Fife Sports and Leisure Trust: Sourcing a Brilliant Female CEO

Situation

The Fife Sports and Leisure Trust (FSLT) manages and operates 14 leisure facilities on behalf of Fife Council. They’re one of the largest employers in the town with 550 staff. Their mission is improving health and wellbeing across Fife, Scotland, offering facilities for people of all abilities.

The CEO of FSLT announced his retirement and the organization needed to recruit a leader quickly. The new CEO would need to foster good relationships with the Council and balance the social and economic purposes of the organization to develop a sustainable leisure service. This meant finding further funding and delivering a long-term vision for FSLT, after coming back from a whole industry closure during the COVID-19 in 2020.

Finding senior strategic leaders to lead FSLT through an important stage in their history meant recruiting a current Managing Director or CEO who had held profit and loss accountability for a leisure service. There are a finite number of leisure trusts in the UK, so it was vital to present this fascinating opportunity to the sector in a highly engaging manner to attract the highest-caliber candidates.

Solution

FSLT engaged PeopleScout to find this unique individual.

We took a detailed brief from the outgoing CEO, and it became very clear that FSLT needed an accomplished new leader capable of creating an immediate impact. We searched the entire UK, engaging with the CEO at Community Leisure UK, the industry association, who shared the role within her network. It’s a close-knit community and the Trust has a good reputation.

We leveraged this expertise in the sector to ensure we had a comprehensive shortlist of the most recommended professionals.

Results

We achieved:

• 72% engagement amongst passive candidates
• Four candidates were invited for interview (three men and one woman)
• Two candidates were invited for second interview (one man and one woman)
• The female candidate appointed to the role