Gallup shared that 50% of U.S. workers engaged in quiet quitting in 2022 — and certainly the sports world was no exception. In 2022, there were professional teams that had limited to no performance metrics, no onboarding, no management training.
How are multimillion-dollar sports companies still operating human resource management (HRM) like startup mom-and-pop stores?
We repeatedly encounter stories of employee maltreatment, hiring inequities, and egregious acts of racism, misogyny, and homophobia defining sports experiences. Imbalance stems from how we bring people into sports organizations. Ideally, through our HRM practices, we’d recruit people into our boardrooms, hire individuals into our clubs as coaches and managers, and evaluate performance based on success benchmarks. This process should be equitable, but often goes unactualized and unmanaged.
One of our studies revealed sport sales hiring managers hired from their insulated networks — telling HR who they wanted to hire, with limited concern for experience or diversity. Other scholars revealed that while an entire pool of candidates were perceived to have similar success potential, female candidates were less likely to be offered the position.
