Reach offers lower paid staff 4% pay rise as it defends digital strategy

Reach is doubling down on growing direct audiences and data-driven digital revenues.

Reach CEO Jim Mullen, who has assured staff he has kept his word on a promise that the company would leave 2024 with the same teams with which it started — Reach chief executive Jim Mullen. Picture: Reach

Reach has offered staff earning £60,000 or less a 4% pay rise and assured them the current round of mass redundancies does not mean the company’s digital strategy has failed.

Staff earning more than £60,000 would not receive a pay rise under the plan, with Reach saying it wants to prioritise its lower-earners during the current cost of living crisis and revenue downturn.

Last week Reach’s chief digital publisher David Higgerson and group editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley told editorial staff redundancies would need to be made in order to respond to a “combination of unprecedented cost inflation, a challenged consumer economy and an industry-wide decline in open-market advertising yields”.