This week we hear from Ridhi Radia, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Immediate Media, about where media sits on the change spectrum for diversity and inclusion.
Ridhi tells us why she is encouraged by the fact that she hears people from a wide range of backgrounds talking about ED&I, embedding values of inclusion in the workplace and within organisational leadership, and the work that she is doing inside Immediate helping networks of underrepresented groups come together to create change.
In the news roundup the team discusses research from Toolkits and National Research Group into consumer attitudes to publishers’ digital subscription products. Of particular interest is its finding that aversion to advertising within subscription products appears to be growing, with 28% highlighting “too many advertisements” as a key reason for their dissatisfaction, up significantly from 19% in 2023.
Some highlights from the interview, lightly edited for clarity:
How Ridhi came to work in ED&I
My background is PR…but I was always conscious that if there was someone who looked like me in a room, they were usually the people who were serving us, rather than the people who were on the table with me. During lockdown, and during the unfortunate death of George Floyd, every company and every human being was looking at their own worlds and self-reflecting. I did the same.
I remember one night, I sent an email to my Chief People Officer Jo Brandl, and said everything that we should be doing, and this is everything that’s wrong. I pressed send, and then went, ‘Oh my God, what have I done, I’m going to be fired!’ I didn’t sleep that night.
The next morning – and this is a good thing about Immediate, is when they recognise your passion, they really give you the space and the tools to go and pursue it – they said, you’re completely right. It was always on the list to do but it always went down the priority list. And when something like this happens, I think you have no choice but to do something about it.
They gave me the space, and they gave me the chance to take it on as a secondment and the training for it. They never said no to me, so I’ve been very lucky. I’ve always had a ‘Yes’ to any idea and initiative I proposed.
The biggest changes she’s seen in industry attitudes
The main change I’ve seen is the sort of people talking about ED&I in a pub. From a media point of view, I was sitting in a pub, I wasn’t even on the table, and there were two white men and they were actually talking about inclusion and diversity. That is something I would never have seen four years ago.
If people are taking that conversation out of the workplace, and they’re learning from each other, and they’re debating, and they’re talking about lived experiences, then that starts influencing the decision-making. And that’s a huge change. Fundamental to creating change is just sharing and having those uncomfortable conversations.
When you’re talking to people about things like race, and emotive issues and situations which are hard for people to digest and not be defensive… it’s only when you start creating that psychologically safe space in the first place to have those uncomfortable conversations that is when people start developing trust, and developing that empowerment to inspire and start creating change.
Seeing more people like me in the industry, seeing more people like me in our company, seeing more people talk about neurodiversity and intersectionality, and looking at how our content and stories have changed, I think we’ve come a long way as a media company in the last three years. And I feel very optimistic about the industry when I look at it that way.
Making ED&I a strategic priority
The only way you can make change in ED&I is making sure that inclusion is a leadership and strategic priority, and really designing your strategy around your transformation business strategy. That’s the only way it will go hand-in-hand. That’s the way you get buy-in as well.
Yes, HR and People teams and myself, we all have a role to drive these initiatives and implement them and create them. But it’s only when it becomes central to your business strategy, and when it becomes a leadership priority, that accountability becomes key. That’s when you start moving the dial.
I think we’re getting there. We don’t put ED&I into CSR or HR; we put it as a foundation. It’s an agenda point during board meetings, it’s talked about at a leadership level, and it’s really embedded into teams. I think that is the only way that we can achieve meaningful change.
The news round-up
Toolkits conducted a study in partnership with the research and insights firm National Research Group into US consumer attitudes to publishers’ digital subscription products.
- Eighty-five percent of subscribers to digital publications reported being “completely” or “mostly” satisfied with the value for money they received from their subscriptions, up from 75% in August 2022.
- Meanwhile, twelve percent reported being “somewhat satisfied”, while just 3% said they were “mostly unsatisfied” or “not at all satisfied”. That’s good, but to be expected as people wouldn’t stick around if they were getting bad experiences.
- Twenty-nine percent of subscribers to digital publications said the total number of subscriptions they held increased in the 12 months before October 2023, while just 7% said it decreased. Sixty-four percent said the number of subscriptions they held remained consistent.
For subscribers who were not fully satisfied with the value for money they received from publishers’ subscription products, advertising load was cited as the top reason, with 28% highlighting “too many advertisements” as a key reason for their dissatisfaction, up significantly from 19% in 2023”.
- This study is just for publisher products, but will we see backlash from streaming services beginning to do the same?
- It’s an especially thorny area as logged-in and known users are of far higher value than anonymous passers by. But there’s a general expectation that if you’re paying for a subscription, you should have minimal or no advertising.
Of course, subscriptions aren’t the only way to monetise audiences. For the 90% of people who won’t subscribe (although we think that’s an optimistic estimate), The Audiencers has some examples of alternatives to increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).
