Maintaining Our Standards The VICE Media Group 2020 Pay Equity Report
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Our goal is to continue to build a company that mirrors the diversity of the world we shine a light on every day, the world our audience expects to see from us and a workplace that is expected from our teams. To that end, we are focused on ensuring equity and transparency by building a DEI strategy focused on our People, Culture, Systems and Standards.
Under the umbrella of People, we are standardizing an inclusive recruitment process, increasing representation of racial and ethnic minorities in global leadership, offering first in class benefits and continuing to improve our performance management processes.
With a focus on our Culture, we are increasing our manager and employee learning opportunities aimed at specifically fostering inclusive behaviors and increasing awareness of racial bias, all with the ultimate goal of creating a shared understanding and commitment to championing equity across VMG.
In addition to this Pay Equity Report, a big focus for our Systems pillar is continuing to create and implement global employee policies, publishing our forthcoming 2020 DEI Report and continuing to conduct periodic pay equity studies. These efforts are centered around the objective of increasing our accountability and transparency, and driving equity in our processes, policies and practices.
Lastly, in our Standards pillar, we are creating inclusive best practices for our creative and commercial teams, conducting inclusivity audits of our talent, partners and content, as well as expanding our creative network. All of this is done with the intention of applying an inclusive lens throughout all aspects of our work and corporate citizenship.
While we know this work is never done we are proud of the commitment we have seen across VMG to push our teams, culture and industry forward.
2020 New Hires
58%
Female
52%
BIPOC (US)
Total People Managers
56%
Female
Total US Employee Population
41%
BIPOC (US)
What is Pay Equity?
We are committed to fair and equitable pay at VMG. In 2018, we built an internal Compensation Team to structure our pay process and implement a company-wide approach to fair and consistent compensation across the organization. We have built new systems and processes to ensure that we pay employees with similar job tasks and responsibilities in a consistent manner and that we remain market competitive.
We define Pay Equity at VMG as ensuring that all employees are paid comparable salaries for substantially similar roles. For every job, there is a pay range that is aligned to the market (i.e. what other companies pay employees for doing similar work). VMG’s pay philosophy considers the following factors:
- Location
- Role
- Performance
Compensation is based on what you do, not your gender, ethnicity, or other social identities. To be clear, pay equity does not mean that everyone with the same job title gets the exact same rate of pay. Rather, there is a salary range for each position within each location and differences may reflect the factors listed above, among others.
Key Terms
Evolution of Pay Equity Assessments at VICE Media Group
In the fourth quarter of 2018, VMG conducted its first Pay Equity Study. The analysis was conducted by an independent statistician to ensure a fair and unbiased process. As we shared with our employees in December 2018, findings from the study resulted in salary adjustments to less than 0.7% of our global workforce.
Since our first pay equity assessment, we have made progress in our efforts to prevent gaps from arising in the first place by standardizing global pay ranges, refining the quality of our data and applying learnings to our people processes.
In the third quarter of 2020, we conducted our second Pay Equity Study, which included Refinery29. This study was also conducted by an independent statistician. The review analyzed pay (base and bonus where applicable) for employees within a specific Line of Business/Job Family/Sub-Family/Job Level across all countries with more than 30 employees. The analysis looked at pay by gender in all countries and pay by race in the US. For countries with small employee populations, where statistical analysis could not be run, the Compensation Team conducted an internal salary review of pay by gender and job level.
Our Findings
Our second Pay Equity Study, also performed by an independent statistician, resulted in adjustments to approximately 0.6% of our global workforce. In addition to monitoring pay equity, we continually evaluate other actions to ensure fair pay practices across the globe. For example, we also performed a supplementary market analysis in connection with the integration of R29 into VICE Media Group and related organizational restructurings, and realigned where there were legacy pay differences in comparable positions. Those who required an adjustment fell into every demographic category. All adjustments were effective October 1, 2020.
In Conclusion
Ensuring pay equity and a continued bias-free and fair approach to pay is an ongoing process, but we are pleased that we are making progress. Each time we conduct a pay analysis, we learn something new that helps us continue to improve in every aspect of the employee journey from recruitment to performance management to career development. We will continue to evaluate our workforce practices on an ongoing basis in order to advance and sustain equity across our global teams.
Data is as of October 1st 2020. Analysis includes all active regular employees and excludes temporary, contingent/contract workers, freelancers and interns/apprentices. BIPOC employees are those that have self-identified in the US as American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Two or More Races.