8th Day News
The Living Wage Foundation
We think a Living Wage matters!
That’s why when we heard about The Living Wage Foundation, an organisation that actively monitored and calculated what a person needs to earn per hour in order to have enough income to live on, we decided to investigate further. We liked the recommendations, however for about 4 or 5 years, whilst we matched or exceeded the Living Wage recommendations that the foundation set when we implemented our annual wage reviews, we didn’t pursue the accreditation part.
Over the years though, customers contacted us asking about our wage structure and whether we were accredited and we realised that it is all very well matching our wages to the foundations recommendations, but as an ethical business we needed to go a step further. It became apparent that as we were already taking a stand against the low wage economy by paying the Living Wage, it was crucial that we publically showed our support for the organisation that had long campaigned for positive social change in the form of wage reform .
So bearing all this in mind, we recently we went through the process of accreditation and are now a Living Wage employer, this guarantees all workers, including any agency staff a business may have are paid £8.45 (or £9.75 London Weighting rate) or higher per hour. Paying the Living Wage is definitely a positive thing for us, it shows our workers that they are valued and research shows that feeling valued by your employer is very important for maintaining staff morale and personal self-esteem. We hope that by being open about our wages and emphasising the positivity to be gained by the businesses who choose to pay the Living Wage we’ll encourage discussion in workplaces and other hopefully other businesses will follow suit.
You can find out more about The Living Wage Foundation here:
