Become a Living Hours employer - good for workers, good for business and good for society

Date: 06/08/2025
Author: The Living Wage Foundation
Company: The Living Wage Foundation

The movement of Living Hours Employers is raising the standard for what good work looks like. The Living Hours accreditation builds on the foundation of the Living Wage, ensuring that everyone has the secure working hours they need to thrive.

What is Living Hours?

Being a Living Hours Employer means providing all directly employed staff who earn less than the real Living Wage x 1.25 and relevant third-party contracted staff with:

• A contract that accurately reflects hours worked. This helps tackle practices like zero hours that simply don't reflect hours worked.
• Decent notice periods for shifts: of at least 4 weeks, with guaranteed payment (full compensation) if shifts are cancelled within this notice period. With this, employees have the ability to plan their lives and budgets.
• A guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week to all who want it. So that workers can get the hours they need to meet their everyday needs.

Why Living Hours is important and necessary

High levels of insecure work are trapping millions of people in poverty, which makes it simply impossible to plan a life. When you don’t have work security, your mental health and life outside of work suffers. Imagine trying to plan your budget when you don’t know when you’re going to be working or if you’ll get the hours and pay you need.

What are the benefits of being an accredited Living Hours Employer?

Decent pay and secure work is good for workers, good for business and good for society; employees thrive and so do
businesses. The Living Hours accreditation allows you to demonstrate your ongoing commitment to providing decent work and doing the right thing for your employees.

It demonstrates to customers, clients, investors and peers that you are one of the UK’s leading organisations on decent work.

Become a Living Hours Employer - Find out more here: livingwage.org.uk/living-hours