At this year's Women In Music Awards, we celebrated the achievements of 13 game-changing executives and artists as the industry came together to honour their work. Music Week has spoken to all 13 winners to tell their stories.
Words: Anna Fielding
Sony Music UK’s childcare policy has won the DE&I Initiative Award at the Music Week Women In Music Awards 2024, and Jason Iley and Liz Jeffery have spoken to us about its impact.
“I’m totally delighted to see it recognised,” says Jason Iley, chairman and CEO of Sony Music UK. “It’s hugely important for the staff at Sony Music, and for the future of the music industry.”
Liz Jeffery, VP, people & experience, led the initiative and collected the award on stage at the ceremony.
“The staff reactions have been amazing,” she says, reflecting proudly on its impact. “Some of the stories I got back from employees made the nine months of trying to get this thing to come to life all worth it.”
Jason Iley pays tribute to Jeffery’s work on the scheme.
“Liz spent a lot of time shaping the policy and looking at the best way to help our parents, with the tapered model ensuring that the financial support goes to those who need it the most,” Iley says. “We’ve received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from parents about the genuine impact it’s had on their work and family lives.”
Introduced in October 2022, the policy entitles parents to claim a significant financial contribution towards the cost of childcare for pre-school age children. It provides Sony Music employees with funding towards the cost of childcare during working hours and is structured to offer tapered grants, correlating to an individual employee’s salary. This entitles lower and middle earners the ability to benefit from increased funding, paying up to £15,000 per year towards childcare costs.
This policy is hugely important for the staff at Sony Music, and for the future of the music industry
Jason Iley, Sony Music UK
Since launch, Sony Music UK has seen a 7% improvement in female retention statistics, a 1% growth in promotion rates for women with 51% of promotions going to women in the company and 69% of new hires also being women. There has been a reduction in both the mean and median gender pay gap and a 13% increase of women into the company’s senior management team to 55%.
“The figures we’ve seen in terms of retention and promotion are very encouraging,” says Jason Iley. “Diversifying the music industry continues to be at the top of our agenda and our goal is to create an equitable company culture. We want to provide our staff with the best support possible and this is one of several measures that we have introduced to increase the proportion of women in senior roles across our company. Hiring for gender balance and diversity is an ongoing focus for us, at every level, as is developing a diverse pipeline of senior leaders, and we continue to keep these efforts in sharp focus.”
Elsewhere, the major has strengthened its existing menopause support, introduced reproductive health support as well as provision of greater access for neurodiversity diagnosis and care. The company has also initiated equal parental leave, core hours, flexible working, a pregnancy loss policy, a domestic abuse policy and a neonatal policy.
Jason Iley tells Music Week the childcare policy “demonstrates the importance of listening”.
“It’s about listening to what people need from us in order to succeed and being cognisant of external and societal factors,” he says. “We are committed to being as transparent as possible and that starts with having open conversations about how we can improve our company and the industry. That conversation is ongoing.”
Here, Music Week sits down with Liz Jeffery to find out more about how the policy came to life…
First of all, how has the launch of the policy affected Sony Music UK as a business?
“We launched the policy with the idea that if we can create a supportive and inclusive environment for all employees, then the employees are happier and more motivated and productive. We know all that to be true. We have done a lot over the past few years to drive diversity and inclusion in the workplace, but there was still this external societal barrier, the cost of childcare, getting in the way. That was part of making the business case as to why we should offer this, because it's not necessarily the cheapest scheme. We were looking to do a few things. Firstly, increasing the proportion of women in senior roles across the company, because we know that greater diversity of thought and experiences is only going to be positive. We wanted to retain more of our top talent to help continue to drive Sony Music forward, rather than losing them. Then increasing employee engagement and loyalty by supporting staff at critical life moments, not just people who are going through those life moments, but also signalling to others that we are a company that is committed and will make bold moves to improve DE&I, creating equal opportunities for all. Then we wanted to be seen as a destination employer for working parents, so that we're able to recruit the best people in the music industry.
“If we look at what has changed since we launched, we've seen a 7% improvement in retention of women in the workforce. And, being completely transparent, it’s difficult to say this was the one thing that made the difference. It's a combination of all of our policies and talent development initiatives, but the data is there. There's been a 13% increase of women into senior management positions and we have seen a 6% increase on the number of women hired. We are seeing positive results.”
How did you make it happen in terms of practicalities and process? And how long did it take?
