Summary
The following is Insider's latest Diversity and Compensation Report. It provides critical data that enables us to track our diversity and equity progress on a yearly basis.
The report looks at our U.S. workforce as of March 2022 as compared to March 2021. Any changes since that time (eg, new hires, promotions, departures) will not be reflected in this report.
As we've previously stated, our goal is to work towards progress over time. We know that diversity makes us stronger and better every day. We strive to be innovative and creative in how we attract, support, and develop talent from diverse backgrounds.
This year, for the first time, we partnered with an outside law firm that specializes in DEI, Littler Mendelson, to help us better evaluate our diversity data on a year-over-year basis. Our goal is to provide insights and establish trend lines that will enable us to continue to make progress in our efforts.
Here are key highlights of the report:
- We have seen a slight but steady increase in the overall racial diversity of our workforce; this is reflected in both Editorial and Non-Editorial areas.
- Overall, we have narrowed the pay gap for female and non-binary employees.
- Overall, the pay gap for BIPOC employees has remained the same.
- There has been little change in the demographic composition of leadership since 2021.
- In leadership, relative pay by gender has gone largely unchanged since 2021.
- In leadership, the BIPOC pay gap has improved.
- In Editorial, the BIPOC new hire population grew by five percentage points to 45%, while Non-Editorial's BIPOC new hire population fell by eight percentage points to 44%.
- In Editorial, the pay gap has grown slightly for both females and BIPOC employees since 2021.
Diversity
Overall, the Insider workforce gender composition has not changed substantially since 2021.
Since 2021, our BIPOC population has increased by 3 percent. There has also been a slight increase in the number of people preferring not to disclose race/ethnicity information.
There has been no substantial change in the gender distribution for either Editorial or Non-Editorial.
The percentages of BIPOC employees in both Non-Editorial and Editorial departments has increased since 2021.
In the last year, the overall gender composition of new hires has largely remained the same.
In the last year, the percentage of BIPOC employees in the new hire population has increased slightly.
For new hires in Non-Editorial departments, the workforce has grown towards near equal gender representation across male and female.
New hires in Editorial have become more diverse since 2021 with increases in Female/non-binary (+ 4ppts) and BIPOC (+5ppts). The racial diversity of new hires in Non-Editorial departments fell by eight percentage points.
Insider Leadership, defined as Director / Deputy Editor level and above, has seen a 2 percent increase in female representation with BIPOC representation remaining consistent.
Compensation
Overall, we have narrowed the pay gap for female and non-binary employees. However, the pay gap for BIPOC employees has remained the same.
In Editorial, the pay gap has grown slightly for both females and BIPOC employees since 2021.
Outside of Editorial, we see improvements in the pay gap for both female/non-binary employees and BIPOC employees.
Overall, relative pay by gender in leadership has gone largely unchanged since 2021.
BIPOC leadership employees now are paid 97 cents for each dollar of pay earned by white employees, up from 91 cents in 2021.
We continue to regularly review compensation across our organization to ensure that we pay all our employees fairly, within both the company and the overall market.
How we'll continue to make progress
The executive team has reviewed and discussed the report, which it is using to continue this important, ongoing conversation.
Over the last year we have begun several initiatives to help us increase our diversity. Among them:
Recruitment
- We updated our HR systems and documents to allow for and encourage more inclusive identification.
- We helped lead the industry by making public our minimum salary on job postings.
- We removed education and years of experience requirements from job postings.
- We added a "if you don't check all the boxes, you should still apply" line to all job postings.
- Senior Editorial potential hires were met with a series of interview questions around how they think of diversity from a hiring, retention, career development, and journalistic perspective.
Training
- We mandated unconscious bias training for all employees.
- In Editorial, we created new trainings, workshops, panels, and guides for 2022, including conducting a "How to Ensure Diversity in our Sources" workshop and a panel on the state of DEI in newsrooms around the country. We facilitated applications to numerous external workshops and trainings, including the prestigious Poynter Leadership Academy for Women and the National Press Foundation's Widening the Pipeline Fellowship, among many others.
Career development
- We did more one-on-one consulting with newsroom staffers to actively help navigate their careers.
- We promoted internal talent into several high-profile jobs, which helped to increase the diversity of many teams, including the leadership team.
- We conducted quarterly DEI meetings with the editorial leadership team to raise issues and concerns, to pitch new ideas, and to highlight the impactful work of our employees.
- We launched a partnership with Seeds of Fortune, an organization focused on creating the next generation of financially empowered women of color.
Expanding our networks
- We created new fellowship opportunities reserved for niche groups. This includes our first displaced journalist fellowship, a one-year program aimed at mid-career journalists.
- We're continuing to partner with Dillard University in New Orleans on a fellowship, which we are expanding to the larger Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) community. These one-year fellowships offer valuable mentorship and training.
- We have updated hiring guidance to encourage managers to look outside their own networks.
New resources
- We used the Society of Professional Journalists race and gender hotline to remove the burden of sensitivity reads and translation work for our colleagues.
- Our Copy Desk released a new copy hub, which includes an improved section on language around identity.
Methodology
Using self-reported data while maintaining employee anonymity, we aggregate and sort race/ethnicity into three categories across the organization: Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); White; and Undisclosed. We also analyze Female and Non-Binary gender categories together since both are historically underrepresented groups.
Pay Gap: We analyze pay gap by comparing the ratio of earnings across the organization; it is not based on a direct comparison of employees of different genders or races doing the same job. In addition, we have opted to present the data without adjusting for factors such as experience and/or area of focus.