Hachette UK publishes second Ethnicity Pay Gap Report

6^th July 2020, London – Hachette UK has published its ethnicity pay gap* report for the second year in a row, with representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees increasing to 9.6%.

The findings, which have been shared voluntarily, form part of Hachette UK’s wider mission to attract and retain diverse talent through a programme of policies and initiatives collectively known as Changing the Story.

David Shelley, CEO of Hachette UK, commented: “We believe diversity in all forms is the key to the creativity and culture that will make us a better publisher. We’ve always encouraged open and transparent debate about representation in publishing, and the events around the world in the last three months have brought even more urgency and immediacy to these conversations. As a publisher, our mission is to help all people, everywhere, to access new worlds of learning, entertainment and opportunity – and to achieve that, we have a responsibility to ensure that more diverse perspectives and stories are shared with the world. And we can only do that by creating a more diverse workforce.

“For us, meaningful change starts with acknowledging and understanding where we are today. Our ethnicity pay gap report is one of the ways in which we choose to hold ourselves to account and it’s encouraging to see that we’ve made some progress towards our 2024 target of 15% BAME representation, but there’s still a long way to go.”

This year’s report been calculated in the same way as the Gender Pay Gap Report** and enables Hachette UK to benchmark its journey towards a more representative workforce. In 2019, Hachette UK pledged a BAME representation target of 15% of the total group workforce within five years. The report reveals that there has been an increase on last year’s figures, from 7.7% to 9.6%, which is 5.4% away from Hachette UK’s overall target.

Despite an improvement in BAME representation, the figures show that the mean ethnicity pay gap has increased from 9.8% in 2018 to 14.1% in 2019 for the Whole Group. The median ethnicity gap has also increased from -6.9% to 7.9%. This can be attributed to an increase in BAME employees in every quartile of Hachette Group, except the Upper Middle, and changes to its distribution business in 2018. The changes to its distribution business saw many lower-paid, non-BAME staff leave the company, which had been artificially lowering the average median pay of non-BAME staff.

Since the last report, Hachette UK has recruited a third cohort of Publishing Trainees, a programme open to people from BAME backgrounds, published a new Respect and Inclusion Policy, and held its first Changing the Story Day, a company-wide showcase exploring ways to become more diverse and inclusive.

Although the overall number of BAME employees has increased, the representation of BAME employees is still low, which means that a small number of jobs can influence the figures in the report disproportionately. To see the full report, please visit: https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/HUK-EPG-Report-July-2020_FINAL.pdf

ENDS

Notes to Editors

* An ethnicity pay gap is the difference between the average earning of all BAME employees and the average earning of all non-BAME employees, expressed as a percentage of non-BAME employees’ earnings.

** The report includes both mean and median figures. The mean pay gap is calculated by taking the average earnings of every BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) employee, and the average of every non-BAME employee, in the company. The difference between the two averages is our pay gap, which is expressed as a percentage of non-BAME employees’ earnings.

The median is best explained by imagining that all BAME employees are lined up from lowest to highest in terms of pay, and the same for non-BAME employees. The salaries of the people in the middle of each line are then compared which gives us the median ethnicity pay gap.

About Hachette UK:

Our mission at Hachette UK is to make it easy for all people, everywhere to access new worlds of learning, entertainment and opportunity.

We are one of the UK’s largest publishing groups, with 10 autonomous publishing divisions and over 50 imprints with a rich and diverse history. We are also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

We publish thousands of new books across the group every year and our authors include Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling and Malala Yousafzai.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Little, Brown, Orion, John Murray Press, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus, Bookouture and Octopus. Hachette Children’s Group publishes a diverse range of books for children of all ages and Hodder Education is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.

We have offices around the UK, including our headquarters in London and the Hely Hutchinson Centre (HHC) for distribution in Didcot. We have subsidiaries in several other regions, including Australia, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jamaica and New Zealand.