“The probability of success at all levels is enhanced by having excellent organisational health.”
NGB Organisational Health Working Group, 2023
For sport to continue to thrive in the UK, it’s essential that sports bodies are effective and sustainable organisations.
The world of sport is changing fast.
Increased financial pressures, greater regulatory responsibilities, and advances in technology are just some of the major challenges we’re facing. Plus, many of you are also dealing with increased competition and fragmentation in, and outside of, your sport, as well as grappling with the changing needs of fans, participants, and athletes.
In the face of this, it’s more vital than ever for you to develop organisational excellence and resilience – for the long-term health of sport, but also to continue to deliver high performance success on and off the field of play.
Building long-term organisational health across sports, and the wider sector, is one of the priorities set out in our 2021-31 Strategic Plan, and to support this we introduced the 'Organisational Health Tool', our first, comprehensive step to better understand the health of National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and how we can help you to be well-run, effective, and sustainable organisations, operating within a connected and thriving sporting system.
An enhanced version of the Organisational Health Tool:
This is an evolving process, so in collaboration with a group of NGBs, and as part of our work looking at future reform of the system, we have developed an enhanced version of the original tool.
This includes a diagnostic tool to help you review your own organisational health and identify opportunities for development.
More about the Organisational Health Tool:
The tool has three areas, which underpin great Organisational Health:
- Strategy and Purpose (what we’re here to do and why)
- People and Culture (who’s going to do it)
- Operations and Governance (how we’re going to do it)
These areas have a number of components which, as a whole, will help you to sustain and transform your organisation into high-performing sporting enterprises.
The tool can be used in several ways:
- As a support and self-reflective tool to help you better understand your own organisational health, while improving resilience and growth.
- To help us (UK Sport) build a cohesive picture of each funded NGB through regular feedback, as well as collating and reviewing data and insights linked to each of the components. This will shape our continuous understanding of organisational issues and developments impacting our funded partners, our ability to identify and react to risks, trends and opportunities, and the type of advice and support we can provide across the system.
- To inform our bespoke development programmes or funding to strengthen the health of your organisation. To deliver this, we will collaborate closely with our funded partners and the Home Country Sports Councils to ensure efficient and effective use of resources and share learnings to benefit the sporting community.
We’ve developed this tool in collaboration with various partners. It is intended to be for – and used by – sports bodies, us, and other partners. It is purposely agile, to be adapted over time to ensure it remains relevant and valuable.
Notably, the tool is not a list of requirements for partners in receipt of funding from us to comply with, but to support the development of sporting bodies. It’s built on a collective understanding of the components that should help make sports bodies more sustainable and successful in our complex landscape. Indicators of excellence for each component are listed as examples (rather than a definitive list) and some duplicate or overlap across different areas, given how interconnected many of these are.
We are determined to work collaboratively with partners to support their continuous improvement and transformation and we’re excited to work with you, using the tool to see how it benefits the sporting community, and how it can be improved and ensure it plays its part in helping us all grow a system which is healthy and thriving – for the good of sport and society.
To read more detail about each component of organisational health…
Download the Organisational Health Tool (Interactive format)
Download the Organisational Health Tool (Accessible format)
Diagnosing the health of your organisation with the diagnostic tool.
Review each component of Organisational Health against ‘indicators of excellence’ and attach one of four ratings (emerging, evolving, embedding, excelling) alongside a trajectory to demonstrate direction of progress.
This then builds a picture of organisational health allowing you to identify strengths, weaknesses, and development priorities.
The diagnostic is a development tool. It is not a compliance exercise. It provides a framework for reflection and can be implemented in several ways, for example:
- As an off the shelf self-assessment tool to support the development of your organisation
- As part of a facilitated collaborative group session
- As a compare and contrast exercise between two or more groups
- As a desk-based exercise
- Or any combination of the above
Start diagnosing your organisation’s health: Download the Organisational Health Tool Diagnostic Workbook
If you are a UK Sport-funded sport/NGB and are interested in running a diagnostic session, please speak to your Advisor.
Organisational Health diagnostic testimonials
“We found the OH diagnostic tool very helpful indeed in holding a structured conversation within our senior team and beyond to calibrate how we are doing and what our priorities should be. It was very appealing to have such a clearly structured approach that combined a quick visualisation as well as narrative. When colleagues had points to make, the general approach enabled us to get to the root of major issues represented in the model. We shall be looking at how we make this a regular feature that can provide further assurance to the board.”
John Coyne, Chair Paddle UK
“As we all face an increasing number of audits and compliance checks, it has been a pleasure to engage in a far more developmental process which can really bring organisational health to life. It has also been refreshing to be part of a wider group designing the concept. The strength of this diagnostic is in how it is used and we, at British Shooting, have embraced it as an aid to continuous improvement. Crucially, also, it has afforded us the chance to bring a diverse range of perspectives to the table, both from within and without our organisation. We will definitely continue to use the OH diagnostic tool and embed it in our ongoing organisational development.”
Hamish McInnes, CEO British Shooting