International Women’s Day: how PPL is breaking the gender bias
To mark International Women’s Day, PPL’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Partner, Tomi Oyewumi, hosted a #BreakTheBias themed discussion with her fellow colleagues to explore their personal lived experiences of being women in the music industry. In this article we provide a wider update on the work of PPL in this priority area of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
Closing the gender pay gap
Whilst PPL has fewer than 250 employees and does not fall under the statutory requirement to publish a gender pay gap report, it does so annually to create transparency around the impact of its EDI strategy.
PPL published its latest gender pay gap statistics in 2021. The data was based on 201 Full Time Employees with a split of 61% male and 39% female.
- A mean gender pay gap of 9.6% in favour of men (down from 15.3% in favour of men in 2020)
- A median gender pay gap of 12.2% in favour of men (down from 18.3% in favour of men in 2020)
- The mean gender pay gap reduces to 4.1% in favour of men when the CEO is excluded. Based on the above data, PPL’s gender pay gap has decreased in terms of both the mean and median pay in comparison to 2020 figures. The main driver for the reduction in the overall gender pay gap is more men than women leaving managerial roles within the company and PPL hiring more women than men into the open vacancies.
What else has PPL delivered to drive positive change?
PPL has undertaken several actions to drive greater diversity and inclusion both within the company and across the music industry.
By way of example, training with culture change business Utopia was delivered to explore what bias is whilst a new job description guide is helping to mitigate against any gender bias language when promoting vacancies.
Wherever possible, a diverse interview panel is comprised for recruitment purposes and both the paternity leave and shared parental leave policies have been updated to provide opportunities for both men and woman.
A previously introduced menopause policy has been updated, educating employees on peri-menopause and putting in place an internal champion for this as part of the newly created Wellbeing Committee.
A Board Development Programme was delivered with campaign group Women in CTRL and a recent partnership with The Cat’s Mother is supporting young women aged 18-25 from low-income backgrounds to progress their career in music. These are just some of the initiatives that PPL has introduced to create a more inclusive work environment.
What’s next?
PPL will soon be publishing a five-year strategy that will set out where it currently is in terms of EDI along with where it would like to be by 2027.
