This report, authored by Shift, Business Fights Poverty and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, helps show how living wages not only offer a way out of in-work poverty and help tackle inequality, but also support business resilience, stability and growth.
As a route out of working poverty and a prerequisite to tackling growing income inequalities, living wages have growing support among business, civil society, and governments. This new collaboration of academics and experts has explored the business benefits of living wages alongside the high cost of inaction and found that paying a living wage can deliver:
- More motivated and productive workforce, with lower staff turnover
- Improved revenues and profits, for example, PayPal attributes much of its recent growth to the decision to pay ‘decent wages’ to all employees
- Increased value chain resilience and performance
- Reputational benefits
- Improved investor prospects
- Readiness for future regulatory reporting
