Living Wage: An Emerging Global Standard for Sustainable Business

Abstract

Paying a living wage is becoming a priority for organisations and an important consideration in creating sustainable business. As an area that provides a tangible measure within the Social aspects of Environmental, Social, and Governance ('ESG') strategies, many organisations are asking how they currently compare, and if not already doing so, how can this be achieved and embedded in the future to encourage pay fairness and integrated into the wider reward strategy for the global workforce?

This report has been produced by PwC and WageIndicator Foundation to provide insight into the current landscape of living wages and market practice, whilst considering the key drivers and challenges faced by organisations. We are glad to share the findings of our first global survey considering the role of living wages and its role in creating sustainable businesses with the aim of providing a baseline of the current state globally, to inform organisations on current market practice to help navigate the topic.

Our findings reflect the ongoing experience we find working with clients on how they are approaching the complexities of implementing a living wage, first in their own operations and increasingly across their, often complex, supply chains. There is no one way to approach this, but we believe that understanding the various drivers and complexities is a first step on the route to achieving implementation of living wages.

There is no doubt that this topic has gained traction in recent years, and continues to do so; from our experience with clients, it is apparent that living wages has risen to become one of the core considerations within the rising prominence of the Social aspects of the ESG agenda. With the direction of travel only moving towards increased commitments from businesses, we hope this survey will be the first of a series of research dedicated to understanding how businesses can integrate the living wage to fulfil increasing reporting requirements, ESG targets and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Commitments; ultimately benefiting organisations and workers alike.