The Living Wage

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

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Every time I have picked up a trade magazine since the budget a few weeks’ ago, I have had to read articles written by business leaders moaning about the new government’s plans to introduce the “Living Wage” rather than the current “Minimum Wage” by 2020

Let me put my cards on the table and say that we have always paid above the living wage even before it was on trend to do so, so we will be registering with the Living Wage Foundation to make this public.  But I have always looked around at the wages for a particular job within the area and ensured that we were paying around the average rate and more for those particularly talented individuals that we wanted to reward more.

I simply don’t understand why employers would want to do anything other than this for various reasons:

- Surely paying people a living wage for the job they do makes for happier employees.  Happier employees generally do better work, therefore earning you more profit.

- I don’t agree with businesses paying poor wages being propped up by government hand-outs.  Why should commercial enterprises be funded by other people’s taxes?

- If your business is not viable by paying living wages to its employees, then there is something seriously wrong with your business model I would suggest.

If there are people within your business who aren’t paying their own wages by their productivity, then find a way to make them more productive by managing their performance upwards.  This in turn will make them feel more valued and it is all positive feedback from there.  We soon have the final of the Cotswold Fayre Food and Drink Young Entrepreneur at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair, and I will certainly be advising the winners to build in the Living Wage into their business plans as they start to take on additional staff.  It really is the only way forward for successful, economy-improving businesses in the 21st Century.

Amongst the moaners I found a couple of farm shop owners talking much more sense, so I will leave the final word to John Sincalir of Craigie’s Farm Shop in Edinburgh:  “The upside to legislation like this is that everyone will have to comply, so perhaps it will weed out the inefficient businesses and allow more room for the good operators to flourish. Within our business, we have been discussing for the last couple of years how we could get ourselves up to being a ‘Living Wage company’. We see this as a real opportunity to get our engaged staff onto a decent wage. Yes, there will be casualties along the way, as we will no longer be able to afford to keep staff just because they are nice people. I am confident that this piece of legislation will help build better teams which will in turn deliver better hospitality businesses, in turn attracting new talent.”