Building a Living Wage System that Serves your Needs
Living Wage For US (LW4US) offers more than living wage benchmarks and certification. We also provide valuable research, tools and guidance so that employers have the tools and support they need to move forward toward a living wage for all workers in the most cost-effective ways possible. Our goal is to make living wage payment a decision that benefits employers, workers and communities.
LW4US has assessed the living wage gaps of dozens of employers across the U.S. Providing each with valuable analysis of how their total remuneration, inclusive of benefits, compares to a living wage in each geography in which they operate. Thus far this work has spurred wage and benefits increases amounting to over $100,000,000 for workers in one year of operation. The resulting increases have had significant benefits to employers as well in terms of recruitment, retention, and productivity.
LW4US has implemented this analysis with a first in field, online total remuneration assessment tool. This allows precise identification of living wage gaps and suggestions for benefits that might provide extremely cost effective pathways for living wage gaps to be bridged.
The beta tool currently in use has received extremely positive feedback, but is only available on a cost per employer basis as it requires extensive engagement from LW4US staff. Additionally, the user interface requires manual data input that can seem daunting for large employers who haven’t yet experienced the tool and would feel more comfortable with options to upload whole sets of data. These challenges prevent LW4US from sharing the tool with the broad range of organizations that have presented new use cases.
We are redesigning the tool to advance the living wage movement. The tool shall:
1. Allow employers to assess how their total remuneration package compares to a living wage without price barriers to use;
2. automate many of the aspects of living wage certification to allow servicing of a large number of employers;
3. remove marginal cost of use for each new employer, thus allowing supply chain and funder use;
4. create a user-friendly experience with embedded guidance that allows less time investment by staff for living wage assessment and certification;
5. reduce the amount of time an employer must invest to complete a living wage assessment through excel uploads of data and potential integration with HR systems;
6. allow for quick adjustment to basic elements at low cost (new back-end data uploads, corrections to formulas for calculation, updates to text and layout, etc.);
7. Allow for easy visualization and tracking of data inclusive of changes over time and Impacts;
8. Provide a future proof tool that could be expanded globally.
A Visual of the Total System Integration Under Design:
Benefits
We expect the redesign of this tool to create extensive benefit to employers, workers, communities, and our entire society. It is designed to remove the barriers and create the incentives to make living wage payment achievable for all and profitable for business.
The tool has built in tracking measures so that the business case can be supported by large quantities of aggregated data. Thus giving employers the confidence to understand how, with the right benefits, they can pay a living wage and why the investment will pay off long term.
1. Creates a pathway for employers worldwide to easily assess and measure progress toward living wages for themselves and all of their value chains that they would like to engage;
2. Enables scaling of LW4US certification and advocacy toward living wage to achieve a world where every family can afford a decent standard of living and every worker is fairly compensated without prejudice;
3. Cuts costs – both labor time involved in each assessment currently as well as costs of maintaining and marginal usage fees for system use, thus enabling licensing of the tool for hundreds of suppliers to a company without any marginal cost for each company, encouraging further uptake;
4. Provides greater maneuverability for future growth as it will be designed to easily adjust to future global living wage benchmark data, expanding beyond the U.S.;
5. Allows employers to assess how their total remuneration package compares to a living wage and understand how to close gaps with the most impactful and cost effective benefits;
6. Automates many of the aspects of living wage certification to allow servicing of a large number of employers with minimal time investment from employers;
7. Creates a user-friendly experience with embedded guidance that allows less time investment by staff for living wage assessment and certification;
8. Allows data sharing between companies for a range of reporting uses without violating legal regulations;
9. Significantly reduces the amount of time an employer must invest to complete a living wage assessment through excel uploads of data and integration with HR systems;
10. Allows for easy visualization and tracking of data inclusive of changes over time and Impacts.
Different user groups will have different ways of interacting with this tool. So we need your help in providing feedback on its design. We have formed a number of focus groups for some key users and invite you to register today! If you don’t see a group for you and want to provide input, simply email us at info@livingwageforus.org and we will schedule some time to talk.
Small/Medium Size Employers
Th Feb 16 – 10 PST/1 EST – https://bit.ly/1Aregistration
Tu Feb 28 – 8 PST/11 EST – https://bit.ly/2Aregistration
Large National/Multinational Employers
Tu Feb 21 – 10 PST/1 EST – https://bit.ly/1Bregistration
M Mar 6 – 8 PST/11 EST – https://bit.ly/2Bregistration
Investors
Th Feb 23 – 8 PST/11 EST – https://bit.ly/1Cregistration
Foundations and Nonprofit Funders
Tu Mar 7 – 10 PST/1 EST – https://bit.ly/2Cregistration
Multinational Suppliers
We Mar 8 – 10 PST/1 EST – https://bit.ly/S1registration
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