Pay policy

Principles

This policy should be aligned with RadHR’s principles, and therefore attempt to:

1. Redress wider social, racial and economic injustices;
2. Value different types of work equally and ‘see’ contributions and types of knowledge that are often less seen;
3. Provide both reliability and flexibility, in recognition of different needs.

This policy will never be able to address the vast array of societal inequities that will affect different RadHR workers, the following is therefore not suggested to be a definitive list. It is our best attempt to do what we can within the constraints in which we work. We include a list of other factors we’d like to consider in future at the end.

See the RadHR Work policy for details of hours, leave etc.

Finally, there may be difficult feelings attached to the experiences and issues outlined below that prevent some people rightly claiming an uplift. It is important that the process of this policy is designed with this in mind, and encourages workers to take uplifts that apply to them, without being forced to disclose sensitive personal info.

Policy

There will be a review of the system every year in December, when the base rates will be set for the following year. Any RadHR worker will be able to suggest changes and amendments at the review stage each year, which can then be discussed and agreed collectively by the core team, based on the RadHR decision-making process.

Base rate

Principle: All workers should be offered the same ‘base rate’ annual salary or day rate, regardless of their position in RadHR, their experience or type of knowledge.

• RadHR operates a flat structure and this should be reflected in pay.
• The RadHR Core Team Policy outlines which workers can join the core team, but this should not affect pay, all workers are equally valued.
• The Base Day Rate is calculated by taking the Base Salary figure adding 30%—to cover non-employee costs such as holiday and sickness leave, utilities, equipment, training etc.—dividing that by 260 (52*5dpw), and finally, rounding up.

Base rates are updated annually in December and implemented in January 
(subject to a financial affordability check by the core team).

Year	Salary Rate	Day Rate
2025	XXX	XXX

Uplifts

The appropriate base rate is then subject to a percentage adjustment according to the criteria outlined below. The uplift percentages are not compounded, but added together to give a total percentage uplift, e.g. three uplifts of 3%, 6% and 9% are totalled into a single 18% uplift and then applied. We’ve chosen to set all uplifts at a multiple of 3 (eg. 6%, 9%) so that freelancers can calculate their rate without accidentally disclosing the particular uplifts they have included. The only exception to this is the ‘Time worked’ uplit, which is calculated at a rate of 1% per 100 days’ worked.

Changes to any uplift—through changes to a worker’s circumstances or an annual change to the uplift, should be applied from the date they take effect. Workers should notify the core team of any changes to circumstances that affect uplifts, for more see the Procedure section.

A worker can choose not to take up any uplift available to them.

1. Time worked

Principle: RadHR should recognise and reward both long-term and short-term commitments to the organisation, by increasing pay rates appropriately.

An uplift of 1% is added after every 100 days worked, up to a maximum of 500 days.

An uplift of 18% is added for ad-hoc / one-off work of 1–10 days; 12% for 11–20 days.

• All work for RadHR contributes to these uplifts.
• Freelancers undertaking ad-hoc / one-off work have extra expenses not incurred by those working a more regular and predictable pattern, and the precarity that comes with that situation should be acknowledged in pay rates.

Example: A worker has worked with RadHR for 300 days with a base rate of £200 per day, a 3% uplift = a rate of £206.

2. Dependents

Principle: Often the greatest financial insecurity (and need) is felt by those with financial dependents: such as (but not limited to) children and ill or ageing family members. Staff with dependents should be supported with increased pay.

An uplift of 9% for each dependent reliant on the worker for living costs. 

An extra 3% per dependent if the worker is the sole earner for the dependents.

An additional 15% per dependent of nursery-age.

An additional 15% per dependent in need of paid care.

• In the case of low-waged partners, where the RadHR worker’s pay constitutes the majority of the support, the uplift can be adjusted as agreed.
• Children are classed as dependents while they are in full-time education or live with the worker, who provides their food and accommodation.
• Dependents are not just children, and uplifts can be made available to the worker in cases where dependents no longer live with the worker but are still supported by them (such as care costs paid by the worker).
• This is not intended to cover healthcare—as RadHR does not want to offer incentives for private rather than NHS treatment. Some healthcare cases may be dealt with through the emergency fund (see below).
• By paid care, we mean health- or disability-related care, not general childcare, which is covered by the nursery-age uplift or the general dependent uplift.

