Guest contributor: Donald Moore, Chair at One+All (Written September 2022)

We all know that the cost-of-living crisis is here, and that it will get so much worse and last for longer than first thought. In Greater Manchester, 1 in 4 children are in poverty now and that too will get much worse.

I hear that shoplifting is increasing as people become more desperate and the things being taken are baby food and period products, hardly luxuries. I’m also hearing that food inflation could double to 20% by the end of the year. And we know that inflation hits the lowest paid harder as most of their income goes on food and energy costs. The energy costs now and projected are simply staggering, overwhelming for millions of people.

Add that to the fact that businesses are failing, having to combat excessive energy costs and lower trading levels.

So what can we do?

Firstly, I think that many leaders and business owners don’t fully appreciate the impacts this crisis is having on lower paid colleagues and I refer to anyone earning less than £30k a year in that. That’s what prompted One+All to carry out an anonymous survey of all our colleagues to tell us their concerns and help us to do more for them.

Our findings included that we have colleagues on prepaid energy meters. Can most of us imagine that they go to the local shops to top their cards and often hope they can live through the week on a fixed budget? What’s worse is that typically they are charged more than the rest of us for paying up front! Plenty of our colleagues told us that they want help with money management which is something that we can help with for free. We are also able to offer interest free loans to help with emergencies or to help colleagues move away from prepaid meters. Signposting people to make sure they are maximising their benefits could be really helpful as well, and our colleagues share tips on cost-savings, discounts and ways to make their money go longer via our internal comms system.

We suggest that all good employers should carry out a survey to learn more and to show colleagues that they want to help. Obviously, we should all be paying the real living wage and we should pay it earlier if we can when it is announced later this month.  Real living hours can help colleagues maintain fixed and predictable earnings, too. This is a time when our employees really need more help than ever and we should do whatever we can or they might not get through it with potentially drastic consequences.

Just like any good ideas we have; we start with learning from others. For our survey we adapted questions from a YouGov cost of living poll for London. Let’s share our findings and solutions across the Charter and our communities and together we can make a huge difference.

The Survey is free to download, and can be found here.