Fulham F.C., London’s oldest professional football club, was founded in 1879 and has grown into a Premier League mainstay with a proud legacy. But Fulham is more than a Premier League football club. Dedicated to its people and the wider community, Fulham encompasses Craven Cottage where the club’s home matches are played, Fulham F.C. Foundation, the club’s official charity, the Academy, which holds Category 1 status and operates from the club’s training ground at Motspur Park, and, coming soon, Fulham Pier, a brand-new state-of-the-art destination. Fulham employs permanent and casual staff across these different divisions and locations, creating a complex workplace structure. Fulham stands apart from more corporate-style clubs due to its close-knit family feel, where everyone knows each other, and is committed to preserving that culture as it grows. To support their expanding team and ensure Premier League-level compliance, Fulham began the search for an HCM platform that could unify operations across departments—from the pitch to the back office. When they discovered Bob, with its sleek interface, ease of use, and powerful real-time analytics, they knew they’d found the right fit for their growing and diverse workforce.
Leading the club with a people proud approach
Fulham is a people proud football club that believes that putting their people first ensures business success. As Caron Streeter, Head of People, explains, “Being a football club, we want to win football matches. But how we do that is also key, and how our people feel in achieving that objective is most important. So people proud is about our people coming to work feeling valued and empowered to perform at their highest potential.”
For Caron, part of being people proud is creating a unified workforce with a family feel. She explains, “If someone starts working in the ticket office, they might not see anyone from the foundation for months and months. They might speak to them, but they don’t know what they look like.”
This is where Bob comes in. Bob provides a centralized feed where Fulham’s people go to discover who’s who and what’s happening daily. To help their people navigate, they’ve hired a photographer to take headshots of each employee using different color backgrounds for people in different areas of the business. For example, people working at the club have a white background, while people working for the foundation have a red background. These headshots will be uploaded to Bob in bulk, enabling people to easily identify their peers and where they sit in the business. “This helps everyone feel part of a community within a community in Bob,” adds Caron.
Another way that Fulham shows that they are people proud is through their “Long Service Awards,” where they recognize those people who have worked for the club for a significant amount of time. People celebrating significant milestone anniversaries of 5, 10, 20, and even 25 years working at Fulham are invited to a special ceremony at the iconic Craven Cottage. The board of directors attends the event, and the long-serving employees receive a gift and an evening of hospitality, which is filmed and photographed, and then shared with the wider organization on Bob.
Fulham’s people proud approach can also be seen in how they celebrated Neurodiversity Celebration Week and Autism Week. Fulham employs a disability manager to support its people with disabilities. To drive awareness, she posted facts and events around neurodiversity on Bob every day of that week. She shared that she was wearing odd socks as a solidarity gesture and invited others to make an impact and join her for an “odd socks day” at the end of the week. The response to her posts was unprecedented. People changed their socks, and Bob’s feed was full of photos of Fulham’s people wearing odd socks.
Before Bob, she would never have achieved that level of awareness and engagement. Bob’s centralized platform enables Fulham’s people to engage and share, and feel connected to a unified, people proud community.
Managing compliance as a Premier League member
Being a member of the Premier League and working in an academy setting comes with strict regulations. Bob Learning and people analytics help Fulham seamlessly manage all the training and admin requirements, saving them time and ensuring they stay compliant.
First, there’s the Premier League Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Standard (PLEDIS), which Fulham is actively working towards receiving intermediate status. This involves evidencing the inclusive workplace and culture that exists at Fulham and how the club is working hard to increase representation in key demographic groups.
In the past, the people team had to collect the data manually, which was time-consuming and prone to error. Now, all their people’s demographic data is in Bob and accessible on the DE&I dashboard with the click of a button.
Caron explains how Bob has transformed this process, “It’s a horrible feeling when you get asked for some data and you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Am I going to be able to get that? How long is that going to take me?’ Whereas now I’m like, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll show you what I can get you.’ And the number of times people have said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s amazing.’ And then I’ll say, ‘I can slice it up this way, or I can show it for a different time period.’ And it’s just so fulfilling for me to serve my stakeholders so effectively.”
Another requirement for Fulham—due to its status as a training academy—is to abide by the youth development rules, protecting the under-18s who train there. To retain their Category One status, they need to complete different safeguarding certifications and show various coaching qualifications, including first aid. Bob helps Fulham stay on top of their certifications, using tasks and reminders to ensure they don’t expire and everyone completes the necessary training.
When it comes to training, Fulham recently added Bob Learning to their Bob set-up and plans to use it to train their people, from management training and employee wellbeing to courses on health and safety. Using Bob Learning, it’s easy to develop course content and share it with the relevant people across the club. Bob also provides insights on enrolment and engagement, as well as certificates for those who complete courses, enabling Fulham to be self-sufficient in their training programs and stay compliant.
Main takeaways
- Bob’s centralized feed helps Fulham empower and unite their workforce with a people proud approach.
- With Bob, everyone at Fulham celebrates their people’s significant milestones.
- Bob’s analytics provide the data needed to stay compliant and prepare for audits as a Premier League club.
- With Bob Learning, Fulham F.C. seamlessly creates mandatory training courses for their people.