Example: A worker has one child and is the sole earner in the household. With a core salary rate of £36,000 = a 12% uplift (9% for one dependent, 3% extra for sole earner) = salary of £40,320.

3. No recourse to public funds or state support

Principle: People with no recourse to public funds or unable to access state support for whatever reason, should not be disadvantaged. 

An uplift of 9% for a worker that cannot access state support.

• There are a multitude of extra costs affecting those with no recourse to public funds, including lack of access to benefits and housing assistance, childcare support, liability to the NHS surcharge etc.
• Where possible, the worker should share evidence of their status.

4. Experience of marginalisation, discrimination and oppression

Principle: Long-term experience of marginalisation, discrimination and oppression has a significant impact on people’s lives.

An uplift of 9% for workers who experience / have experienced systematic oppression.

• This uplift does not require proof and can be made as needed by the worker.
• For a number of reasons, we recognise this can be a challenging uplift to identify. So, as part of the implementation of this policy (see the Procedure section for more), we encourage a conversation with each new worker to establish whether this applies or not, rather than trying to offer a comprehensive list of what would or wouldn’t ‘qualify’. These conversations should be respectful, supportive and validating, and not pushy.

5. City living

Principle: It is recognised that workers incur higher costs if living in cities.

An uplift of 9% for workers who reside in London. 

An uplift of 6% for workers who reside in other UK cities.

• If a worker feels the uplift is insufficient to meet the extra living costs incurred, the amount can be reviewed on request to the core team.
• This uplift should be monitored annually.

6. Disability or long-term health issues

Principle: Many long-term health impacts and experiences of disability result in higher costs of living.

An uplift of 9% for workers with a disability or long-term health issue. 

• Claiming this uplift does not require any formal diagnosis of a ‘condition’, the focus is on life-impact and extra costs, even if the health issue is managed.
• We recognise that for employed workers, a range of other work-related policies—including types of paid leave, flexible working hours, the ability to swap an uplift for more paid time off etc.—can be as (if not more) important than pay. We aim to design these to be more flexible and inclusive, and encourage all workers to suggest additional changes wherever needed. For freelance workers, in addition to the uplifts in this document, we are also considering a hybrid model, see more on this in the Future Uplifts section below.

7. Additional uplifts/downlifts

RadHR acknowledges that workers may be affected by factors not listed above. If there is anything significant which negatively or positively affects your levels of privilege, you can build this into your rate by making further adjustments.

We appreciate that sometimes it can be hard to ask for the uplifts for whatever reason. If that is the case, we encourage you to discuss what these might look like during the implementation process, or else raise anything that comes up with your buddy, the core team or someone else appropriate at any point throughout the year.

Wealth & inheritance

The aim of this policy is to uplift workers in need, not penalise them.

• If a worker has a lot of accumulated or inherited wealth; significant income or equity in property which is not coming / did not come from work; or wealthy family members from whom they would reasonably expect a lot of inheritance, we would expect them to decline some or all of the uplifts available to them.
• We are aware that “a lot” is a relative term, so as a rough rule of thumb, for every £10k of unearned wealth, inheritance, equity or income you can approximately equate that to a 1% uplift. This is based on approximate interest-to-assets calculations compared with our base pay rate.

Pensions

Principle: RadHR supports the long-term financial security of its workers, especially in old age, so should contribute to pensions. However, the investment of the pension contributions should not support negative environmental and social impacts.

RadHR will match any payments into a pension fund, (as long as these are invested as ethically as possible) up to 5% of the workers’ salary. 

RadHR will consider increases to this rate at every annual budget review / sign-off.

Any pension fund chosen by an individual will be put to a meeting of RadHR core team workers and agreed (or not).

