How Emerald Publishing adopted an “informed, fair and consistent approach to pay”
To enable a robust and effective Pay Benchmarking process, Emerald Publishing worked with our consultants and adopted our pay benchmarking tool, PayLab. Project complete, their People Director Katy Snell reflected on the transition with Innecto consultant Spencer Hughes.
Spencer Hughes: Katy, first please give us some background on Emerald as a business.
Katy Snell: Emerald Publishing is one of the world's leading digital-first publishers. We commission, curate and showcase the kind of impactful research we believe makes a real difference. We work with thousands of universities and business schools around the world to share knowledge and provoke the kind of debate that leads to positive change.
SH: As a business, how would define your approach to reward?
KS: As a small to medium-sized company we don’t claim to lead the market in terms of pay but we invest heavily in flexibility, career development and work-life balance as key parts of our Employee Value Proposition. Obviously, pay is still important though. We review salaries annually and make pay rises based on wage growth, inflation, and the median benchmarking ranges. We’ve also focused on putting together a comprehensive package of benefits based around flexible working, transparency and a strong commitment to EDI. Gender equality is really important to us and last year we were named in the Times’ Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality list.
SH: Before you worked with Innecto, what key reward challenge were you looking to address?
KS: We were looking for a common framework for pay structures with consistent and reliable real-time benchmarking data. We wanted to develop an informed, fair and consistent approach to remuneration across our dispersed workforce. We needed to ensure we had competitive packages in place to attract and retain talent, enhance our Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and develop a transparent and equitable approach to pay progression aligned with market dynamics.
SH: How was your old system impacting the business?
KS: Before we were using wide salary ranges that didn’t provide us with the granular level of detail to benchmark roles effectively. It was also a very manual process to benchmark against market data, which was time-consuming and open to error.
SH: Why did you choose PayLab, and how has it helped with that?
KS: PayLab was recommended to us by a colleague who had used it before, and had worked with Innecto, so knew the level of service and support we’d receive. So we created a small project team with key stakeholders across the business to build a business case for investment.
PayLab itself is easy to use and to maintain. We now have easy access to robust data allowing us to efficiently benchmark new roles as part of the recruitment process and assess our competitiveness on an annual basis as part of our salary review process.
SH: You mentioned transparency which is a hot topic at the moment. How would you assess your business’s readiness for Pay Transparency and what are you doing in this area?
KS: In 2024, we became OpenOrg accredited. This means we are internally and externally transparent about who we are, what we offer, and what we don't offer - for better or worse. We have updated our careers website to provide realistic accounts of our ways of working, policies and benefits. We advertise salaries on all our roles and internally we share our salary benchmarking medians.
PayLab - The future of Pay Benchmarking
- Pay Benchmarking helps ensure compensation decisions are backed by accurate market data, and that they align with your pay and compensation philosophy.
- A robust pay structure allows for fair and equitable pay setting and pay progression through principles that are justifiable and reflective of key criteria like skills, competency, performance and contribution.
- PayLab uses objective benchmarks and market insights to help implement and manage standardised pay structures and formulate salary bands for every position and level. By helping HR and business leaders better understand employees’ positioning within pay bands and against the market, PayLab allows for more robust pay decisions. By generating reports by department, gender or ethnicity, it also arms businesses with the information they need to stay on top of any pay gaps or anomalies and move forward in a transparent way.
For more information or to book a demo of PayLab please contact our consultant spencer.hughes@innecto.com.
