What is Living Hours?

We work with employers who want to end in-work poverty. Our Living Hours accreditation sets the standard for what good work looks like, ensuring all employees have the security they need to thrive.  

Millions of workers are trapped in low paid and insecure work, meaning that their job doesn’t provide them with the means to meet their everyday needs.

Precarious working conditions – such as zero hours and casual contracts – disproportionately impact minority ethnic workers, young workers and older workers.

Our Living Hours scheme helps to address this problem, by asking employers to provide workers with the right to:

• A contract that accurately reflects hours worked. This helps tackle practices like Zero Hours that simply don’t reflect hours worked.
• Decent notice periods for shifts: of at least 4 weeks’ notice, with guaranteed payment (full compensation) if shifts are cancelled within this notice period. With this, employees have the ability to plan their lives and budgets.
• A guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week to all who want it. So that workers can get the hours they need to meet their everyday needs.