Profile Strategic HR
One common goal
Everton Football Club is known for being a family club so HR was redesigned to help
better reflect this stance among employees, hears RACHEL SHARP
Before travelling to Liverpool to meet people
director of Everton Football Club Kim Healey,
HR magazine has already heard the phrases the
‘people’s club’ and ‘family club’ in relation to the
organisation a fair few times. A walk through the
city centre to the Premier League club’s head office
in the Royal Liver Building and it all starts to fall
into place.
On the busy high street HR magazine comes
across a roadshow vehicle
presenting plans for Everton’s new
stadium and legacy project to
members of the local community
for feedback. If the crowds taking
a look are anything to go by this is
quite the talk of the town.
“Everton is a truly genuine club
and we want to ooze that out to
everyone – whether that’s staff,
supporters or the community –
everyone matters,” says Healey
proudly as she gives us a tour of the Club’s new
office along the city’s waterfront.
It was this family feel and vision to be the best
(the Club’s motto is Nil Satis Nisi Optimum –
‘nothing but the best is good enough’) that Healey
“couldn’t turn down” when she was approached to
join as head of HR in 2015.
“I met Denise (Barrett-Baxendale, then-deputy
CEO and now CEO) and she showed me her vision.
What she wanted was to be the best, and to be in The
Sunday Times’ Best Companies to Work For, which
would make us the first football club to achieve that.
And it was like: ‘er right OK and off I go’,” she says.
HR’s remit covers “every member of staff except
the players”, including the first team manager,
teachers at the Everton Free School, coaches and
medical personnel at USM Finch Farm training
ground, stadium staff and employees of the charity
Everton in the Community. This totals 500
permanent and fixed-term employees and more
than 950 casual and match-day workers.
The club has always retained its family feel and
made good on its motto of excellence, with the team
winning the FA Cup five times and lifting the UEFA
Cup in 1985. Everton was also the first club to
construct a purpose-built stadium and have a game
televised. But employment and HR practices were in
serious need of modernising when Healey joined –
something football clubs in general have historically
struggled with.
“Go back 15 years and HR in football was a lot
less prevalent,” says Healey, referencing her time
at Blackburn Rovers (her first job in football) and
then Wigan, a club that had “never
had HR”.
Coming from a “non-football
background” this was all quite an
eye-opener: “I got a lot of ‘Kim
you can’t do that here, it’s football’.
I had to educate people that ‘it
might be football but let me give
you some options’.”
First on Healey’s list at Everton
was rebranding HR to “the people
function”. Her aim was to move it
I got a lot of ‘Kim you
can’t do that here,
it’s football’. I had to
educate people that
‘it might be football
but let me give you
some options’
from “a policing function” to a business partner
model. “If we’re going to have that family experience
with supporters then staff need to feel it as well,”
she comments.
Another action taken early on to build HR’s
credibility was Healey’s insistence that one HR
person work every match day.
“That’s when we have the biggest population of
our staff. We have about 800 casual staff on match
days and they might have HR issues, so they need to
know we’re there and where to find us,” she says.
This is all part of football becoming more of
a business, and clubs realising they “need to
attract and retain the best people they possibly can,”
she says.
Tackling the issue of low pay in sport has been
crucial to this shift. On the day HR magazine
catches up with Healey national news sites have
published reports of Citizens UK calling on football
clubs to end ‘poverty pay’, and named Everton as
one of a handful already taking action.
“I think it’s recognising that those working in
sports clubs and facilities are affected by low pay,”
explains Healey. “A lot of money in clubs goes into
Photography: Lorne Campbell
hrmagazine.co.uk November 2019 HR 25
/hrmagazine.co.uk