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Hachette UK reveals new pay transparency measures

Hachette UK has announced a raft of new measures to bring more transparency to how pay is calculated, awarded and communicated at different levels of the company. The publisher is raising its entry level salaries, sharing salary ranges at higher levels of seniority and, for the first time, introducing transparency around its bonus structure.

 

Melanie Tansey, Group HR Director at Hachette UK, commented: “The success of our business depends on our ability to attract and retain the best people to deliver on our mission of unlocking new worlds for consumers. To continue building our open and progressive culture, we need to be transparent and fair about how pay decisions are made, and show how pay might progress as people develop their careers at Hachette UK.

 

“Since 2018, we’ve been introducing different ways to make pay more transparent and alongside our gender and ethnicity pay gaps, these latest measures are vital to holding ourselves to account, while motivating our employees to drive our business forward.”

 

Emma Petfield and Ellen Harber, co-chairs of Hachette UK’s Gender Balance Network, added: “We’re so pleased with this latest step to make pay and bonus structures and decisions at Hachette UK more open and transparent, which puts our company at the forefront of the wider industry conversation around pay. Since the publication of our first gender pay gap report in 2016, numerous employee workshops, in partnership with management, have directly fed into a collaborative conversation between the Gender Balance Network co-chairs and senior leadership to drive meaningful change. We’re really glad to see all of the recommendations reflected in these measures, in spite of all the challenges 2020 has brought. As a network, we firmly believe that greater transparency across the business is vital to closing the gender pay gap, empowering Hachette UK employees to understand and affirm their contribution to the business, as well as attracting the widest pool of new talent. We welcome this commitment to transparency as part of the larger ongoing effort within publishing to reduce barriers to entry and progression.”

 

Hachette UK’s new pay transparency measures include:

 

Minimum London salary of £24,000 – In line with the company’s commitment to improve pay for more junior roles in its business, it is increasing its minimum salary in London to £24,000 from 1st January 2021. This new entry level salary will apply to all roles in all of Hachette UK’s publishing divisions and central departments, excluding some roles within the facilities support team.

 

Pay ranges to £80,000 median – The company has been publishing internally its salary ranges for roles with a median salary of up to £60,000 since 2018, but it will now share salary ranges for roles with a median salary of up to £80,000. In all cases where it has published salary ranges, there are at least 10 people in every job to allow confidentiality within a range. For salaries above this level, there are too few incumbents in each role for pay to remain confidential. Externally, Hachette UK remains the only major publisher to show pay ranges for the majority of jobs it advertises.

 

Bonus range added to pay ranges – Some management roles and senior roles at Hachette UK attract an annual stretch bonus target above the 5% target applicable to everyone else, and these stretch bonus targets increase with the level of responsibility and the expectations of the role. For the first time, the company is adding the median stretch bonus target range to the pay ranges it publishes internally, so that employees can see to which roles stretch bonuses apply and the typical target percentage.

 

Bonus target for employee network co-chairs – In recognition of the contribution Hachette UK’s employee networks make to its business and in particular to its diversity and inclusion programme, Changing the Story, the company is offering an additional 5% stretch bonus target to all of its network co-chairs from 1st January 2021, effective for the duration of someone’s leadership of a network.

 

Demystifying pay and bonus decisions – To ensure that the company’s principles and practices are clear and easy to understand, it is creating an employee toolkit to help people understand how budgets are set, its pay ranges, how pay increases happen and how bonus schemes work.

 

Gender pay gap – The government removed the requirement for companies to publish their gender pay gaps by April 2020 due to the pandemic and may well delay it again next year. However, Hachette UK will publish its 2020 gender pay gap in January 2021.

 

To read Hachette UK’s last Gender Pay Gap Report, please visit: https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/GPG_REPORT_2019.pdf