The Good Employer Charter - Guidance

It includes some practical initiatives that you can put into action in order to make a difference that will benefit your organisation, your customers, your employees, the local community and the local economy.

Pillar 1: Living Wage

To meet the Good Employer Charter Living Wage standard, organisations will need to be a Living Wage employer.

The Living Wage is a voluntary hourly rate set independently and updated annually by the Living Wage Foundation, and calculated according to the basic cost of living in the UK. By paying the real Living Wage employers are voluntarily taking a stand to ensure their employees can earn a wage which is enough to live on.

Many employers report wider business benefits as a result of investments in staff pay. The current London Living Wage rate, which applies to Basildon, is set at £10.90 per hour (2022/23).

For further support and advice on becoming a Living Wage Employer, visit the Living Wage Foundation (opens new window).

Pillar 2: Employ Basildon

To meet the Good Employer Charter Employ Basildon standard, organisations must agree to:

• advertise vacancies and training opportunities at the Advice Store and meet with Advice Store Manager to discuss future skills and recruitment needs
• provide high quality training opportunities that focus on improving skills, supporting job creation, including for those furthest from the job market
• seek opportunities to work with schools and colleges to help to ensure young people are equipped with the right skills to match the requirements of the labour market

We expect all accredited businesses to make use of The Advice Store, Basildon. The Advice Store is a community workspace based in Basildon Town Centre, led by Basildon Council's Economic Development Team. It is home to a wide range of organisations which help local residents wishing to advance their employment prospects and careers. Its services include providing access to an array of training courses, careers advisors and employers.

The Advice Store works with its partner organisations to provide free recruitment support including:

• placing and promoting vacancies,
• assessing immediate and/or future recruitment needs
• creating new apprenticeship or traineeship placement opportunities.

For more about the Advice Store, visit The Advice Store, Basildon on facebook (opens new window).

Pillar 3: Buy Basildon

Investing in the local economy means supporting local businesses and suppliers by buying local, buying social, investing in local supply chains and opening up business opportunities to local SMEs.

In practice, this means:

• Choosing suppliers close to the point of service delivery wherever possible
• Developing tender evaluation processes that reward those bidders that can demonstrate the creation of additional social value for Basildon
• Commit to working with business representative bodies and other local agencies to help build the capacity of local SMEs and social enterprises to successfully bid for contracts
• Developing targets to use local suppliers in your contracts
• Encourage suppliers to endorse and embrace the principle of 'Buy Basildon' throughout their supply chain

Pillar 4: Be the Best

An Equality and Inclusion policy demonstrates your organisation's commitment to equal opportunities, abide by equality legislation and promote equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) provides a downloadable equality and diversity policy template which can be adapted to your organisation's requirements.

To download a template visit:

•  ACAS - Equality, diversity and inclusion policy template (opens new window)

Organisations are required to upload a copy of their equality policy as part of the Good Employer Basildon accreditation application form and you are welcome to download and adapt ACAS' template and upload this as part of your application.

The Business in the Community website provides guidance on how to conduct diverse recruitment and the Government provides guidance on providing reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates.

For further information visit:

• Business in the Community (opens new window)
• GOV.UK - Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions (opens new window)

Here are some suggestions on how you can incorporate equality and diversity best practice into your recruitment process:

• Consider a range of media and advertising opportunities using a range of channels so you do not discriminate or end up with candidates from too narrow an audience
• Ask applicants to state if they need any 'reasonable adjustments' for any part of the recruitment process
• Include company benefits such as flexible hours, part-time work/job shares and working from home
• Ensure application forms are not discriminatory. For example, to require a form to be filled out 'in your own handwriting', where written English is not relevant to the job, may discriminate against applicants whose first language is not English or applicants with disabilities that affect their writing ability. This issue could be avoided by making an electronic version of the form available
• State the organisation's commitment to equal opportunities and that it welcomes applications from all who believe they fit the essential requirements of the job.

Below are some suggestions for how you can incorporate equality and diversity best practice in your monitoring:

• Effective monitoring is a legal requirement for public bodies under the Equality Act 2010Effective monitoring is an important tool for measuring performance and progress towards equality and diversity goals and in ensuring a truly inclusive working environment. Monitoring is not an end in itself. Data that is collected needs to be analysed and used to inform appropriate action.
• Monitoring will only generate meaningful and reliable results when employees feel safe and confident in disclosing personal information and when they feel assured that meaningful action will follow.
• Monitoring can be done at a variety of different points in the employment cycle including recruitment, training, promotion, staff surveys, performance management, grievances and dismissals. The purpose of collecting this information is to look for differences between groups, identify trends over periods of time, investigate the reasons for these differences and to put suitable actions in place.
• An equality and diversity monitoring form should be filled in voluntarily and should state that the details will be used solely to build an accurate picture of the makeup of the workforce in encouraging equality and diversity.

Further information and enquiries

For further information and enquiries please contact the council's Economic Development Team. See contact details below...