Fair Work First: guidance
Updated Fair Work First guidance to support those seeking/awarding public sector grants. Includes clarifying evidence requirements for demonstrating compliance with the real Living Wage and effective voice grant conditions, and offering a more streamlined evidence gathering process.
Annex B: Conditionality in public sector grants - Evidence of compliance with Fair Work First conditionality
The following evidence is to be provided to demonstrate that the grant recipient is meeting the conditions for the real Living Wage and effective workers’ voice.
A grant recipient should provide the most appropriate evidence for its organisation from the list below. This may be re-used if applying for multiple grants in a financial year. It may need to provide more than one source of evidence depending on the make-up of its workforce and whether contractors/agency workers are employed to directly support delivery of the funded project/activity.
Table of required evidence for demonstrating compliance with the real Living Wage condition:
Grant value - Below £100k (cumulative)
- Directly employed staff
- Living Wage Accreditation; or
- Self-declaration
- Apprentices
- Self-declaration
- 16-17 year old workers
- Self-declaration
- Workers in third party organisations
- Self-declaration
Grant value - Equal to or above £100k (cumulative)
- Directly employed staff
- Living Wage Accreditation; or
- Anonymnised pay bands confirmed by recipient’s Finance Department; or
- Accountant certificate
- Apprentices
- Anonymised payroll;
- Anonymnised pay bands confirmed by recipient’s Finance Department; or
- Accountant certificate
- 16-17 year old workers
- Anonymised payroll;
- Anonymnised pay bands confirmed by recipient’s Finance Department; or
- Accountant certificate
- Workers in third party organisations
- Anonymised copy of contract for relevant contractors/ agency workers;
- Accountant certificate; or
- Letter from Director of Finance (of principal grant recipient)
Evidence of payment of the real Living Wage
The cumulative amount refers to the value of grant funding received by an organisation from an individual funder over a single financial year.
All data should be handled in line with GDPR and should not be retained longer than is necessary.
Living Wage Employer Accreditation applies to directly employed staff aged 18 years of age and over who are not apprentices. Further evidence is required for other groups, as above.
Useful reference:
Self-declaration
Grant applicants are not required to provide specific evidence but will have to adhere to any arrangements for validating payment of at least the real Living Wage applied by the grant maker/funder and must confirm they will pay at least the real Living Wage to their workforce from the start of the funded period; and in advance of making a claim, they must provide evidence of doing so.
The grant maker/funder to set out in its grant guidance/information how it will validate self-declarations, such as spot checks.
Evidence of appropriate channels for effective workers’ voice
The table below provides examples of how the different channels of voice can be evidenced. This is not an exhaustive or prescriptive list, and funders can recognise different forms of voice that are appropriate for different organisations.
21 employees and over
- At least one channel at both levels (individual and collective) is evidenced.
- Where it is known that for periods of the year, the workforce will consist of 21 or more workers, a channel at both levels should be evidenced.
Fewer than 21 employees
- Although it is to be encouraged in all organisations, there is flexibility in terms of evidencing the collective element of voice within organisations with fewer than 21 workers. If they are unable to provide a collective voice channel, these organisations can provide evidence of individual voice only. This aligns with the requirements for application for statutory union recognition and is therefore considered as a benchmark in terms of the size of workforce where collective representation would be expected.
Voice Channel - Line Management Relationship (i.e. effective 2-way dialogue through 1:1 relationship).
Level - Individual
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that there is opportunity for regular 1:1 open and two-way dialogue between line managers and their direct reports; that this dialogue exists separately to standard performance review processes; and that worker-manager working relationships are effective.
This could also be supported by evidence of regular engagement survey that supports this; and/or in Organisation’s KPI’s.
Voice Channel - Staff /Engagement Surveys
Level - Individual
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that an appropriate survey is regularly undertaken and can demonstrate that feedback is provided to workforce and actions created and implemented to address this.
Voice Channel - Suggestions Schemes
Level - Individual
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that a scheme exists and examples provided of improvements made as a result.
Voice Channel - Intranet/Online Platforms
Level - Individual
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that an internal platform exists that allows worker contribution to strategic discussion and examples provided where input is acknowledged and acted upon.
Voice Channel - Trade Union Recognition/ Collective Bargaining
Level - Collective
Evidence
Employer to provide copy of Recognition Agreement or other evidence demonstrating that unions are recognised for collective bargaining purposes.
Voice Channel - Staff Forums / Networks
Level - Collective
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that network(s) and/or a forum exists, meets regularly, supports open dialogue and is action focussed. Examples of actions progressed should be provided.
Voice Channel - Access is provided to trade unions / employer is open to trade union membership
Level - Collective
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that:
1) trade union access is granted to recruit and organise members.
And/or:
2) workers are aware that the employer is happy for them to join a union of their choice (e.g through induction materials, clause in contract).
Voice Channel - Joint Consultative Committee/s (JCC)
Level - Collective
Evidence
Confirmation from employer that JCC/s exist and examples of issues covered.
Voice Channel - European Works Councils (EWCs)
Level - Collective
Evidence
Employer to provide papers from EWC demonstrating membership and active participation.
Evidencing conditionality in third-party arrangements
Detail on how conditionality applies where the principal grant recipient provides funding to a third-party to support the delivery of the grant funded activity can be found here. Where the grant recipient is a public sector organisation or registered social landlord and uses the grant funding to carry out a public procurement exercise for goods, works or services to deliver the grant funded activity, the real Living Wage and effective voice conditions do not apply. Public procurement rules apply.
The principal grant recipient should seek confirmation from any third-party that workers directly engaged in the delivery of the funded activity who are aged 16 and over, including apprentices and based anywhere in the UK, are paid at least the real Living Wage. Appropriate evidence should be provided to the funder; this could be confirmation that a real Living Wage clause has been included in the contract between the two parties.
Detail about the scope to make a limited exception for third-party grant arrangements is provided in Annex C.
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