So who’d believe an outsourcer could be a convert to a higher minimum wage?

Outlook

The recent whingeing by wealthy chief executives over the prospect of having to pay their staff moderately acceptable wages has made for a deeply unattractive spectacle.

However, some businesses have made the counter-argument that it is not only morally right to pay people properly, it also makes economic sense. Motivated and engaged workers are less likely to take sick days and more likely to stay put and do a better job.

Mitie would not, on the face of it, appear the most obvious name to be on this side of the debate. The outsourcing giant’s business rests on its ability to win contracts to provide services for both public and private sector clients via competitive tenders – under which the cheapest bid usually wins. And one of the easiest ways to ensure your prices stay cheap – and so keep shareholders and executives in the manner to which they have become accustomed – is to squeeze the people you hire to do the work.

And yet here is Mitie using its latest trading statement to wax lyrical over the virtues of George Osborne’s increased minimum wage. Please note: I’m going to stop calling it the living wage because, unlike the voluntary scheme that also bears that name, it isn’t.

Mitie says it welcomes the Chancellor’s move because it “ensures that those of our people who are affected are better rewarded and feel more motivated to do the jobs they do. It will also improve retention rates across our business.”

One or two other minimum wage payers have made a similar case, but in so doing they have also felt the need to warn that the new higher pay rates might nonetheless affect their hiring policies. Not so Mitie.

However, it has also promised to keep shareholders sweet – and the only way of doing both is to make customers pay more. Mitie admits this is likely while at the same time promising to work hard to identify potential cost savings.

Next on the agenda: directors turning up for the next board meeting wearing T-shirts bearing the legend “Jez We Can” next to a picture of the esteemed leader of the Opposition.

Perhaps not. In part, the company’s stance is motivated by the fact that its competitors all face similar pressures. It’s not as if they’ll be able to undercut Mitie by being mean to their staff.

I was also told that now the Chancellor has narrowed the gap with the true living wage, the company reckons it may take less heat for not seeking accredited living wage employer status any time soon. To which my response would be: guess again.

Another point worth noting is that the company has been in receipt of some rather bad publicity over whether or not it actually paid the old minimum wage to certain of its workers, courtesy of the BBC. Needless to say, Mitie disputes Auntie’s allegations, and denies its chief executive was ever hauled in front of HM Revenue & Customs, as claimed. But it does admit to “discussions” with the latter’s watchdogs.

Anyway, an industrial tribunal is pending. Which may yet cast some light on whether Mitie’s conversion to the cause of corporate decency is anything more than skin deep.