Trust achieves accreditation as Living Wage Employer

Trust achieves accreditation as Living Wage Employer 31 Mar 2023

Imperial College Healthcare has been accredited as a Living Wage Employer, in recognition of our commitment to paying all staff a wage that reflects the cost of living and working in London.

The certification is from the Living Wage Foundation and means that everyone working at the Trust is being paid at or above the London Living Wage (LLW), which is currently £11.95 per hour. This is also known as the real Living Wage and is calculated each year by the Resolution Foundation. It provides a voluntary benchmark for employers to ensure their staff earn a wage they can live on, not just the government minimum. According to the Living Wage Foundation, just over 17 per cent of jobs in London pay less than the real Living Wage - around 700,000 jobs.

We began our journey toward accreditation in 2019 when we decided to set the LLW as a minimum pay rate for staff working at the Trust but not directly employed by us (everyone directly employed by us was already paid at or above the LLW). We implemented the decision either by making it a requirement in our contracts with third-party employers or by bringing contracted-out services back in-house. Our biggest change came in 2020 when we brought around 1,000 cleaning, catering, portering staff back in house as directly employed members of our team.

Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: "I am very clear that all staff working in our hospitals – whether employed directly by us or through contracts with specialist companies – should be part of one team. I'm very proud that we were one of the first teaching hospital trusts to bring cleaning, catering, portering staff back in-house. Not only was this good for our staff, it made a huge difference to our ability to respond effectively to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We want to play our full role as a partner in our local communities and this accreditation will help us do that, demonstrating our commitment to employing local people and encouraging other employers to do the same."

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