Reach staff have received a £600 bonus in recognition of the company’s profit growth last year.
However the National Union of Journalists has contrasted this with the £662,000 in total bonuses being paid out to chief executive Jim Mullen.
The NUJ also urged the company to “urgently reconsider” a 2% pay rise offer for staff that is on the table for 2025.
As reported earlier this month, Reach grew its operating profit by 6% to £102.3m although total revenue was down 5.3% to £538.6m.
Reach chairman Nick Prettejohn said in the company’s annual report, published on Tuesday: “The performance of the business in what remains a challenging sector and environment meant that the Board has agreed bonus payments to the executive team and throughout the organisation to reflect everyone’s hard work and commitment.”
Remuneration Committee chair Olivia Streatfeild said: “Our strong performance that benefited all stakeholders in 2024 enabled Reach to provide appropriate increases in remuneration for our colleagues.
“Our people remain our most important asset and recognising this with pay that promotes retention and rewards performance will, we believe, be to the long-term benefit of the business.”
Bonuses are being paid this month to about 3,300 members of staff at Reach. The business had a total of 3,566 employees as of 31 December 2024, of which 2,327 were in editorial.
Streatfeild attributed the bonus to the “strong” adjusted operating profit which she said meant the “2024 bonus ‘profit pool’” was “fully self-funded”.
The bonuses followed a 5% base salary increase which took place in April 2024 and took the minimum salary for a senior journalist at Reach to £32,760.
A year earlier Reach staff saw a 4% pay rise for those earning less than £60,000 a year and pay freezes for higher earners.
Reach’s executive directors are receiving their first bonuses in three years after no extra payments were made in 2022 or 2023.
Mullen and chief financial officer Darren Fisher are both receiving a cash bonus of 50% of their base salary as well as a bonus deferred share award, of 75% and 50% of base salary respectively, that they can cash in the shares in three years.
Both received a 5% pay rise in 2024 meaning Mullen’s salary from 1 April 2024 was £529,646 and Fisher was on £378,000.
Streatfeild said “performance against a wider range of factors” was monitored before confirming the executive bonuses, including digital and print revenues, environmental performance and diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Mullen’s total fixed remuneration for 2024 was £585,000 made up of £523,000 base salary, taxable benefits of £23,000 and pension benefit of £39,000. He also received total variable remuneration (bonuses) of £662,000 taking him to a total of £1.25 million.
Fisher received total fixed remuneration of £425,000 in 2024, made up of a £374,000 salary, £23,000 taxable benefits and £28,000 pension benefit, plus £432,000 total variable remuneration taking him to a total of £857,000.
Mullen said in the report that Reach has “delivered a strong financial performance with an operating margin of nearly 20% and that importantly means we can meet our significant obligations, whether that’s to our former employees and pensioners or to our shareholders”.
The NUJ said it “stresses Reach must also meet its obligation to current employees, who have been central to the company’s success by offering a pay award that reflects the true value of their work”.
The Reach NUJ Group Chapel said in a statement: “It is good news that the business has turned around its key digital revenues and has improved its operating profits out of which these bonuses will be paid. But this was done on the back of heroic efforts by employees to dramatically increase the number of stories going online and by those in print outperforming the market with threadbare resources thanks to significant redundancies.
“The NUJ is currently consulting its members over a pay offer from management with the headline across the board increase of just 2% – which equates to a pay cut when inflation is taken into account. This is poor reward for their part in the business turnaround.
“The one-off staff bonus that has been paid is non-consolidated and while any additional sum is of course welcome, it does nothing for meeting the financial challenges members and their families face for the future…
“Our members will not have a problem with success being appropriately rewarded, but they do expect fairness and deserve better in 2025 – especially as the promising upturn in digital revenues is continuing into this year and recent big cost items such as legal costs for unlawful news gathering cases and drop in newsprint expenditure is falling away.”
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