Publishers welcome PRH pledge to pay work experience participants

Other publishers have welcomed Penguin Random House's new stance on paying work experience participants, after it pledged to pay the National Living Wage to 450 candidates every year to help tackle the issue of a lack of diversity within the industry. However, others have suggested a requirement to pay work experience participants may put some companies off from offering it at all.

Andrew Franklin, m.d. of Profile Books, said it had been paying work experience applicants the Living Wage for some time. A strong campaigner for fair treatment of interns, in the past Franklin has said it is “shameful” some publishers do not pay those on placements while chief executives are “paying themselves hundreds of thousands of pounds a year”. He said of PRH's new policy to pay work experience candidates in addition to its interns: "[The move is] much better late than never. We've been doing it for a while, so I'm very pleased [PRH] is now doing it and hopefully a lot of other publishers will follow suit." 

Hachette's payment for one-week work experience placements is limited to expenses, the company said, but it emphasised it pays interns on its eight-week "work experience" programme, as reported on in November. Those applicants get a grounding in editorial, publicity and marketing and are paid the London Living Wage. It also runs a black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) trainee scheme, offering 12-month paid placements to interns who are paid an entry–level salary. 

"We continue to welcome a wide range of applications for one week work experience placements," said a spokesperson for Hachette. "These are designed to give just a taste of what working for a publisher entails. For these week-long placements we pay expenses. As part of our outreach programme we are funding places on the UCL publishing summer school; we have created bursaries to fund two special Hachette MA projects at Kingston University for students from BAME backgrounds and, as we are very focused on encouraging applications from outside the South East, we are funding additional bursaries for students from three regional universities with publishing programmes."

Bonnier Publishing said it opted to pay a fee of £1,000 a month to all those on its formal "work placements" which generally last between one and three months. It offers shorter periods of work experience, for which expenses are provided, but there are "fewer" opportunities of this kind available and they are offered on an "adhoc" basis. Its focus is on its work placement scheme, a spokesperson said, from which it has recruited a number of current staff who are quickly rising through the ranks. The spokesperson added: “We believe that any form of work experience should be meaningful and a genuine asset on a CV. We offer short-term work placements which generally last between one-three months and pay £1,000 per month. They’ve proven a great way of finding talent and we’re proud to have identified permanent roles for over half of those who’ve joined us on a work placement in the last two years.”

For HarperCollins, which makes the more traditional distinction between "work experience" (lasting between one and two weeks) and longer term "internships", it said while it only covers work experience candidates' expenses, the ratio of work experience placements to paid internships was changing in favour of the latter. 

"HarperCollins has a broad diversity and inclusion strategy and we support all cross industry activity that drives this agenda forward," a spokesperson said. "Our existing policy is that all interns are paid National Minimum Wage and we cover expenses for those on work experience placements. Increasingly we offer fewer work experience placements and more paid internships."

However, for other, smaller publishers who may be unable or unwilling to pay work experience candidates, the move may put them off taking on short placements altogether, it has been suggested.

Alessandro Gallenzi, publisher at Alma Books, said the government's "vociferous" attitude against unpaid work experience had influenced its decision to stop the practice altogether. 

"We stopped our work-experience programme years ago and have no immediate plans to revive it," he said. "It was three things: first, the fact that the government (rightly) didn't look favourably on unpaid work experiences; secondly the decline in the quality of applicants; and thirdly - at times - the mere lack of space in the office!"

He added: "I remember discussing this with our accountant and coming to the conclusion that our programme wasn't worthwhile unless we were able to offer some payment."