Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Closing date for applications: 19th November 2025

Salary: Up to £65k dependent on experience (+bonus +benefits)

Location: London

Contract: Permanent

Lead the next chapter of Changing the Story, Hachette UK’s award-winning DEI strategy, and shape how one of the UK’s biggest publishers reflects the readers it serves.

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

We're made up of 10 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Orion, which won Publisher of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards; Little, Brown; John Murray Press; Hodder & Stoughton; Headline; Octopus, and Bookouture. They publish fiction and non-fiction in digital, audio and print format, from the world's best and most diverse authors, including Brit Bennett, Candice Carty-Williams, Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Maggie O'Farrell, Delia Owens, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling, Colson Whitehead, and Malala Yousafzai. Hachette Children's Group publishes a wide and vibrant range of books for children across all age ranges, while Hachette Learning is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.

Hachette UK is part of Hachette Livre, the world's third largest trade and educational publisher. As well as our headquarters in Carmelite House, London, and our state-of-the-art book distribution centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire, we have recently opened five new offices in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. The UK region also includes offices in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

It's an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK's creative industries.

What you'll be doing

Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment, and opportunity and in order to serve the diversity of readers around the world, it’s imperative that our people and publishing are fully reflective of this diverse readership.

Nearly ten years ago, we created ‘Changing the Story’, a programme of strategic policies, cultural initiatives and progressive partnerships to put diversity at the heart of everything we do. It is now one of the four pillars of our business strategy (the others being Owner Mentality, Understanding Consumers and Growth Mindset) and something that everyone who works at Hachette UK is involved in from the day they join.

Changing the Story (CtS) has three strands:

Our People - Building a talented staff base that is representative of all readers and a culture in which everyone can thrive in their role whilst being themselves.

Our Publishing - Building an author base and publishing output that reaches more readers by representing all readers and telling stories with inclusion at their core.

Our Partnerships and Publicity - Celebrating the best of CtS internally and externally to build our employer brand and developing charitable partnerships to improve access to books and life-changing reading skills for under-served communities.

As Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) you will sit at the heart of Hachette UK and primarily support the people strand of CtS, while also being actively involved across the publishing and partnerships & publicity strands.

• You’ll set the CtS agenda in the UK that reflects the needs of our business, with input from the Group HR Director, Senior VP of DE&I, CtS board and your own knowledge of DE&I trends.
• You will lead a team of Network Chairs and support our employee networks, including maintaining the governance model, managing co-chair selection, ensuring their goals are aligned to our mission and the broader people agenda, amplifying their work, and dealing with any issues.
• You’ll create and publish our annual pay gap reports and in turn work in partnership with our HR team, the CtS Board and employee networks to create well rounded DE&I action plans that address pay gap findings, recruitment and progression insights and identify when we need to improve representation of groups where we don’t reflect all readers and available talent.
• You’ll network widely and create and nurture partnerships with organisations who build and support communities of underrepresented groups to spread the word about publishing and the opportunities at Hachette including Business in the Community, Creative Access, The Black Writers Guild and more.
• You’ll help shape and deliver our annual Changing the Story Festival, working with colleagues and employee networks to develop inspiring programming that reflects our DE&I priorities, showcases diverse voices, and engages employees across the business.
• You’ll propose, consult on and draft policies to enable our culture and promote inclusion and wellbeing and support external accreditations and partnerships.
• You’ll manage and be responsible for the Changing the Story budget ensuring we get the best value for money possible.
• You’ll work with our talent acquisition team on our recruitment policy and infrastructure that supports our accreditations and partnerships and helps build recruitment practices to attract a broad range of candidates and hire people across all roles who better represent all readers.
• You’ll benchmark our people practices and amplify the work of our employee networks by entering awards and listings, and you’ll represent Hachette UK at diversity, equity and inclusion events.
• You’ll work to ensure our Respect & Inclusion policy is embedded throughout the company by advising and supporting staff and managers on any issues with empathy and sensitivity in partnership with the HR team.
• You’ll also source and create training programmes to build empathy, respect and inclusion such as our Inclusive Leaders and Everyday Inclusion training with support from your Learning and Development colleagues.
• You’ll work closely with our Communications team to amplify the activity of our networks and promote and celebrate their work internally and externally.

Who we are looking for

• You’re experienced in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion with a successful track record of high impact change that you have led.
• You have a growth and commercial mindset, and like being at the forefront of initiating and leading change.
• You use data and insights to shape strategy, influence stakeholders, and measure impact—translating numbers into clear actions that drive meaningful progress.
• You have a well-established network, and have experience of building and maintaining external stakeholder relationships.
• You have the ability to be immersed in the business, are close to the "pulse" of the employees and Senior Management Team to ensure a high level of engagement and insight.
• You’re an influencer with an ability to challenge and persuade stakeholders with different perspectives – bringing the right information and presentation style for the audience.
• You have experience of working and building strong relationships with Board level management. You build trust quickly, are a credible, proactive professional with excellent judgement and the ability to inspire confidence in others.
• You’re comfortable shifting between hands on and strategic tasks and able to work autonomously and in an agile way - comfortable with both pace and ambiguity. You have the ability to prioritise and handle ever changing and conflicting workload priorities.
• You’re highly organised, remaining calm under pressure.
• You’re proactive, solutions focused, and a pragmatic problem solver, identifying issues and proposing solutions beyond policy and process.
• You’re a proficient copywriter, who understands the power of language to drive change.
• You are proficient with numbers and at interpreting statistics.
• You demonstrate experience of role modelling and championing a company’s mission and values.

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including AgeWise, Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

The role will be based at our London office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.