UK collection societies PPL and PRS For Music have revealed their gender pay gap figures.
The announcement is a legal requirement and has seen several big music companies – including the majors and Live Nation – opening up their executive pay structure to closer scrutiny.
The PPL and PRS For Music results are particularly interesting because, while the two societies have just come together to form a JV in Leicester, their record on gender pay is markedly different to one another.
Based on the April 2017 snapshot, PPL has the stronger performance with a 4.3% median pay gap in favour of women. The mean figure for salaries in the middle range is a 6.6% gender pay gap in favour of men – still better than the 9.1% national average.
The mean bonus gap is 36.5%, although the median bonus gap is 4.7% in favour of women. The proportion of male and female employees receiving a bonus is roughly equal.
PPL’s upper pay quartile has a better gender split than other music companies: 45.5% women to 54.5% men.
PPL’s chief executive officer, Peter Leathem, said: “PPL is actively committed to ensuring it has a diverse workforce and a culture of accountability, respect and fair reward. Our focus in recent years has been three-fold: recruitment, training and talent management. We strive to always recruit from a wide pool of applicants, and we have implemented training initiatives to support our people managers with recruitment. We have also created a talent management programme to support career progression throughout the company, providing opportunities to retain and further develop our diversity of experience, skill and knowledge.
“Whilst it is not directly covered by the gender pay reporting statistics, we have also focused on the related important issue of equal pay. Based on an extensive job evaluation exercise, which we continue to review each year, we have created a framework to ensure that our employees are paid equally for similar types of roles. We remain committed to investing in all our people, regardless of gender, race or ethnicity or any other protected characteristic.”
PRS For Music has a less impressive record: a gender pay gap of 17.2% (mean) and 11.5% based on the median measure (not far off the national average).
Again, the proportion of men and women receiving bonuses at PRS is roughly equal. But the mean bonus gap is 68.8% and the median gap is 24.1%. In PRS' upper pay quartile, women made up 34.6% of those top jobs.
Pamela Harding, PRS for Music HR director, said: "We have a gender pay gap at PRS for Music and the main reason for this is that there are fewer women in senior positions than men.
“We know that diverse teams are more successful, more fulfilled and more motivated than those that are uniform. At PRS for Music we are committed to treating people fairly across all levels of the organisation and making sure they have the same opportunities for career development, reward and recognition.
“Diversity and inclusion are core to our business and we will continue to take steps forward by establishing an Inclusion strategy in 2018, to ensure all of our people feel that they are treated fairly regardless of gender or any other form of diversity."
The JV is not included in the quoted figures.
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