This editorial policy explains what Headcount Journal publishes, the standard a claim has to meet before it appears, and how we keep commercial arrangements away from editorial judgement.
What we cover
People operations, HR technology, compensation and benefits, talent and hiring, and the longer argument about how work is changing. The reader is whoever ends up owning the policy — a people lead, a comp analyst, a founder doing it themselves. The test is whether a piece survives contact with a real handbook.
Sourcing and proof
- We link pay data, benchmark ranges, survey findings and turnover figures to whoever produced them, and we state the sample and the period. A benchmark without a sample is an anecdote in a suit.
- We identify vendor-published research as vendor-published wherever we cite it.
- Employment law is jurisdictional. We name the jurisdiction, and we describe what a rule requires rather than advising you on how to comply with it.
- Where we could not confirm something, the article says so instead of implying otherwise.
- We do not run invented quotes, composite employees presented as real, or testimonials attributed to people who do not exist.
Advertising has no vote in editorial policy
Commercial revenue funds the publication, partly through paid partner content, and that side of the business does not reach editorial. A partner cannot read a piece before it runs, cannot buy favourable treatment and cannot get coverage they dislike removed.
In addition, paid work is a distinct product: Partner content label, disclosure panel, no place in the editorial feed, outbound links marked rel="sponsored". We decline paid work that is off-topic, or that we believe would leave a reader with a false impression of what a tool or a policy does.
Machines and drafts
We use software, AI included, for research and production. However, we do not publish anything a person has not read and edited. Accuracy is the publication’s responsibility whatever tool produced the draft.
Keeping pieces current
Where the facts change, and in this field they change by statute, we update the article and date the update visibly. We never re-date an article we have not revised.
Questions about any of this: editor@headcountjournal.com.