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The PPA is inviting all consumer and business media publishers to participate in what it claims is the first magazine-industry-wide survey of workplace diversity and inclusion. 

The survey is close to going out, with the findings to be reported this spring as well as examined by the trade body’s diversity and inclusion working group. 

The PPA aims to re-run the survey at least every two years to provide a benchmark of the industry’s record on diversity and inclusion. Findings will not single out individual companies but will be aggregated to provide an industry-level picture. 

Questions cover staff age, regional distribution, ethnicity, sexuality and cognitive diversity among other issues. The survey is created in partnership with organisational change consultancy EA Inclusion.

The volume of survey response will be key, according to PPA chief executive Owen Meredith, because “without the data it’s currently very hard [for us] to see” where the PPA has made, or needs to make, successful adjustments to improve diversity representation. 

Meredith hopes the survey will prove useful in tackling the challenge of retaining the more diverse workforce that he believes companies have recently successfully been attracting. 

“I think there are plenty of examples of D&I schemes that companies across the industry are running successfully in bringing talent into the industry,” he said.

“I think the key challenge is how we retain that talent and help talent from all sorts of backgrounds, but particularly from those that are not traditionally associated with publishing, flourish in the long term.”

In 2020 the PPA introduced the Diversity Initiative of the Year to its awards line-up, with Condé Nast’s Vogue winning in the main PPA Awards and OutThere Publishing winning in the Independent Publisher Awards.