A peek behind the curtain
The events of the last 18 months - snowstorm, pandemic, and all - have radically reshaped the work we’re doing at Food First NL. That’s no surprise, and we’ve had lots of chances to talk about it. What we haven’t done, though, is talked about some pretty big changes we’ve been making behind the scenes, and I think it’s time to change that.
Since early 2020, Food First NL has been trying hard to look at our own organization through an equity lens. Unsurprisingly, we found lots that needed changing. I’d say there will always be things to improve on - this is a journey, not a check box.
That said, I want to share some of the steps we’ve taken. At Food First, we benefited hugely from the example set by our friends at FoodShare TO, who’ve been taking the same lens to their own work. I recently sat down with Katie German, Director of Advocacy and Programs at FoodShare, to compare notes about it (You can watch that conversation here). One key takeaway from our chat was the importance of showing what’s possible - and to open ourselves up to some accountability to our community.
So, what is possible? Let’s start, as Food First NL started, with how, and how much we pay people. We’ve done a few things here.
A living wage floor
The lowest rate of pay at Food First NL is now pegged to the living wage calculated for St. John’s (we don’t have a calculation for anywhere else in NL) by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Right now, that makes it $18.85, and if the CCPA updates their numbers, ours will automatically move (since they don’t update this number annually, we also index it to inflation).
Why do this? As Katie from FoodShare noted in our chat, we need to be aware of the potential for food insecurity within our team. That possibility is very real if you’re earning minimum wage, even if it’s for full-time hours. A living wage helps prevent that. It’s pretty basic.
This wasn’t a drastically difficult change for us to make here at Food First NL, where most staff were already above this line. The biggest impact has been on the top-ups we provide to students and interns (who normally come here with funding that only covers minimum wage). Our living wage policy means we have to think a bit harder about when to take these folks on, since ~40% of their wages will be coming out of our budget. To be honest, I think it’s actually a good thing. Summer students and interns are ubiquitous in the nonprofit sector but we don’t always do a good job providing them with a fulfilling experience, and I often wonder if that is, in part, because their labour is “free” for organizations. Topping up to a living wage also means we have more skin in the game.
We know that making this shift would be harder for some others, especially organizations with large teams of entry-level employees, or without any funding beyond summer students and internships. There are structural issues in our sector for sure - but if we are able, I really think we should - and if we can’t right now, we should be thinking about how to get there. Nobody who makes their living helping others should be stranded in poverty themselves.
A maximum ratio between the highest and lowest-paid employees
Just as they have done at FoodShare TO, we have instituted a maximum ratio of 3.0 between the highest and lowest rates of pay at Food First NL. That means that increasing pay for our upper pay band (the CEO) can’t happen without also increasing the pay for our lowest ones.
In practice, this is a bit of future-proofing for us as we grow; we’re well within that ratio now and will be for the foreseeable future, but we thought it was important to send this message to ourselves.
A fixed and transparent salary structure
Over the years, organizations build up all sorts of quirks in their pay structures as people come on board under different circumstances and with different amounts of negotiation. That means that many of us (Food First NL included) end up with folks doing similar work, or employed at similar levels, with differing compensation. Baking this kind of inequity into your team structure just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
We also know that making negotiations a part of the hiring process systematically disadvantages candidates from equity-seeking groups, who don’t have nearly as much social permission to bargain hard.
So, we ditched it. We now have a fixed salary grid, with a starting salary for each type of position that increases in a fixed way over 3 years until they get to the top of the band, then stays put. Everyone at the same level in the organization is in the same band, with the only difference being due to how long they’ve been here.
More flexibility
Nonprofit organizations like ours can’t easily compete for talent on salaries alone - we can rarely match government or private-sector organizations. Where we can compete, though, is on working conditions and flexibility.
As with almost every workplace, COVID-19 started a conversation about our working model. Before the pandemic, remote work had been the exception. Now, it’s the norm for us - I don’t anticipate we’ll ever again have our whole team working from an office, and we’ve made it clear that work-from-home is always an option here. This is a real benefit to our mission. We have a province-wide mandate, and can now have a province-wide team that meets as equals online.
Beyond the work-from-home arrangements, we’ve also been adding other kinds of flexibility. In particular, we’ve added a much broader category of long-term leave; if you work for Food First NL and want to go to school, run for office, or take another job that’ll expand your horizons for a while, that is now much easier to accommodate.
All these changes in how we pay people also set the stage for changes in how we hire. Over the past year we’ve made some big changes there, too.
Always posting the salary: all Food First NL job postings have the exact rate of pay included in them. Connecting to the equity goals that led us to setting up a fixed salary grid in the first place, this removes the bargaining element of taking a job with us.
Recognizing alternative qualifications: there is no single path to being the right person for a job. We began to realize that requiring a particular set of credentials - a Bachelor’s Degree, say - excludes a lot of great candidates who have taken alternative paths. In particular, folks who have a lived experience of food insecurity may not have been able to pursue as many formal qualifications as others. With that in mind, we no longer mandate any credentials, but instead look for skills and perspectives.
Targeted hiring: we are always trying to diversify our team and with that in mind we will be focusing on getting the word out about job openings through community partners that reach folks with a broad range of lived experiences, alongside the more general public posting of opportunities.
In a lot of ways, these are the “low hanging fruit” of conversations about equity - HR policies that can be written and amended. We’ve also been trying to create a space within our team for bigger picture conversations about equity and our work. We dig pretty deep: how do we think about the work we are doing, the philosophy behind it, the partnerships we’re engaged in, the way power works in our organization and in our networks?
A monthly equity learning circle is one way we are trying to get at this. Usually, we talk through a big idea (body positivity, food sovereignty, food as a human right, etc), and that often generates some concrete items for us to work on, causing us to rethink what projects we run with and what language we use about them on a regular basis. It’s also a great space for the team to come to grips with the staggering amount of injustice that shapes our work.
All our conversations about equity are very much a work in progress. We’ve still got a ton to figure out, and there’s rarely a clear answer to any of the tough questions that come out of it, but to my mind, this is some of the most important work our team does. We’re always happy to hear ideas on how we could do it better, or to chat about the nuts and bolts a bit more with folks interested in digging deep into internal equity themselves.
Josh Smee, CEO, August 2021
