Meet the women pushing for pay transparency

I meet Laura Braithwaite and Kate Merritt, the co-founders of Liberty Hive, a platform that operates like a “dating site” for connecting talent in the media industry to companies, in a hip east London café.

Set up in March 2020, the pair, both based in London, came up with the idea of Liberty Hive with no inkling of the huge demand for flexible working arrangements that would come post-Covid.

Now in its third year, transparency runs through the company’s veins with a particular focus on employers being upfront about salaries and flexibility.

Braithwaite, who pioneered flexible working at her company nine years ago, and Merritt are both mums who understand the importance of being open about pay to help create a more equal environment to keep talent.

Its website, which is adorned with pleasing, pastel colours, allows users to easily select whether they’re hiring or looking for work, and more importantly, the way in which they want to work, whether it’s remote, hybrid or at a face-to- face company.

The pair say the technology-led platform offers a new and modern solution to traditional hiring methods for all types of roles from freelance to permanent across all levels.

Having known each other for years in the media industry, the pair seem at ease with each other and confident in their business and industry knowledge.

Reward Strategy asks them about their campaign for salary transparency and reaching pay parity and why offering flexibility is so important.

Explain how you both came together to create Liberty Hive?

Kate: Laura and I worked together 20 years ago in media agencies. We worked really well together for around five years, went off and did our own things in the industry. In 2020, we reconnected when we both came up with the same idea and went to

research it in an agency. Within the space of two weeks, the agency’s managing director told me he had someone in talking about that same idea and “by the way, you know her”. Me and Laura then reconnected and Liberty Hive was born three weeks later.

Laura: When we talked about it initially one of the statistics in 2019 said that only 4.3% of the workforce worked flexibly. We thought that we would have to do a big behavioural piece, but then Covid came along and that changed everything.

Why did you think it was needed?

Laura: We set up Liberty Hive to keep talent in the industry. We noticed in particular that parents were leaving their jobs because hours were inflexible, demands of caring responsibilities, for example elderly parents, and a general restlessness. We wanted to give people the freedom to work in a new way, connecting these amazing people to great companies wanting to tap into agile, flexible talent. We have since evolved to support all contract and permanent roles but freedom to work differently is in our DNA.

Kate: The purpose of it originally, was that we noticed there was a lot of people working long hours, and because of that were leaving the industry because they had childcare to do or they have parents to look after or they were just unfulfilled. We wanted to set something up that would keep talent in the industry.

How does the platform work?

Laura: It’s a bit like a dating site for people in media. When you sign in, you put in everything, your skillset and how you want to work, whether it’s part-time, full-time, in the office, hybrid, remote etc. We made that the focus. And then companies know what candidates they are getting and tapping into talent that otherwise would have left the industry. There is nothing like it for our industry – traditional recruitment can be very slow and expensive (3.5 months to fill).

Kate: It is a technology platform that connects media and marketing specialists to companies, using bespoke matching technology. We launched in February 2021 to provide companies the freedom to attract the best talent and for our candidates to find the best opportunities. Our fastest connection from posting a role to someone being hired is eight hours!

Where does the name come from?

Laura: Liberty and Hive came to us fairly quickly - in fact - in one session! Liberty represented the freedom to work differently, and Hive was the community of talent. They come to us and fly off and then come back. We keep putting money into building our technology to make it smarter so that people can connect upfront based on how they want to work.

Kate: We work with forward-thinking companies who are open to someone who wants to maybe work three days a week. For example, we had someone who wanted to work 3 and a half days up to the summer, which she wanted to take off and then go full-time after that. It allows people to be agile.

You started Liberty Hive in March 2020, exactly when the lockdown came in, what were your main challenges then?

Laura: As we registered Liberty Hive at Companies House, we believed our biggest challenge was going to be changing the attitudes of flexible working but fast forward three years the office life has changed and there’s no going back. As some people say, the genie’s out of the bottle.

What kind of candidates do you have? 

Laura: Anyone from all different walks of life. Anyone looking for new opportunities, for example, someone who works in media but would like to get into marketing. We do some communities as well where we do back to work schemes for people who haven’t worked for a few years.

What are your thoughts on employers ghosting candidates?

Kate: It drives us nuts when people don’t respond to candidates. We always check in with our clients, we encourage them to leave a personalised message detailing how long the process is and to manage expectations, for example, if they go on holiday. We keep a real eye on that because it’s just rude. When a job has been filled, the candidate will get a notification saying as such.

Laura: It is never acceptable to do this intentionally. We do hear that it happens, but it is normally due to the platforms and recruitment processes not working properly. For example, an average media role on LinkedIn may get over 200 CVs. It is impossible to get back to all of those applicants. At Liberty Hive, we have
the technology that allows companies and ourselves to send a personal message and keep candidates in the loop on their application.

Do you give advice to candidates?

Laura: Sometimes, we will say you need to work on your CV. For example, a candidate might have certain skills and expertise that just aren’t shining through. And then we offer people names of partners that can help. We don’t take commission for it.

