16 July 2025

Terms of Reference: Consultant to document best practices for verification of living wages and develop guidelines for companies to assess and select verification service providers

The Roadmap on Living Wages (the “Roadmap”) is a joint effort to ensure the adoption of a uniform approach regarding living wages. In a platform with leading organisations, IDH is developing tools to support companies in measuring and addressing living wage gaps across all sectors our organisation has defined as a priority. The Roadmap aims to strengthen international alignment, develop consensus on the living wage definitions, tools, and approaches for companies to work on living wages. With leading retailers/buying and producing companies, IDH is addressing strategic issues and challenges related to living wage gaps in key commodities. We also rely on a Technical Advisory Group of standards and experts for providing us with technical advice on the development of the Roadmap and tools such as the Salary Matrix, and through the Stakeholders Committee we consult with like minded organisations and initiatives.  

The Roadmap includes 5 steps which are inspired by the needs companies have when moving forward to closing living wage gaps:

Identifying reliable living wage benchmarks,
Providing tools to measure current gaps,
Verifying calculations of gaps,
Implementing projects,
Sharing learnings.

These ToR refer specifically to step 3 of the Roadmap: verifying payment of living wages and calculations of living wage gaps.

Since the launch of the Roadmap at the end of 2019, IDH has been supporting the development of practical tools to support the implementation of step 3. Namely, recommended auditing guidelines for verifying living wage gaps through the appropriate use of the Salary Matrix. This work enables IDH and its Roadmap partners to recommend sustainability schemes and auditing bodies that, by adhering to these guidelines, can support businesses in verifying living wage gaps as a starting point to support dialogue between producers, workers’ organisations, unions, and buyers for finding solutions to address potential gaps.

IDH also developed a training of auditors and trainers’ program in partnership with ImpactBuying Academy to enable the necessary assistance to auditors in the uptake of these guidelines. Furthermore, IDH has signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with auditing bodies (whose auditors have been formally trained by ImpactBuying Academy) that can assist companies in verifying living wage gaps. This process has enabled IDH to recommend organisations with duly trained auditors that can assist companies in verification of living wage gaps calculated using the Salary Matrix.

Nonetheless, those guidelines, trainings and MOUs are directly designed to assist parties that have chosen the Salary Matrix as the tool to measure remuneration and living wage gaps. Today, as many companies in multiple sectors advance on their living wages goals and targets for their own workforce and in their supply chains, other tools (apart from the Salary Matrix) are being used to support such efforts. Thus, companies are requiring an array of verification services (to be furthered identified as part of this endeavour) that range from requiring proof of payment of living wages, assurance that calculations of living wage gaps were done correctly and/or verification of general progress towards living wages; and they lack guidance on how to select service providers that can give them the assurance they are looking for. Such verification services include those that focus on a company’s own operation (workforce) as well as verification services that can be used in supply chains for key suppliers (tier 1) and beyond. On the other hand, organisations providing such services can benefit from the identification of best practice to support improvements in the verification services they provide.

IDH is, therefore, looking for a consultant, consultancy firm or consortium/group of consultants (referred to as Consultant in the rest of these ToR) to document best practices for verification of living wages and develop guidelines for companies to assess and select by themselves the verification service providers (beyond those that are using the Salary Matrix as the core tool for remuneration and living wage gap calculations).

See the full Terms of Reference here.