Decent Work/Income and Work-Life Balance
Description
The company compensates workers fairly and transparently and pays a living wage to ensure workers are able to meet their basic needs and can afford a decent standard of living for their family without needing government support. The company offers equal pay for equal work, facilitates access to anonymised compensation data for the purposes of benchmarking, and does not negotiate compensation down based on an applicant’s previous salary. As part of its compensation package, the company helps ensure its workers can enjoy adequate paid time off. For employees not able to work flexible hours, the company sets predictable working hours and rotation schedules, with adequate notice of changes. Wages are paid on a predictable schedule to support worker financial planning and timely payment of commitments.
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Resources
Global Living Wage Coalition
The Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC) is a partnership between two independent networks with complementary missions and work: the Anker Living Wage and Income Research Institute (Anker Research Institute) and the GLWC Action Network (Action Network). They provide a comprehensive explanation of the Anker Methodology for measuring a living wage, and they have compiled a broad range of case studies for living wage implementation.
Roadmap on Living Wages
IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative, has created this platform to help you take tangible steps towards aligning your company's compensation with international living wage standards. The platform introduces a 5-step approach: identify the living wage; measure living wage gaps; verify calculations of gaps; close living wage gaps; and share learnings. For each step you will find primers, FAQs, and tools - such as benchmarks and auditor guidelines - to help you progress through the process.
The Living Income Community of Practice
The Living Income Community of Practice is a partnership between The Sustainable Food Lab, GIZ, and ISEAL. Their goal is to support activities that help smallholder farmers achieve a living income and a decent standard of living. The resources on this platform can help you to understand the difference between a living wage and a living income; understand and calculate living and actual incomes; and identify and discuss strategies for closing the income gap.
A Living Wage Roadmap for Large Employers
This guide from Vancity explores their journey towards becoming a certified Living Wage Employer (LEW). It includes details of their 7-step process, identifies leads for spearheading each phase, and lays out the timeline for Vancity's LEW journey. The tangible and actionable content in this guide will especially benefit business leaders, change agents, and procurement personnel who are ready to advance from embracing LEW in principle to enacting it in practice.
Worker Debt and Inequality
This brief from Re:Structure Lab can help you to better understand how worker debt has become a critical, consistent element of business models configured around forced labour and human trafficking. The brief explains how supply chain workers are routinely paid at or below the minimum wage, oftentimes owing to wage theft, fraudulent deductions, predatory fees, and inadequate legal protection. It also explores solutions for addressing worker debt and inequality, such as alternative forms of corporate accountability mechanisms; reparations for historical injustice; debt relief; and more.
Living Wage Analysis Tool
The UN Global Compact has created this free tool to help you identify actions and further opportunities for your company to provide a living wage. The tool showcases good practices for ensuring a living wage in business operations and supply chains, and features questions based on real-life company practices and international standards and indicators. This tool is a good starting point for assessing current policies and programmes, highlighting areas for improvement, and identifying opportunities to set future corporate goals and targets.
The Case for Living Wages: How Paying Living Wages Improves Business Performance and Tackles Poverty
Too many business continue to see living wages as a burden and challenge rather than an opportunity. This paper from Business Fights Poverty, CISL, and Shift explains the benefits that living wages provide to businesses and investors, including within core operations, value chains, and the wider operating environment. This resource can help you to better understand the need for a living wage (both for workers and firms), and features recommendations, key questions, and a five-step approach that can help your company to take action.
Effective wage auditing to advance living wage action: Research briefing to inform practice
This report from ISEAL an help you better understand the wage auditing landscape. The first section outlines the key challenges around wage auditing and verification related to both internal practices as well as external standards and audit protocols. The second section highlights emerging best practice related to wage auditing.
The Platform Living Wage Financials (PLWF)
The Platform Living Wage Financials (PLWF) is a coalition of investors supporting the payment of living wages in their investee companies and associated value chains. Their work - including a living wage assessment methodology - can help your company measure and monitor progress on living wages across your operations and value chain. Their living wage assessment guidance document would be of particular benefit to sustainability and supply chain management teams tasked with supporting the implementation of living wages.