You have a campaign on salary transparency, why do you think this is important?

Laura: Everyone should be paid equally and fairly. We have been watching closely the Government’s pay and transparency campaign that was launched last year and have written to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions for more information on it. There are issues with employers offering too wide of a salary band, for example, £50,000 to £150,000. What are your thoughts on that? 

Kate: We recommend a band of around 10%. We think anything too broad is not helping anyone. And we know from our platform that when you’re transparent with your salaries, you get 67% more success with applicants. There is a whole benefit from a salary gap, like time, efficiency, functionality, and I think it shows a company is progressive.

What are your thoughts on staff being told to go back to the office? Have you seen an increase in this from employers?

Laura: I think this boils down to a similar approach to salary transparency, we find all our clients are totally different. There isn’t a one size fits all. Whatever your view is on it, we think you should say what it is up front. The other day we had an instance where a candidate went through three rounds of interviews, offered the woman the job and then said, “by the way, we’re a face-to-face company” and she wanted to work two days a week. It just wastes huge amounts of time. There are clients who say, “to innovate, we need to be in the office all the time and you may or may not agree with it. It is their choice, but they need to be upfront about it. But I think
the more progressive companies are the ones trying out things like the nine-day fortnight, the four-day week. You can offer flexibility in many different ways.

Kate: And you will attract more diverse teams. If you’re saying to people “we want you in five days a week”, companies limit themselves by having that blanket rule.

How is it working together?

Laura: We’re both people who sit behind a desk and devise strategies. Twenty years in media agencies, to go from those organisations to just being the two of us is great, but scary. In the beginning we had to learn so much about the technology and the fundraising fees and data. Someone said to me “it takes three years” but it took us only a year. We’ve gained confidence now whereas our first Linked In post took us around three days to send because we were so nervous.

On pay transparency, have either of you known that you were being paid less than a colleague who did the exact same thing as you?

Kate: Over the years we have heard stories about this and that is why we are big advocates of salary transparency. A recent example was two graduates starting on a set salary, the male colleague asked for more in the interview process and his request was accepted. The female graduate didn’t, so they started on a
lower salary. What has the company done for its culture there? And yes, you could argue that the young woman didn’t negotiate but it shouldn’t be that way. It should be transparent. The countries that have pay transparency are seeing that they are moving closer to closing the gender pay gap. The job is the job.

Have either of you been paid less than a male colleague?

Both: Yes!

Laura: At the time, I put it down to me having three kids and having to leave on time. Now, that’s why we’re so passionate about it. If I knew what I know now, I would have been angry. I was one of the first people in our old company to work part-time and I remember saying to the CEO, “if it doesn’t work, you can sack me!”. But it was a different time. After a month, it worked really well, and I carried on doing it for nine years. I felt fulfilled by that. And then one day I woke up and wanted to go back full-time.

Is it good for people to know what their neighbour earns or a work colleague? 

Laura: I think that if people know what others are earning, for example, a nurse sees another nurse and that they’re being paid broadly the same, but if they see a doctor’s wage, they might want to retrain. It kind of empowers you to say, “I want that and what do I need to do to get there?”. One of the things that we’re working on is being transparent with our data. So, if you want to go on and see what a social media director makes, for example, if you’re you can go on and see what people are making at that level. We haven’t got there yet but that’s what we’re working towards.

Kate: There are so many things going on in the country. Baroness Stedman-Scott launched the pilot scheme last year and nothing seems to be getting done. It felt like it was launched on International Women’s Day and since then we’ve struggled to find any information. We’ve written to Lord Younger, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions to find out what is happening.

Has the outlook on flexibility changed?

Kate: Covid has helped that because suddenly men have to see that whole balance thing at home and I think there is a lot more awareness of that struggle that women have, which they might not have seen before. I think going forward it will get a lot easier. One thing that was said to me when I had kids was the motorway analogy -that when you worked full-time you were speeding along in the fast lane and the move to part-time might move you into the slow lane. It doesn’t mean you stop, you just go slightly slower. And that’s okay because that might be what you want at that time.

What do you think of the Chancellor’s changes to childcare in the budget?

Kate: I think it’s giving more women the opportunity to come back to work. As we all know it’s a huge barrier. Whether it will be enough, I don’t know.

In light of the thousands of redundancies companies are having to make, how do employers tackle burnout?

Laura: We are seeing that longer hours are beginning to creep in massively, because the work still needs to be done. There are two sides of it, the company side, and the employee side. I think the company should employ people in different ways, look at whether you could tap into flexible resources to scale up when your business goes through busy times. And likewise, employees need to look at what they’re doing and see what else is out there and take the driver’s seat and work differently. Being informed helps make those choices.

Is anyone ever truly happy in what they do?

Laura: Human beings are never 100% happy. I would say that when you know that a certain dial has gone too low, you’ve got to be able to recognise that and do something about it. Today people are much more in control of their own destiny. Now, you can do 20 roles across 20 years.

Kate: With flexibile working, job satisfaction and wellbeing have gone up hugely, and of course, we love our job!