The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) represents the UK’s recorded music industry as a trade body. It champions the interests of its membership, which includes over 500 record labels, music businesses and associate members, including independents across the UK as well as Universal Music UK, Sony Music Entertainment UK and Warner Music UK. The BPI is committed to equity and inclusion and operates around a strong belief that everybody should have the same access to the recorded music community and the wider sector. BPI works closely with its members, industry partners and the UK Music Diversity Taskforce to identify and tackle barriers to access.
We interviewed Hailey Willington, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Manager at BPI, to learn more about its year-long mentoring programme targeted at underrepresented groups in the music industry as identified in the UK Music Diversity Survey. The initiative paired eight mentees with eight mentors to look at professional practice in a holistic way, developing leadership capabilities in a diverse range of staff so they can go on and play those functions in other organisations. We learn more about how this DEI work fits into the wider BPI strategy and what makes it successful.
What are your motivations for addressing diversity and inclusion within your organisation?
We approach DEI work from an ethical and moral standpoint. We believe we have a duty to create inclusive environments where everyone feels they can thrive, both within our organisation and across our membership and wider industry. There is also a clear business case for diversity, meaning a healthy climate for investment is also an inclusive climate by definition. We want to make sure we have a really diverse range of talent both in front of and behind the mic, so to speak, and that people are encouraged to stay, develop and thrive within the recorded music community.
How are these motivations embedded in your wider company strategy?
We want everyone to feel safe and at home within the recorded music community and within the organisation. We have a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy that sits within the wider organisational strategy, but at the same time is designed to entwine with everything we do. We want inclusive practice to be folded through everything that BPI does from a strategic point of view.
We’re a member of UK Music - the wider umbrella group which represents the UK’s collective music industry - and are also members of the UK Music Diversity Task Force. Much of our engagement over the past five years with the taskforce has been to help collaboratively develop frameworks for the wider music industry. We feel it’s important that we live by these frameworks as an organisation and exemplify them in how we work them into our own practices.
What are your main EDI goals? What are you trying to achieve?
Our five-year strategy, which we published for National Inclusion Week, articulates what we're trying to achieve and what we're looking for as indicators. What we've said is that at the heart of BPI, we want to develop a diverse workforce for our organisation and the recording industry, one where individuals can bring and contribute a wide range of lived experiences and views as part of an integrated team. We believe in creating environments where people are safe, supported and where they feel they belong and where there's opportunity for all; if we can achieve that within our organisation and help our members to achieve that within their organisations, I think we'll feel successful.
Practically speaking we have shorter, medium and long-term goals. In the short term, we're doing a lot of work at BPI to develop our own inclusive practice, so we can aim to lead from the front and ultimately understand the challenges of our members and best serve them.
In the medium term, we’ll be doing more work with our members to support them in developing their own inclusive practices. Over the longer term, we have a set of around 14 objectives and outcomes for our DEI work that we're hoping to see by the end of 2027. These will help us more broadly understand and measure our impact both at BPI and across the wider sector.
Can you tell us more about BPI's mentoring programme?
The mentoring programme grew out of the UK Music Ten-Point Plan. Points 4 and 5 required organisations to have an annual training budget that ensured opportunity for all, and to allocate budget to implement programmes to increase diversity and representation at middle and senior management. Our mentoring scheme was BPI's response to those points.
Since then, the UK Music Diversity Task Force has published the Five Ps theory of change model. The Five Ps is an evolution of the Ten Point Plan and still asks organisations, like us, who have committed to it, to look at investment within their teams in this way.
The Five Ps ask for organisations to champion staff through allyship and mentoring programmes. This is exactly what we're looking to do through the BPI’s mentoring programme.
We're a relatively small organisation of around 50 team members and the structure of our organisation as a trade body means that we don't have always have a huge amount of space for people to move up through the organisation. However, we do of course still want to invest in our team’s continuing professional development. We're non-competitive, which means we actually see it as a positive thing when a member of our team takes the next step in their career, goes to work for one of our members and stays within the Creative Industries. The objective for our first mentoring cohort, which was a year-long programme concluded toward the end of 2024, was to support team members at BPI to develop the next step of their professional practice, preparing them to embrace opportunities to move up, through and across the industry.
What were the mechanisms you used to engage people in the mentoring programme?
Our mentoring programme was one of the first DEI initiatives I oversaw the launch of after joining BPI. As I got to know the team, I spent time speaking to everyone I could. I wasn't just asking them if they would like to participate in the scheme but also if they line managed someone who they felt would benefit from it. We spoke about it at team meetings and company days, and presented it to the team in a wide call-out forum. Team members could put themselves forward to become mentees but we also did lots of targeted work with the line managers of the organisation to find out if there was anybody they would like to nominate and felt would benefit from participating.
For mentees who were nominated by their line manager, participation wasn't compulsory. However, including the line manager nomination approach allowed me to go and speak to someone and say, 'Hey, your line manager suggested this' and ask them if they'd like to consider being a mentee. Personal communication was really important to getting a wide range of team members involved.
For the mentors, there was a general call out across the organisation for people who might be interested in undertaking mentoring and coaching training. When we launched the programme, the mentors ranged from BPI's Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer to some much more junior team members, so there was a whole diversity of seniority, experience, age and departments. This was an important asset when it came to launching the scheme and matching mentees with mentors.
How have you assessed the success of your EDI activity?
The entire programme is a long-term investment in developing a diverse workforce for the industry. However, even now we're able to see, through self-reported impact from the mentees, that they feel the scheme has positively impacted their confidence. Everyone has agreed that being mentored has positively impacted their professional life, work or career, and that it's helping them explore new skills and interests.
We've had two team members who were mentees move on from the BPI in the last few months and both have gone in very different directions within the industry. However, both have been very clear that the mentoring programme has been essential and integral to them identifying their next steps. Overall, 38% of the mentees within this first year either moved on from their current role into a new role or opportunity within the industry or embraced new roles or responsibilities within the BPI. We're proud of that figure because it shows we're achieving exactly what we set out to do.
We're also hearing from line managers that the programme is having positive impacts for their team members. So, we're seeing really strong initial signs already. Another great outcome is that we have mentees have come to the end of their programme asking when we're going to train the next cohort of mentors and saying they'd love to get involved.
What do you think has made the mentor programme successful?
I think the programme works because it recognises the individuality of each person participating and is flexible enough to provide them with what they need. I think the other thing that has been particularly positive about the scheme has been the level of training and support the mentors got before they embarked on the journey. All mentors went through the Core Skills in Coaching & Mentoring for Advisors, Mentors and Teachers through Guildhall Ignite. Following the conclusion of the course, each of the mentors was matched with a buddy they could practice their skills with. Having that level of support set them up well for working with their mentee and is something that has really enabled the programme's success.
Also, the scheme is completely confidential, so the mentors and mentees understand the confidentiality within their relationships. As a result, I'm not automatically privy to what each mentee’s focus is, but at various times a mentoring pair will come to me and say, 'we're working towards these goals' and would like some logistical support. We've encouraged this and the scheme has been flexible enough that BPI has been able to use our position as a trade body, and the network that comes with it, to facilitate experiences for participants. This could look like networking opportunities, introductions, further training or even work placements. This has been really unique and an additional positive element about the programme.
What advice or key learning would you share with other organisations considering delivering similar initiatives?
Planning is key. The success and strength of the impact we've seen comes down to the rigorous planning of the initiative and the training the mentors took part in, as well as the investment in planning that has taken place. Doing it right required time to make sure the programme was properly designed and that everyone had the support they needed. That investment has paid off enormously.