Older peoples’ housing charity, The Abbeyfield Society, has announced it is increasing the wages of frontline staff by an overall rate of 15%.

The wage hike is part of a range of improved benefits introduced by the charity to help employees through the cost-of-living crisis.

Gail Manley, HR director, said: “As we all know, the past few months have been unprecedented, with a cost-of-living crisis, fuelled by rising inflation, high energy bills and the war in Ukraine. This is putting a lot of extra pressure on our workforce and affecting their lives both at home and at work. Alongside this, our sector is experiencing huge recruitment and retention challenges, with record numbers of vacancies in health and social care.

“We are committed to supporting our loyal and hard-working staff through this current cost-of-living crisis and beyond. We truly value our staff’s significant contribution to Abbeyfield and our residents, and hope that our competitive pay and benefits package will make a difference in these challenging times. We are keen to attract and retain the best people and encourage them to stay and develop their careers with us, and will continue to invest in further initiatives to support our employees.”

Abbeyfield is enhancing its annual leave for long-serving staff and will be enrolling all workers on its Medicash, group medical cash back scheme. The scheme will be fully funded by Abbeyfield and includes up to four dependent children under the age of 24.

Other benefits include the opportunity to progress pay as staff develop new skills, the provision of a fully funded group life assurance plan, a competitive company pension scheme and enhanced sick pay.

In addition, Abbeyfield recently launched a new suite of wellbeing and inclusion training courses and promotes regular Financial Fitness Friday webinars to support financial wellbeing, with its employee assistance programme giving staff 24/7 access to expert advice, information and a personal support system of trained counsellors. Abbeyfield was also delighted to achieve official accreditation as a menopause friendly employer last year.

The organisation offers an employee discount scheme thorough it Benefits at Work portal, which includes discounts at a range of retail outlets, hotels, cinemas, Uber and more. It also offers charity worker discounts, gym membership discounts, savings on car, home and travel insurance, an e-voucher rewards scheme,  subsided eye tests and a £500 recommend a friend staff referral scheme.

In addition, Abbeyfield is committed to investing in education, training and development, with an accredited leadership development programme and apprenticeships available to all staff. It also runs staff recognition schemes such as Team of the Month to recognise and reward outstanding performance.