Benefits & government schemes

Principle: RadHR welcomes state efforts to redress inequalities through subsidy, benefits, and schemes, and encourages workers to apply for them where eligible.

RadHR will provide workers with whatever documents they need to claim the benefits or allowances to which they are entitled.

For schemes such as tax-free childcare, the government’s ‘free childcare’ hours, or Universal Credit (UC), workers may need to provide proof of income such as wage slips as part of their application. In some cases, they may also need a letter from their employer.

Other pay support

1. Emergency pay system

Principle: One of the greatest insecurities is the risk of losing one’s home. RadHR should work, as far as possible, to prevent this from happening to its workers. 

In times of RadHR financial emergency, housing and other fixed costs (e.g. council tax) will be covered first, and the remaining workers’ budget split equally.

• RadHR promises its workers that in financial hard-times, the primary mechanism to save money on worker costs will not involve laying them off or cancelling agreed working days; instead the base rate will go down (i.e. all pay levels in the organisation go down together).
• If the workers budget is so low that the core rate falls below a certain threshold (to be set), the normal, long-term pay system (all elements outlined above) is temporarily suspended, and an emergency pay system—based on “equal disposable income”—kicks in. This switch must be approved by the core team.
• While RadHR will prioritise financially supporting workers facing eviction, wherever possible, we strongly encourage workers to join their local rental union (e.g. London Renters Union) or Acorn branch, who will be able to offer more support than RadHR can in those circumstances.

Under the emergency system, RadHR pays all workers the relevant proportion (according to part-time / full-time status) of each worker’s fixed housing costs: specifically, rent or mortgage, house and contents insurance, council tax, water rates and travel to work. Having paid these elements, the remainder of the workers budget is divided between workers in accordance with the principles set out above and in proportion to the number of days they work.

• The emergency pay system is specifically an emergency system, and is never expected to apply for more than 6 months.
• When emergency pay is applied, workers will be expected to respond to an ‘all hands on deck’ call for fundraising. This means that all non-essential RadHR work may need to be postponed, with workers’ time used to raise necessary funding to stabilise the organisation’s finances and return to the long-term pay system.

2. Emergency fund

Principle: RadHR supports workers with personal emergencies such as housing & health.

In emergencies, as agreed by the core team, RadHR will support worker’s costs in relation to personal emergencies, where they have no other options or possibilities.

RadHR does not provide any pay uplift to cover healthcare, as it supports public healthcare and the NHS. However, RadHR recognises that, after more than decade of austerity and quasi-privatisation, in some cases NHS service is inadequate.

The emergency fund referred to here is for the emergency personal needs of RadHR workers and is entirely separate from RadHR’s financial reserves.

Each year, the emergency fund will be added to using the previous year’s underspend, specifically including mediation and contingency budget lines, the exact amount to be determined by the core team. This continues until the fund reaches £3,000 per employee worker, and after that time it is ‘topped up’ annually in line with inflation to keep the sum total at this level in ‘real terms’. This fund is ring-fenced and cannot be used for any other purpose than emergency support for workers.

N.B. The inflation measure to use in annual adjustments is whichever is highest of the CPIH, RPI and Vimes Boots Index.

Process

Principles

• Simplicity: the system should be as simple as possible to work through (especially the emergency fund).
• Confidentiality: we recognise that the justifications behind requesting an uplift can be sensitive and inhibit requests and so we have tried to design the policy to obscure the particular reasons behind the total uplift claim, and to not require any disclosure of reasoning wherever possible.
• Openness: we also recognise that confidential pay structures can sadly have a corrosive effect on worker motivation and so our actual rates of pay will continue to be visible via our open budgeting systems.
• Trust: the system of uplifts (and whether these are taken or not, depending on inherited wealth etc.) relies on the honesty and integrity of all other workers.

Uplifts

Automatic salary variations

• Time worked: will happen automatically at the beginning of each financial year or anniversary of the first day worker.
• Child dependent(s): in the case of children, this will happen automatically on beginning working with RadHR or return to work after maternity/paternity leave. 
• City living: on commencement or move to a city.

