'We are committed to the quality we are known for'

Years – perhaps decades – had passed since the Leaders Performance Institute had last heard of the Y2K scare until it was dredged from the recesses of our mind by UK Sports Institute CEO Matt Archibald.

He is discussing the logistics of the UK Sports Institute [UKSI] changing its name from the English Institute of Sport in April. As part of the process, on the 24 April, the organisation’s website and email addresses changed and its staff entered a short period of downtime to enable those changes to take effect.

“Everything worked like it did across Y2K and nothing dropped out of the sky,” he says, referring to the late-’90s fear across society that digital calendars resetting to ‘00’ on 1 January 2000 might cause havoc. “I did have a flashback on the morning and remembered the millennium,” he adds.

The English Institute of Sport [EIS] was founded shortly after the turn of the millennium, in 2002, to support teams and athletes across the UK’s ‘Home Nations’ – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“We routinely send hundreds of our people on secondments with teams or sports to the Olympics and Paralympics,” he continues. “What we all aspire to do is support British sports, teams and athletes that go to the Paralympics and Olympics and perform at their best, and they come from all of the Home Nations. For me, it just helps with that.”

The EIS, and now the UKSI, will continue to work closely with the other home nations to ensure all the support offered is aligned.

The reasons behind what Archibald admits was a “misnomer” are “locked up in the mystique that surrounds the genesis of the Institute”.

“Right from the outset, there was a question mark about the name,” he says.

“People who have been with the organisation for 20 years have sent me screenshots of various documents and items of stationery with the name ‘UKSI’ on them”.

For some people, the misnomer was an important issue and they argued for change.

“A number of voices within the system raised the question again and again when others didn’t see it as a priority”.

Of course, the name change was never the priority – the Institute’s commitment throughout the 2024 Paris cycle was and remains the delivery of ‘outstanding support that enables sports and athletes to excel’ – but the case was vigorously made and the name change was approved by all key stakeholders.

The transition was operationalised in the 12 months before it was announced and, through that process, the other Home Nations sports institutes, namely Sportscotland, Sport Wales and Sport Northern Ireland, offered their full support. “They are all 100% behind us and we do not now supersede them. We might be the scale operator, but they will carry on doing the great work they’ve always done”.

While there is some nostalgia for the era of the EIS, there is undoubtedly greater cohesion with the renaming. “UK Sport [the government agency responsible for investing in Olympic and Paralympic sport in the United Kingdom], the UK Sports Institute, British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association – we feel it more accurately reflects the Institute’s role as a powerhouse of the British sporting system.”

Speaking of which, the changes to the previous EIS logo are minimal. “We haven’t deviated too far because we did feel that if you change both the logo and the name too much at the same time then you do run the risk of becoming somewhat unrecognisable”.

The EIS logo, characterised as it was by a V shape, has been retained with tweaks to the colours used – red, white and blue – to make it more British. “There was no piece of paper that clarified the original colour scheme and there were lots of stories floating around. One was that the colours were, broadly speaking, although not exactly, the five Olympic colours. There was also a view that the V may be the V for ‘victory’ or maybe a butterfly stroke or maybe the ribbon of a medal.

“Following consideration and reflection with our people, we felt that the ribbon concept chimed with more of our people more strongly in the sense that we see ourselves as an organisation that provides the support and the infrastructure to athletes and sports to help them win.”

“We wouldn’t be comfortable putting the medal on the front and we’re in the background, but the ribbon that holds the medal sits well alongside what the UKSI is going to do and what the EIS has done. So we’ve gone back to that history and that may have driven the original logo and we’ve maintained that. We’ve also changed the colour to have a GB-style red, white and blue, and that can be used online and in some of our physical branding as well”.

The UKSI does not expect its rebranding to have any impact on the quality of the services it provides to the UK’s sports teams and athletes. “Fortunately, we’re a business to business institute that does not serve the general public,” says Archibald. “The risk for us in a name change, with a loss of custom or a loss of recognition, is negligible. For example, we supply to British Swimming and they’re not going to get confused by who we are.

“The high standard of support that we offer to sports and athletes will not change, we are as committed as ever to delivering the quality that we have become known for across the board.”

Archibald explains that an internal working group, in tandem with a small group of consultants, ensured the transition was smooth as the branding was brought up to date and rolled out across all UKSI platforms.

“We see this as a significant piece of work but not one that’s so high risk that we needed to follow a particularly well-beaten path. We’ve done it ourselves and we’re confident that we’ve run a good process and taken everyone with us,” he says.

There is optimism for the future too. “We’ll have a little more confidence as there’s no question mark about why we’re called this or why we aren’t called that and it will enable us to be more confident in how we express ourselves.

“We’re not expecting a 20% performance uplift for the sector at Paris on the basis that we’ve changed our name, but we do see it as a long-term strategic adjustment that will hopefully help us to attract the best people from across the country to work for us, people that weren’t as keen to join the English Institute of Sport as they would the UKSI, especially if they come from the other Home Nations.

“We also feel this could apply to athletes having a greater understanding of who we are and what we do and perhaps make them feel more comfortable acknowledging our work externally if they’re not from England.”

Another aspect that remains unchanged is the often recognised black t-shirts sported by EIS staff when working with teams and athletes. This was important to Charlotte Henshaw, who won gold in the Canoe Sprint women’s KL2 event at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.

Upon learning of the EIS’s impending name change from UKSI Communications Manager Grace Cullen, she asked: ‘Will you still be wearing the black t-shirts? That’s all that matters because we see people in black t-shirts and we feel reassured because we know those people, they know what they’re doing, they’re there to support us’.

“We’ve changed our name, we’ve slightly changed our logo, and we will still be in our black kits,” says Archibald. “It does stand out as most UK National Governing Bodies tend to wear red, white and blue and our people have always been in black. It’s nice that athletes recognise that and, for them, it will be business as usual.

“It doesn’t matter if our name is changing, they know UKSI people will be of the same high calibre and will still be there to support them.”

This article was first published by Leaders.