Promoting fair pay within organisations is paramount for fostering equity and respect among employees. One crucial aspect of this endeavour is ensuring that employees receive the real living wage (RLW), as set out by the Living Wage Foundation, individuals earning below this threshold struggle to afford basic necessities.
While transitioning to the real living wage may entail short-term costs, the long-term benefits are significant, employee retention and reducing recruitment costs are among the advantages. We spoke to some of our accredited organisations to find out how paying the real living wage has helped their business and employees.
Aspire Community Works is a campaigning and community business that provides estates management and open spaces services to local communities.
Aspire Community Works are Real Living Wage employer advocates, why is it important that people are paid the real living wage?
“Aspire’s mission is to provide sustainable and high quality employment for people who have been disadvantaged by the labour market for a number of reasons. We do not think those who have suffered disadvantage should be doubly disadvantaged by low pay and poor working conditions, as too often happens.”
“Since we started our frontline business in 2010, the payment of the RLW has been an essential part of treating our employees well, along with treating them with respect and providing them with decent working conditions and the room to develop their skills. By doing the best we can for our workers, we are rewarded by them doing the best that they can to build our business with lower rates of staff turnover and high levels of morale and commitment.”
Katharine Sutton, Director
Aspire Community Works campaigns for better work opportunities, can you share some of the work you have done and the impact it has had?
“We set up our #BetterForUs campaign in 2020 run by Aspire on behalf of our employees with the support of Trust for London. The campaign is aimed at working with public and private sector organisations to encourage them to use their purchasing power to deliver RLW and good jobs, particularly in the everyday economy. In essence, we want to see good procurement demonstrated throughout the supply chains of the public and private sectors. We are asking all organisations to sign up to our five point pledge for respect, decent wages, sustainable procurement, good work and employee voice.”
Katharine Sutton, Director
Avorium is a siblings-run business based in York selling matching desk accessories and stationery that can be personalised on the spot.
What benefits has Avorium had from paying its staff the real living wage?
“By paying our employees the RLW, we have found their motivation to provide a great customer experience is elevated, as well as their passion and excitement to work for our business. It has also improved our employee retention and the number of job applications we get.”
Tom Calvert, Director
What would you say to other small businesses in retail that are worried that they can’t afford to pay the real living wage?
“While at first we were unsure whether we could afford the increase in staff pay, we have found that the increase in dedication and passion has returned a net positive impact on the business. Our business-wide sales our higher since we made this change, and Avorium seems to have a strong team that all love to be here!”
Tom Calvert, Director
Boo Coaching & Consulting provide world class executive coaching and learning solutions by takingcutting-edge research and translating it into a delivery style which is engaging, participatory and above all fun.
Boo Coaching and Consulting has been an accredited real living wage organisation since 2016. Why was becoming a RLW accredited organisation so important to you?
“To put it simply, it fits with our values and it’s the right thing to do. Fair pay really matters, it is fundamental to workplace wellbeing, something at the heart of all we do.”
“We want our team to not only be able to cover their bills, but to have funds left over to use in the pursuit of joy. Only then they can be happy and healthy at work and be at their best for themselves, their families and our customers.”
Amy Rothwell, Happiness Ambassador
In 2021 you won a Real Living Wage Champion award – can you share details of things you’ve done to champion the RLW and any impacts you’ve noticed?
“It’s difficult to condense our enthusiasm for the Real Living Wage Movement into a paragraph or two! We won the Champion Award in 2021 and in 2023 we won the Living Wage Week photo competition for our series of ‘Living Wage Mermaids’ photos. Other things we’ve done include getting up at dawn to take sunrise photos of the Living Wage sign in local beauty spots – to make a ‘treasure hunt’ highlighting that Bolton deserves far pay, we’ve made ‘Living Wage Week – the Movie’, we’ve organised local events and webinars.”
“We sponsored the Living Wage Health & Social Care Award and we try to keep the conversation going, our aim is to create a talking point around the things that matter to us. Although we are a small organisation, we hope our efforts and our collaborative events spark dialogue, influence behaviours, and encourage others who trust us to do all they can to be fair and responsible employers, and work towards Living Wage accreditation.”
Amy Rothwell, Happiness Ambassador
Seniors Helping Seniors® provides care for the elderly who need help to live at home. Care is provided exclusively by senior people with care experience and their services bridge the gap between family, state-provided or charity care on a ‘what matters’ basis to self-funders.
You are champions of the Real Living Wage for the care sector, and you credit your company’s success to paying people well. Can you share some of the benefits you’ve seen in your business and across the sector?
“Seniors Helping Seniors was honoured to win the Living Wage Champion Awards ‘against all odds’ award. The champion award is a prestigious prize and we won for “setting a new standard for employee welfare within the traditionally lower-paying Care sector”.
“From a corporate point of view, I believe we are the only care company who has no issues finding the right carers. Other care companies who have followed our lead on pay, show improved employment results. We understand what our employees want and need. We developed our robust People Strategy in 2022 and we are committed to it.”
“The culture of a care company has never ever been more important to success. The way to build culture is by understanding what employees want and need. It starts with their wage, but pay is only the beginning. We developed our robust People Strategy in 2022 and this is the key to our organisation’s success. The strategy helps us deliver on the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and it includes pay, wellbeing and coaching with The Sustainable Life Coach.“
Sally Wilse, Co-Owner
How have you overcome the challenges you have faced championing the real living wage in a sector that still has high levels of low pay?
“When the Government announced the new living wage in October 2023, it was a huge hike, more than we expected. The Living Wage Foundation then announced the RLW the following day and it was even higher!”
“After this, we got our business owners together to strategize and we listened carefully because pay impacts everything. We went public with the statement that we would be raising wages to the RLW by April 2024 (one month earlier than the deadline) and we made that announcement in the same week the RLW levels were announced to lead from the front. We also offered advice to every care company who doubted the reasoning.”
Sally Wilse, Co-Owner
Feeling inspired?
We are incredibly inspired by the dedication of the accredited organisations featured in this blog, championing the Real Living Wage (RLW) and embodying the principles of fair pay. These organisations have not only recognised the importance of paying employees fairly but have also taken concrete steps to prioritise the well-being and empowerment of their workforce.
If you are feeling inspired by these organisations, visit our other component pages to see how organisations are embedding the other nine components and see how you can make similar actions!
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