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Jason Iley and Liz Jeffery discuss impact of award-winning childcare policy
Following the recent Women in Music Award for Sony Music UK’s childcare policy, Jason Iley, Chairman and CEO, and Liz Jeffery, VP of People Experience, spoke to Music Week about the positive effects of the landmark scheme.
Winning in the DE&I Initiative of the Year category, the policy provides employees with funding towards the cost of childcare during working hours and is structured to offer tapered grants, correlating to an individual employee’s salary. This entitles lower and middle earners the ability to benefit from increased funding, up to a maximum of £15,000 per year, towards childcare costs.
Talking about the policy, Jason said: “I’m totally delighted to see it recognised. It’s hugely important for the staff at Sony Music, and for the future of the music industry. We’ve received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from parents about the genuine impact it’s had on their work and family lives.”
He added: “Diversifying the music industry continues to be at the top of our agenda and our goal is to create an equitable company culture. We want to provide our staff with the best support possible and this is one of several measures that we have introduced to increase the proportion of women in senior roles across our company.”
Reflecting on the encouraging figures since the policy began in October 2022, Liz said: “If we look at what has changed since we launched, we’ve seen a 7% improvement in retention of women in the workforce. It’s a combination of all of our policies and talent development initiatives, but the data is there. There’s been a 13% increase of women into senior management positions and we have seen a 6% increase on the number of women hired. We are seeing positive results.”
Liz, on the positive industry reaction to the policy, said: “There are a lot of companies reaching out to Sony to say, ‘How on earth have you done this? Can we learn from you?’ And so we’ve been spending a lot of time talking to companies outside of the music industry. We’ve had interest from government ministers, so we’ve been talking to them about the scheme and some of our other policy work.”