Brighton & Hove Living Wage Campaign 2022 survey results

18th January 2023

Our local Brighton & Hove Living Wage campaign, led by Brighton Chamber, is celebrating over ten years of success and now has over 850 businesses pledged to pay the Living Wage.  

Each year, we send our living wage employers a survey, benchmarking the feedback we receive against the year before to track how we build on our work and change the campaign to suit the needs of businesses and employees.  

This year’s survey results confirmed why it is important to pay the living wage in Brighton & Hove. 

The survey ran from the 21 September to 2 October 2022. We had 108 responses and this is what they told us: 

  • 9 in 10 (94%) Living Wage employers felt the LWC was important for the business overall (those scoring 4 or 5 out of 5, on a positivity scale), up from 89% last year 
  • 9 in every 10 respondents (88%) felt that paying the LW had a positive effect on staff (those scoring 4 or 5 out of 5, on a positivity scale)
  • 3 in every 4 respondents (76%) said that they would consider if suppliers were LW employers before choosing them, a slight fall compared to last year (81%) 
  • The positive impacts of paying the LW are wide-ranging, with the highest share saying it was good for staff morale (a high 79% compared to 61% last year) 
  • More than half of respondents felt it supported employee retention (59%) and, alongside this, 48% felt it helped with recruitment 
  • Additionally, nearly half felt the impact with high levels of staff productivity (48%, up from 28% last year) 
  • When asked about paying to sign up, more than half (60%) said it would depend how much it would cost (up from 50% last year), with a further 30% saying they would not. Just 5% said ‘yes’. 

Most of the comments we received demonstrated our Living Wage employer’s enthusiasm and dedication to the Brighton & Hove Living Wage campaign. However, some employers told us about their concerns around the increase in the living wage rate and the increasing costs of running their business. 

For a detailed report, please visit the survey section of our website here. 

Thank you Boninsight and FDM design for bringing this report to life!