HR ignores in-work poverty at its own risk, argues Hayley Kirton
As a member of the middle class, I have little pity for cost of living arguments.
By that, I don’t mean that I like to laugh at poor people. I mean that most of the complaints about the cost of living I hear usually involve something about having to use a gym that doesn’t have a steam room or only being about to afford a long weekend in Italy rather than a whole week. The poor souls.
However, as speakers at the TUC congress in Liverpool passionately pointed out, for some, money problems extend further than having to buy supermarket own brand goods every now and again. For some, problems with money means having to choose between putting food on the table and keeping the house warm. Or keeping the house full stop.
But, if you don’t see how that problem affects HR, you might want to consider the in-work poor.
Thanks to the severity of the recent recession, real wages have fallen dramatically since 2010. But the costs of actually keeping a job, such as travel and childcare, are still plentiful. Some workers, who are either low paid or in an area with high costs of living or a combination of the two, are worse off in work than they are out of it. One of the speakers at the congress even noted that some people were so crippled by train fares that they’d been forced to call in sick on occasion.
If you’re not one to side with the unions, it’s worth noting that they weren’t the only ones touting this viewpoint at the congress. Roughly an hour after the trade union delegates were done debating cost of living issues, Bank of England governor Mark Carney addressed the congress, also talking about low wages. Even though Carney said that low wages were an acceptable trade-off for making sure people could stay in work, allowing them to develop and maintain skills, he also said that paying people a respectable wage for their work was important for people’s dignity.
Apart from feeling morally repugnant, surely having a workforce whose pay doesn’t cover their working expenses is bad news for staff morale and engagement? In order to do their best work, people have to feel like turning up to work each day is worth their time and, if their pay isn’t even covering basic living expenses, it’s questionable as to whether it really is. And, if there’s no way the budget can stretch to a pay rise, then HR might need to think of something non-monetary to reward people with.
When you look at it like that, I have no doubt that low pay is very much HR’s problem, or at least something they need to be aware of.