The latest findings of the Publishers Association’s UK publishing workforce survey show that while publishing continues to meet its target to employ at least 50% women in senior roles within five years, there has been little progress in its other target of increasing the ethnic diversity of employees.
The survey is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of the publishing workforce, with 14,122 employees from 71 businesses taking part. This is an 11% increase in the number of respondents compared to 2019 and a 25% rise in the number of participating businesses.
Key findings from The UK Publishing Workforce: Diversity, inclusion and belonging in 2020 include: over half of executive leadership and senior management roles are held by women; representation of people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups has remained around 13% since 2017; the representation of people with a disability has increased from 2% in 2017 to 8% in 2020; and almost half of respondents have experienced mental health problems.
The 2020 survey is the fourth commissioned by the Publishers Association. After the initial survey in 2017, industry-wide five-year targets were set to employ at least 50% women in both senior leadership positions and executive level roles and ensure that 15% of employees are Black, Asian and from other ethnic minorities.
Having built the workforce survey up to be the most comprehensive of its kind, the Publishers Association is now beginning to look at creating guidance for publishers around the collection of author ethnicity data. It is also continuing to support the adoption of Publishing Assistant apprenticeships to improve access routes into the industry.
The Publishers Association engaged diversity and inclusion specialists EA Inclusion to undertake the workforce survey in 2020. The survey will continue to be conducted annually.
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