My name is Nicola Ryan and I'm direct colleague support at One+All. One+All is a supplier of school uniform and workwear UK wide, and I have been with the business now for 18 years during which time the company has completely transformed its culture, its fortunes. We've done that in many ways but some of the key things that have happened for us is becoming employee owned in 2015. So we were originally family owned and we're now 100% employee owned in trust. And we've also become a B Corp as well, which means that, people and planet are equally as important to us as profit or prosperity as well. And we balance those accordingly and make sure that we're responsible to the planet and to the people that are involved with our business.
I've been a CIPD member for over 20 years and really leaned on the CIPD for support throughout my career, whether that's through my studies and exams, but especially in challenging times. I'm A fellow of the CIPD and recently actually I've accessed the mentoring service and connected with a mentor who's working for a large PLC, which I've found incredibly helpful, probably one of the most meaningful things I've ever done, to be honest, with the CIPD. And the reason why I was really keen talk about cost of living and the impact of that on colleagues is because we're a business who have core values of trust and care and feel that if we're a business that cares for colleagues then caring for their financial wellbeing as well as other wellbeing is just so important and we typically see everything through the lens of the lower paid first. That's really crucial to us.
We recognise that there were some things happening in the world around us, rising energy costs, rising cost of living, and in our business, over half our colleagues are in roles that we would consider traditionally lower paid roles. And so we recognise that has an impact. And obviously, inflation impacts those who are lower paid most because most of their income is spent on energy and kind of crucial costs really that they don't have a lot of say over. And so we set about looking at how we could support colleagues. And I suppose the first step of that really was just listening to our people and how that was impacting them.
So we did a few things really. We did a lot, but we started with a survey. We did a cost-of-living questionnaire with our colleagues in 2022 and we asked them questions that maybe people wouldn't typically think of, but we recognise that our colleagues were probably going to be struggling. And so we asked them some questions like, how would you describe your financial situation? Are you struggling to make ends meet or are you managing? We asked about colleagues' household bills and have they fallen behind or are they managing to pay those? And this was all designed really for us to understand the impact on our colleagues and start to tailor our support to colleagues. And we're really lucky in our business because we have really great retention. So we average one resignation a year in our business and we've held that for about the last six years and that's in a workforce of 80 colleagues. So we know we've got the same people that have been with us for a really long time and we know that they tell us the truth. And we know that because we do colleague satisfaction surveys, we've got a really open, honest culture and so we knew that our colleagues would tell us the truth, when we submitted that survey and it helped us to really understand the impact on our people. Some of the things that I'm going to talk to you about we've had in place for a long time because our ethos hasn't changed. You know, our ethos was the same pre-cost of living challenges, but we've enhanced a lot of this as well.
So we're a proud real living wage employer. We're also a real living hours employer because we figured that real living wage is such a great support for colleagues, but it's not much use if your hours are subject to change at short notice. And so we want to make sure that real living wage is exactly what colleagues come out with. And we commit to those regular hours. And auto enrolment as well. When auto enrolment came in, we recognised that for many colleagues that had an impact on their take home pay. And we think saving up for your retirement is incredibly important, but that was something that not everybody could really afford to do. And so we committed to paying the full amount. So we pay the colleagues contribution and the employer contribution, which means that colleagues only have to put in themselves if they can afford to do that, those contributions are taken care of. And again, that has made such a difference to colleagues because those people who maybe wouldn't have saved for their retirement now are doing automatically. And if they want to then put something else into that, they can.
As an employee-owned business, we're really lucky as well because we share profits with our colleagues. And since becoming employee owned and since working on our culture of care for colleagues, our profits have grown. And this is kind of where we talk about that link between happy colleagues and doing amazing work and business success, we've really seen that because since we invested in the culture, profits have grown. And this year, for example, we've just announced a profit share that every single full-time colleague will receive 3,600 pounds. And that's tax-free because we're an employee-owned business. So it takes the pressure off, you know, our colleagues and we pay 80% of that at Christmas. Because we figured that's when, if you've got young families, anything like that, that's when you'll need it most. And the remaining 20% we pay in March as well, at year end, once we know what that profit is. So we've seen the benefit really of looking after colleagues' wellbeing, colleagues' financial wellbeing, that we end up being more successful as a result.
Some of the other things then that I really wanted to talk about, we engaged with a credit union about four or five years ago. And that helped colleagues to be able to save for, a rainy day, put some money aside. The credit union is a really great way to save confidentially. And so actually, if you're somebody that's experiencing domestic abuse and financial abuse, using the credit unions is a way that you can save basically as a backup without somebody at home being able to see that you're doing that. And so we've been able to offer that as a provision as well for anybody that's experiencing challenging times. And something that we started about 12, 13 years ago now was we offer interest-free crisis loans to all colleagues as well.
So where we live, we'd heard that there was an increase in payday lenders, loan sharks, and that really worried us as well. And we didn't want any of our colleagues to feel that they had to go down that route. And so we heavily promote these interest-free crisis loans and some of the things that we've supported colleagues with. I mean, we've supported colleagues with gambling debt and we've helped them to do a plan to kind of get out of that and to make sure that wasn't a reoccurring thing, that they could pay that off and that they could, you know, could then live comfortably and know that wasn't an issue that was going to affect them again in the future. We've supported colleagues with, if the boiler breaks or your car breaks down, you know, those kind of emergency debts, but also more substantial things. You know, we've supported colleagues to help family members out if they were, you know, if their parents were in need of something to improve their home, because caring responsibilities are also key as well. And For us, that's made a huge difference. We ran that cost of living survey in 2022. We ran it again about a year later. And we'd in that 12 month period, we'd not had a single request for an interest free crisis loan. And we figured that was because the support was so tailored to colleagues that they hadn't needed it.
I think this is a fair thing to say is working employees shouldn't be living in poverty. They shouldn't be struggling. You know, when they're making a business like us successful and everybody benefits from that. So I think we've got a responsibility as an employer to make sure that colleagues can afford to live. And we have a really lovely example of that actually that I'm ever so proud of, which was that during COVID, a big chunk of colleagues obviously were furloughed because retail kind of essentially shut and we had the furlough scheme and we were really worried about those colleagues because the furlough scheme obviously didn't pay the full salary. And at the time we asked any colleague that was earning a salary of over 30,000 pounds if they would be willing to volunteer a reduction in pay so that we could top up furloughed colleagues to 90% of their pay. And every single colleague volunteered, every single colleague over 30,000 pounds volunteered to reduce their pay. And that was anything between 10% or 50%, depending on what they were earning. But they volunteered to do that. And we use that to top up those furloughed colleagues. And typically we prioritise colleagues to be furloughed who were maybe vulnerable. Or who had caring responsibilities.
You know, the culture back when I joined in 2008, the culture wasn't like this and I've been part of an amazing team that's really kind of worked to transform that and get people thinking about each other and the customer and the supplier and generally looking out for each other. And now we see that every day.
One of the things I think that has helped us in this is obviously I talked about listening to our colleagues, but I think board and leadership diversity as well. So in our team we have lived experience. If you've got that lived experience then you know what it's like to be skint and I think that's really helpful when you're supporting a group of colleagues from all different backgrounds. We're hearing so much about poverty at the moment. In Greater Manchester, one in three children in Greater Manchester are in poverty and over half of those with working parents. And I just wonder, and I would like people to think about what kind of world it would be if all employers looked after the lower paid first.