Opt-in salary variation

• No recourse to public funds: workers are not required to demonstrate proof of this, any opt-ins will be taken on good faith.
• Experience of marginalisation: this is available for anyone to opt-in to if they have had long-term experience of marginalisation, discrimination and oppression that has had a significant impact on their life circumstances.
• Non-child dependents: this is available for anyone to opt-in to as soon as they become a dependee.
• Disability or health issues: this is available for anyone to opt-in to as soon as they experience the impacts of the disability or health issue.

Inheritance & unearned wealth

• Using the rule-of-thumb in the section above, the worker would adjust down whatever uplifts apply to them, by the appropriate figure.

Setting pay rates

• Share policy: Before someone commences paid work for RadHR, whatever the length, a core team member (as agreed by the core team) shares this policy with the worker and outlines the process. 
• Discuss policy (optional but recommended): The core team member should offer to talk through the policy in whatever medium suits the worker so that they can clarify the approach and uplifts if needed. The worker can ask to talk about the policy with any member of the core team. If they have a ‘Buddy’ we recommend they speak to them about the policy.
• Claim uplift: The worker, whether they have spoken to a core team member or decided not to, should then reply to the core team member with their total % uplift, including only the details suggested by the uplifts outlined above.
• Check uplift: The core team member then checks the response, if there are any problems, they should discuss them with the core team.
• Agree uplift: The process should not take longer than 1 month, and should complete before the worker starts their paid work for RadHR, ideally at least 2 weeks beforehand.

Emergency fund claims

• Workers may apply for use of up to 50% of the emergency fund. 
• There are no formal criteria, it is open to workers to make applications for whatever is an emergency for them.
• The decision on any application is made by the core team.
• No worker may apply for more than 50% of the total fund in any year.
• The emergency fund may offer a grant or a loan, at the discretion of the core team, under terms to be agreed.
• Although it is budgeted, it is assumed that most years the fund will not be used (it’s an emergency fund). In those cases, it will be carried over to the next year.

Appendix: Future updates

We’re grateful to Platform and PIRC for sharing their needs-based pay policies that we could start from. Even so, it takes time to develop policies, especially ones as complex as pay. As a result, there are several things that are not in this policy that we would like to look at in future.

The issues we’d like to consider include:

• Renting / Large living costs: these can be more significant than the city uplift.
• Hybrid Freelancer: This is a legally difficult area, but current UK employment and tax law demands either a more protected status (“employee”, though this protection is lower than in many places) or a much less protected status (“self-employed” freelancers). However, sometimes there are good reasons for workers needing a more flexible self-employed approach. That does not mean that they should automatically sacrifice all the protections and affordances of employee status. This is something RadHR would like to explore further.  
• Working from home costs: Working/equipment costs for people who have a complicated homeworking setup (caring responsibilities, shared house living etc.). This could include the costs of working in cafes, etc.
• Disability: As a Core Team we do not have direct experience of the impacts of disability, and have included the current uplift in a basic form, aware of this. We would like to think more about how to make the uplift more substantive, working with those who have direct experience of disability.
• Family estrangement & care leavers: We’re conscious of the ways in which family estrangement, experiences of the care system and/or emancipation can deepen other forms of inequality. In particular, we are aware of the knock-on effect they can have on individuals’ access to employment—especially employment that is flexible and well-paid—and what this means for those who may want to get involved with RadHR but do not have the safety net to take on part-time or freelance work. At this stage, these experiences come under the ‘marginalisation, discrimination, and oppression’ uplift (above). We need to do some more thinking as a Core Team about how we might include a specific Family estrangement & Care leavers uplift in a way that feels more attuned to the particular needs of those who might want to claim it.
• Day rates for short-term one-off work. We are aware that some short-term work like facilitating workshops might require higher day rates than we currently offer. We have included the short-term work uplifts to try to address this, but will review whether these feel sufficient once the policy has been running for some time and there are workers we can talk to about this.