“It was a Friday morning, and I was reading yet another news article about the catastrophically high cost of childcare. And I got really annoyed, and so I emailed Jason Iley, our chairman and CEO, who I report to, and said ‘I really think we need to do something about childcare.’ Within half an hour, he came back and said, ‘Let's explore it.’ It was a nine-month process overall, starting with trying to scope out what others were doing in this area. I couldn't find anybody doing this, but there are other schemes where people have arrangements with nurseries and provide a discount scheme for their staff. I didn't feel that was right, because an important element of this programme is about choice, that people get to choose the right childcare. It was also about trying to craft a policy where money is being given to people in the fairest way possible. We have a tapered approach, so that anybody who earns £40,000 or under will get the maximum of £15,000 each year, and then it goes down relative to earnings. Male employees can also claim it, so there are women outside of the Sony ecosystem who are also benefiting from this. We had to work with employment lawyers to make sure we weren’t discriminating against anybody in any way. We spoke with tax advisors, too. We also have a parents’ network within Sony, so we tested the idea of the policy with some of them to make sure it felt like something was super inclusive and that was needed. We got super positive feedback there.”
There are a lot of companies reaching out to Sony to say, ‘How on earth have you done this?'
Liz Jeffery, Sony Music UK
How would you sum up the reaction? From both Sony staff and your peers in the industry?
“One individual emailed me to say that, the night before the announcement, they had been considering whether or not they needed to quit their job, and trying to find a company that had an in-house creche because she's a single mum. And she saw this policy and burst into tears. There are similar stories of employees who have been having arguments with their partners about how they're going to afford to do all of this. And they’re now able to make a choice and not have to leave the workforce or go down to part time hours.
“The industry reaction has been really, really positive. I get some intel from some of our colleagues who are in groups, like She Said So and Cat's Mother, and others in the group are messaging saying, ‘Wow, look at what Sony is doing.’ We got a huge amount of good press coverage. There are a lot of companies reaching out to Sony to say, ‘How on earth have you done this? Can we learn from you?’ And so we've been spending a lot of time talking to companies outside of the music industry. We’ve had interest from government ministers, so we've been talking to them about the scheme and some of our other policy work.”
Do you think the music industry takes the implications of parenting seriously enough?
“Yes, but look, I think for a long time it has been difficult for some women to have careers in any industry, including the music industry, because of the cost of childcare. But I do think that is shifting across the whole music industry. Obviously, people are going at different paces. The larger companies have got more resources and can move more quickly. For Sony, it has been a considered effort. In 2018, we were the first private sector company to offer full pay time if you have a baby prematurely. We were the first private company to offer full pay for prenatal babies and we also offer equalised parental leave, so everybody can take up to a year off. And men are doing that. And obviously that helps support women’s careers. There’s all our support around menopause, core hours, flexible working, as well as looking at sort of particular kind of targeted recruitment initiatives to get more women into A&R positions, our talent development programmes. I think things are improving, and that's positive.”
Do you think any of the other majors are going to follow you?
“I would say you'd have to ask them that. It is difficult. We're able to do this for a number of different reasons, and it is something that we've chosen to invest in because we're really focused on creating a more equitable company culture. All I can say is, I would hope that they do follow what we're doing.”
What have been your biggest lessons from the project so far?
“That you have to keep trying to push the boundaries. Keep talking with staff, we have a really good relationship with our employee networks, which means that we're getting ideas from the grassroots up. And you need to be in touch with what's going on out in the world, and not be afraid to take bold moves to try and respond to that. We need the best talent, and so we have to do things to secure that best talent.
So what's next? Do you think you'll expand or modify the scheme?
“It's actually around two years to the day since we launched it. We're going to keep running it as we are. We obviously are keeping an eye on what ends up happening in terms of the Labour government and childcare. We may therefore choose to modify it, as we created a policy based upon the state of childcare in 2022. My hope is that childcare improves across the board in society. And maybe there's a world, although probably not for a long time, where a policy like this isn't even needed. But whilst there is a need, we will continue to have that policy. We're continuing to look at everything that we do. At the start of 2024, we launched fertility support for our employees. We strengthened our support for menopause, strengthened our support around neurodiversity. We continue to look at how we can support everybody in different life moments.”
Finally, how do you feel about the scheme personally?
“This is going to sound really corny, but working in HR, I think that I and others have a brilliant platform to change people's lives and make them a little bit easier. It doesn’t need to be a big scheme. I’m mindful of the fact I work for a major record label and we have more resources, but everybody's got a platform to do something and they need to take that platform. [That really hit hime] upon hearing the positive impact that it had when our employees shared their stories. I do feel super, super proud, and feel super lucky that I work for a company like Sony, that I work for a boss like Jason, who will continue to back and support these initiatives. Lots of people in HR don't necessarily have a people-centric CEO who's going to invest in this kind of thing.”
Click here for more from Women In Music 2024.
