We are serious about being the best we can be for the world’s children. That means we place a premium on attracting the best people to work for us and to lead our organisation.
OUR APPROACH TO PAY
We are committed to being a kind, agile and inclusive organisation so that we can be the best version of ourselves to deliver for and with children. Securing the right people is key to delivering our strategy. One of the ways we do this is by paying our colleagues a fair salary that is competitive within the charity sector, proportionate to the complexity and responsibilities of each role, and in line with our charitable objectives.
We are accredited by the Living Wage Foundation and committed to three key principles for pay:
- equality/fairness
- responsible financial management
- market competitiveness in line with the wider charity sector.
We pay all colleagues a living wage of at least £11.95 per hour in London and £10.90 per hour in the rest of the UK.
We awarded our colleagues a 3% pay increase in April 2022, after financial constraints prevented us increasing pay in 2021.
2022 was a tough time financially for many people. With that in mind, everyone who worked for Save the Children UK below Executive Director level received a taxable £500 cost of living crisis allowance in additional to their regular salary, spread across the six months of October 2022–March 2023.
We also conducted a pay review in May 2022, focusing on reducing our gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
We’ve faced similar challenges in attracting and holding onto talent as the rest of the sector. We’re looking at ways to develop a ‘total reward’ approach that looks at factors beyond pay – such as working environment, hybrid working and more flexible working.
We acknowledge that debates over pay – and executive salaries, in particular – are important and reflect genuine public concerns. We are committed to achieving the right balance between recognising these concerns and ensuring our salary levels help attract the talent we need to run an effective and efficient impact-driven multinational organisation. The People Committee oversees our Pay Policy and decides on the salaries of our Chief Executive and executive directors (see our Annual Report)
We publish our approach to pay, including details on our gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap, in detail on our website. We have also signed the pledge to Show the Salary.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REMUNERATION IN 2022
The trustees delegate the day-to-day running of the organisation to the executive directors, who are considered the key management personnel. Compensation for all executive directors employed at Save the Children UK for the year ending 31 December 2022 is detailed here.
Our Chief Executive Officer is paid a full-time equivalent annual salary of £143,000. The pay ratio of our CEO’s pay to our employees is as follows:
- Upper quartile (£52,250): 2.7:1 (2.9:1 in 2021)
- Median pay (£44,283): 3.2:1 (3.3:1 in 2021)
- Lower quartile (£36,825): 3.9:1 (4.1:1 in 2021)
