The All-In Diversity Project is based in London, England.
In 2017, Tina Thakor-Rankin and Kelly Kehn collaborated to found the “All-in Diversity Project“, which is backed by Young Gamblers Education Trust (YGAM). Both women are experienced professionals in the online gambling industry and currently run independent consulting firms.
Thakor-Rankin and Kehn formed the All-in Diversity Project as an industry-driven initiative to provide benchmarks for diversity, equality, and inclusion in the global gambling sector.
One cannot solve a problem without defining and quantifying said problem. The initiative has the tagline “We believe that we can’t fix what we can’t measure.”
With that in mind, Thakor-Rankin and Kehn designed their own diversity benchmark.
Creation of the All-Index
The primary objective of the All-in Diversity Project is the establishment and publication of the All-Index, which is an industry standard index. The All-Index is designed to be the definitive tool for the sector to measure the current levels of diversity. Like the Human Development Index or the Global Peace Index, the All-Index takes a variety of factors and combines them into one all-inclusive number rating.
Using the information from the index, the researchers can then implement a guide for future change and progress. The Index should provide a year-on-year progress update that highlights successes, discuss challenges, and points the way to opportunities. From that, the All-In Diversity Project can make ‘best practice’ recommendations in areas such as corporate governance, internal policies, recruitment practices, equal pay, employment legislation, unconscious bias, and marketing.
Kelly Kehn said, “We established the All-in Diversity Project because we believe the industry itself has a role to play in improving how we do business. We believe the best way to push the industry forward, is to create the tool for all businesses globally to use in benchmarking their own diversity initiatives…And we can’t fix what we can’t measure first.”
Female Presence in Gambling Industry
Kelly Kehn has put a lot of her focus into putting more of a female presence in the current male-dominated nature of the gambling industry. She pointed out that that male dominance has not changed for more than a decade. According to Kehn, the lack of diversity is one of the reasons why the gambling industry is beginning to show signs of stagnation, especially in appealing to younger audiences.
A need for change is an opportunity to include more gamblers in the industry. The pair believe that diversity in the workforce can help the online gambling industry become more profitable.
Kehn said, “We know that there’s a big shortage of women, that’s globally and in every industry. So, I think now, people are starting to say ‘Okay, this make sense. Let’s start to talk about it. Let’s start to measure and benchmark and create a level of transparency that we can compete on the world stage.”
“I think Tina and I (like so many others) were sick of hearing, ‘There are no women in gaming’ and decided the industry needed a benchmark once and for all. We decided the biggest way for us to affect real change was to create tools for the industry so that any organization who wanted to progress, could do so in a calculated and measurable way”, said Kehn.
Inclusion, Not Seclusion
The main goal of All-in Diversity Project is not to turn women against men, but instead to help the gambling industry move in a different direction in regards to diversity and inclusion. That should help online gaming companies to recruit new talent, as well as retain the right talent.
Kehn explained that data on the diversity study is offered free of charge to gambling operators. With the free offer that women hope that the operators will take the data and use it to better their businesses.
Kehn added. “Finally, we agreed that this should not be an ‘Us vs. Them’ issue. This is about all of us working together to push the industry forward. As Tina said, we have a reputational, regulatory and recruitment issue to solve. We aren’t going to get where we need to be if we don’t work together on this one.”
Benefits to the Diversity
The developers of the project are not saying that adding women to an organization’s workforce will necessarily guarantee growth in revenue. But studies have shown that there are many benefits to having diversity in businesses.
“Having diverse perspectives within our businesses helps improve how we market to our customers and extend our reach to new demographics. It can lead to the creation of new products that appeal to new audience”, Kelly Kehn said.
Referring to studies which back such assertions, Kehn said, “It’s been proven that having a diverse board also leads to better corporate governance. Overall, having a diverse workforce means having diverse experience and perspective. This eliminates ‘group think’ and overall better ideas.”
Speakers at Industry Events
The women discussed their passion for invoking tangible change and that wanting change isn’t enough. You have to actually do something to get the results you want. One of Kehn’s visions is to invite more female role models to speak at industry events. Such role models and champions of diversity do not have to be females only, according to Tina Thakor-Rankin.
She said, “A role model should inspire. This could be a woman who has ‘made it’ because they have achieved that which you aspire to. But equally it could be someone who is admired for the way in which they think, behave, act or conduct themselves. It could be a male manager who actively promotes inclusion, or it could be a woman who just gets on with the job and does it well.”
Women CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies
At present, there are 32 female CEO of Fortune 500 companies, which means they are vastly outnumbered by the 468 men who run Fortune 500 firms. Still, that is progress.
Since the 1980s, when there were no such CEOs, that number has grown – but at a slow pace. The hope behind the All-In Diversity initiative is to see numbers like that grow and for women to have a higher presence in leadership roles as well as diversity in all organizations throughout the gaming industry.
Kelly Kehn summarized her project, stating, “Promoting diversity within your company means you have the access to the widest pool of talent, which is incredibly important, in places like Malta. It means you can, you don’t have the bias that you can keep and retain the top talent no matter what they look like or the backgrounds they’ve come from. It means you are bringing in new perspective to your business, which affects your product, it affects the way you market, and it affects the way people feel actually when they are working on teams day to day.”
