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Our People

 

Careers at Penguin Random House

Our dedicated team of publishing professionals is committed to helping authors realize their very best work and to finding innovative new ways of bringing stories and ideas to audiences worldwide. To explore job openings at Penguin Random House, visit our Careers website here.

 

Our Social Impact

We bring people together bymin amplifying storytelling and diverse voices, not only in the books and in the authors we publish, but also within our company, by working to create the most equitable and inclusive home where all are welcome and where every person is empowered to be themselves and to share their perspectives. For more information about our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion, visit our Social Impact website here.

 

2022 Penguin Random House Workforce Demographics

At Penguin Random House, we strive to create books for everyone; having a workforce that represents the society we live in goes hand-in-hand with achieving this goal. Today we are releasing our third annual company demographics report, which illustrates our progress as we work toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. 

Here is a snapshot of PRH’s current workforce makeup:

 

This next chart shows the breakout of the company’s employees by race in both 2021 and 2022, along with U.S. population and industry benchmarks.

We again looked at the data associated with our editorial and marketing & publicity teams because these roles directly shape and support our lists and, subsequently, our efforts to publish and promote more BIPOC creators. We’ve continued to make notable progress in these departments.

 

This next chart shows the racial makeup of our population at different career levels, with our 2021 data included for comparison. While we continue to make progress at all levels, the entry-level population is still racially diversifying at a higher rate than most other levels.

 

In addition to our recruitment efforts, we are deeply committed to prioritizing retention, promotion, and development opportunities for our current employees in all underrepresented groups. We will continue to assess, supplement, and make changes where needed to our policies, procedures, resources/tools, and communication around internal mobility, promotions, and succession planning to ensure and promote equity. These efforts will need to be amplified so that our workforce continues to diversify at all levels at a faster rate.

One of our company’s near-term goals is for our new hire demographics to reflect U.S. working age population demographics by 2024. This next chart shows the racial makeup of the company’s new hires over the last six years. As we move forward in making our hiring practices more equitable and inclusive and to remove historical barriers to entry, we have seen an increase in racial diversity within our new hires, especially since 2019.

 

Updates on Our Actions

This year, we’ve continued to expand our Recruitment Outreach and Partnerships team. Both our Manager of Diversity Recruitment – Outreach and Partnerships, and Associate of Recruitment Marketing have joined the team that already included our Campus Recruiter, a role added in late 2020, and each of those positions are primarily or fully dedicated to diversity recruitment efforts. 

One of our 2022 efforts has been to enhance our employer brand presence on social media to help draw in more candidates from different backgrounds and to supply information to make the publishing industry more accessible to all. Our new resource, “How to Get into Publishing,” which was launched across multiple social channels, provides information and tips to people interested in publishing to help demystify the industry. We are also working on a new “Day in the Life” video series to help candidates outside of the publishing industry get a better sense for what we do.

Additionally, we have continued to expand campus outreach. In the past year, we have grown our presence at Minority Serving Institutions including California State Dominguez Hills, Howard University, North Carolina A&T State, Spelman College, University of Central Florida, and University of Maryland, Baltimore County while maintaining ongoing partnerships with schools including NYU, Pace, Columbia, CCNY, Fordham, and others. This list and those relationships will keep expanding throughout the year and beyond. 

We’re also increasing our efforts to reach mid-level professionals who are interested in making a career shift to publishing. This includes gathering information from employees about their transferable skills —proficiencies gained in other jobs and industries that have translated well to an array of roles across publishing —to be used in job ads, presentations to prospective candidates, and short informational videos to help make publishing a discoverable, attractive, and accessible destination for all.  

We’re continuing our work to ensure that job descriptions, postings, and interviews are competency-based, and free of bias, and we’re pleased that our Hiring Manager Toolkit, which provides guidance on these topics, has been widely adopted. 

 At Penguin Random House, we are in this for the long haul: Having a workforce that is representative of our society will take time, but we will continue to make tangible changes to our workplace culture, systems, and procedures to help us get there. We look forward to sharing our ongoing progress with you.

Our Approach to Diversity & Inclusion

As Penguin Random House, we hold a collective belief that diverse voices need to be elevated and heard. And we can and must do better. We must give a platform to an even broader range of voices, especially more authors, illustrators, and creators of color. For us, more diverse publishing is not just a moral imperative. Establishing more inclusive business practices is a necessity for us to help build an inclusive society.

Our approach to diversity and inclusion in our business focuses on these four priority areas:

  • Leadership Investment in Diversity & Inclusion: Effective leadership is at the core of systemic change and we are investing in that change through unconscious bias, antiracism, and inclusivity training. We acknowledge that leaders need to take more proactive ownership of our efforts in order to relive the burden on employees from marginalized groups and junior employees.
  • Diversity & Representation: While we have a globally diverse workforce, we are committed to making our employee population even more representative of our society. We will increase the number of books we publish, promote, and sell—by people of color.
  • Career Growth: We believe that diversity and inclusion is crucial to the development of all employees. Our Human Resources teams have created tools to help employees have more purposeful conversations with their managers about career advancement. We are also actively making advancements to increase the clarity and consistency regarding opportunities for career and compensation development in order to ensure that employees are prepared, supported, and well situated in how to advocate for their career path.
  • Psychological Safety and Belonging: We understand that it is important for employees to be their authentic selves within the workplace, and that managers play a key role in establishing the climate that allows them to do so. We seek to create a more psychologically safe, inclusive environment that allows employees to bring their full selves to work and voice their ideas and opinions openly.

These pillars are the guiding principles by which Penguin Random House will foster a more diverse, equitable and inclusive company culture. Like our publishing, we locally implement our global diversity and inclusion position. On this page, you will find a selection of the programs and initiatives that are underway in support of these overarching pillars.

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