. The gaps make clear that we need to double down on our current commitments and add more impactful steps in 2022. By doing so, we’re hopeful we’ll see improvements in the demographic data and greater impact in next year’s report. 

As we continue to face many changes, internal and external, we’re reflecting on where we are today and keeping our eye on the details. We’re continuing to monitor demographic changes and other key results that will let us know whether we’re on the right track.

What We Learned Last Year

Coaches and athletes often fixate on what needs to get better—we’re no different. We saw the necessary changes needed to compete and thrive as a globally connected leader in the sports industry. Our plans and initiatives set us up to leap out of the starting blocks at a sprinter’s pace when, in reality, we’re running a marathon. We neglected the space and time that our people, especially those in management positions, would need to understand our definitions, policies and efforts. Change fatigue is real and we need to make sure we bring our employees along at a pace that’s sustainable for the long term. 

We saw the biggest wins last year with voluntary grassroots training and awareness efforts, specifically employee-led roundtables on topics intersecting sports, race, gender identity and more. Even more impactful and critical was establishing employee resource groups (ERGs). We currently have five ERGs and a governing body, Together@Hudl. The five ERGs are Community Champions, Her Hudl, Hudl Black, Pride@Hudl, and a newly formed Mental Wellness ERG. At least one representative from each ERG sits on the Together@Hudl committee.

In 2022, our focus is on sustainability and better equipping our people with the tools and resources they need to engage with this work. We’ll work specifically with people managers to serve as stewards of our shared efforts. To help all of us along this journey, we’re committed to hiring a dedicated DE&I leader to oversee our collective efforts.

As we reflect on the progress that we made on our Diversity Games Plans (DGPs, listed below) in the past year, we have much to be proud of. People showed up to engage in dialogue, create community and improve processes that made our company better. Many of the efforts were grassroots, which helped us to focus on topics that were simultaneously the most important to our employees and reflective of the broader issues facing our industry.

• DGP #1: Create a stable long-term foundation for DE&I investment. 
• DGP #2: Overhaul our hiring processes to successfully recruit more diverse candidates. 
• DGP #3: Embed inclusive programs and structures that position us to nurture and retain women and underrepresented minorities.

We also acknowledge that some efforts just didn’t get off the ground. We’re refocusing our efforts this year to include processes that build a more sustainable foundation. We’ll recommit to the DGPs where we fell short and have set new goals for 2022 to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion are integrated into all areas of our business. In our full report, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of each DGP, what we learned and what we’re doing to improve. 

Final Words

We still have a lot of work to do. We started, as organizations often do, with a direct focus on diversity. We now enter a phase where inclusion and equity become important instruments to influence and support the meaningful differences between employees. We’ll continue to seize on our unique position in the industry to drive equity and evolve Hudl for the better.