Living wage

What is a living wage?

A living wage is the income a person needs to cover the real cost of a decent life in the place they live. Housing, food, transport, healthcare, and enough left over to absorb a bad month. It is calculated from local data, so the number for London looks nothing like the number for a small town two hours away.

This is where it parts ways with the minimum wage. A minimum wage is a legal floor set by government, often political, often years behind the actual cost of living. A living wage starts from the other direction. It asks what someone actually needs, then works back to the pay. In the UK, the independently calculated Real Living Wage has sat well above the statutory minimum for over a decade, and thousands of accredited employers pay it by choice rather than law.

The gap matters because full-time work that still leaves someone unable to make rent is a structural problem, not a personal one. A living wage treats fair pay as a baseline of the employment relationship, not a perk handed down when budgets allow.

Living wage at Dallonses

We are a certified B-corp, and pay was one of the first things that certification made us examine honestly. Talent has a future because the future demands talent, and you cannot ask senior people to do their sharpest work while they worry about the basics. So we pay above the local living wage across the team, and we keep the bands transparent enough that nobody has to guess where they stand.

It costs more. We think it buys something worth more. People who are paid fairly stay, grow, and bring their full attention to a client's hardest problems. That stability is part of why brands trust us with work that runs for years, not weeks.

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