We believe a staff culture which values inclusion, equity and wellbeing helps to creates a stronger, healthier and more productive team. We are proud of the practice we’re developing, but always want to learn more. We regularly review our staff policies and benefits, as well as undertake an annual staff diversity audit, to help us understand how we can improve.
On this page you’ll find more details about some of the steps we’re taking to create an organisation which we, and all our members, can be proud of.
An inclusive & equitable employer: we are committed to putting inclusion and equity at the heart of how we recruit, support and manage our staff. We’ve signed up to a number of initiatives to help us deliver on these commitments:
- 10,000 Interns Foundation programme: each year we pledge to take an intern from each initiative (Black and Able interns), offering paid internships that create new pathways into the sector that promotes equity of opportunity
- Show the Salary: only advertising jobs (members and our own) with salaries to stop perpetuating pay gaps which evidence shows most affect women, racially minoritised staff and people who are LGBT+
- Living Wage Employer: we are a Accredited Living Wage Employer, paying the real Living Wage to everyone who works for us
- Living Pension Employer: we are a Accredited Living Pension Employer, to help workers build up a pension pot that will provide enough income to meet basic everyday needs in retirement.
- Menopause Workplace Pledge: we’ve signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge to take positive action to make sure everyone going through the menopause is supported
- Disability Confident Employer: we are joining a movement of change, to encourage employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
A commitment to staff wellbeing: we pride ourselves on being an employer that values and promotes staff wellbeing, and we’ve thought hard about how we can put this into practice. We now have a range of benefits which are available to all staff*and include:
- Enhanced flexible working (see below)
- Employer supported volunteering – three days a year to volunteer
- Mobile months – work up to four weeks a year abroad or elsewhere in the UK
- Health cover through Benenden – including 24/7 access to GP and Mental Health support lines, wellbeing and exercise classes among other benefits
- Ability to buy extra annual leave
- Cycle2Work Scheme
- Life insurance
- Office closure between Christmas and New Year (in addition to annual leave entitlement)
*Some of these benefits become available to staff on completion of their probation period
Enhanced staff policies: over the past few years we’ve been developing a suite of new staff policies. We review these annually to ensure we’re taking account of employment practice elsewhere and offering the best we can. Policies we are particularly proud of include:
- Flexible working. We trust our staff to know how best they can get their work done. Whilst we have ‘core’ hours and office days, we allow staff to take charge of their own time and work in ways that suit them best. From October 2023 to March 2024 we trialed new ways of working, including reducing the working week to 32 hours with no changes to salaries. This has now been made permanent and you can read more about this here.
- Equal parental pay and leave. We have combined our previous policies to ensure that staff members starting or growing their families have the same entitlements. We offer full pay for the first 26 weeks, then 13 weeks at 90% of average weekly earnings, or the equivalent to the statutory maternity pay as set by the Government.
- Pregnancy loss policy. London Funders is committed to supporting all employees who suffer the loss of a pregnancy, whether it happens directly to them, their partner or their baby’s surrogate mother, regardless of the nature of their loss, and whatever their length of service.
- Pensions. We offer a generous pension contribution of 10% on your total salary**. We only start deductions from your salary at 5% above £26,000 (though you are welcome to make additional contributions), ensuring that everyone at London Funders receives a pension above the Living Pension Standard rate.
** this is available to staff on completion of their probation period
Tell us what you think!
We regularly publish insights from the way we work on our website, and are always open to sharing our experiences and learning with others. Please get in touch with our Head of Programme Delivery, Grace (grace.perry@londonfunders.org.uk) if you’d like to hear more about how we work or want to share practice that you’re proud of so that we can share with our members.