- Home
- Careers
- Our Benefits
Our Benefits
We offer a range of wellbeing and work-life balance benefits to recognise and reward the essential contribution our employees make to our success and growth.
Annual Leave – Support Staff
You will enjoy a generous annual leave allowance, based on length of service. This starts at 29 days for up to 5 years’ service, 32 days for 5-9 years and reaches 34 days when you have 10 or more years of service (pro-rata for part-time staff). This is in addition to the statutory bank holidays and WHMAT compulsory closure days over the Christmas period.
Generous Occupational Pension Scheme
Whether a teacher or support staff employee, you will automatically become an active member of an occupational pension scheme from the start date of your employment (Local Government Pension Scheme for Support Staff and Teachers’ Pension Scheme for teachers).
Incremental Progression and Cost of Living
WHMAT follows the nationally agreed pay scale for all staff. This means that every September, you should expect your salary to go up by one spinal column point until you reach the top of your grade or salary band, the main proviso being that you have fully engaged with our Professional Growth process. Further details are in our Pay Policy. Cost of living rises are also made annually, subject to government policy. This is in addition to incremental rises.
Living Wage Employer
At WHMAT, we are a “Living Wage Employer”. This means that we pay all of our staff at least the living wage rate for the Midlands, regardless of grade.
Flexible Working
We operate a notional 36.5 hour working week for support staff and 32.5 hours for teachers and class-based support staff. However, we encourage a culture of flexible working that supports colleagues with their work-life-balance and those with caring responsibilities. For further details, see our flexible working policy.Flexible Working PolicyIn addition, a number of other supportive policies aid work-life balance and create a family-friendly workplace. These include home-working and our Life Leave Policy, which covers areas such as time off for dependents, house moves and graduations.
Family Friendly
WHMAT is fully committed to helping working parents balance work and family life wherever this is operationally and financially possible. We operate a maternity, paternity and adoption leave package which is significantly more favourable than statutory requirements and covers areas such as shared parental leave and parental leave.
Long Service Award
WHMAT’s Board of Trustees recognises and values the contribution of all of its employees, and recognises that some of them have worked for Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust (WHMAT), or its predecessors, for many years.
We aim therefore to reward loyalty and commitment of employees due to long service of 25 years through a one-off gift up to the value of £150 and a personalised certificate, which could be received on retirement or whilst they are still employed.
Cycle to work scheme
Save money on cycling to work (or pleasure) with Cyclescheme. Cyclescheme is an employee benefit that saves you 25-39% on a bike and accessories. You pay nothing upfront and the payments are taken tax efficiently from your salary.
Citysave
WHMAT are really pleased to announce the launch of a new optional employee benefit with Citysave Credit Union. Citysave Credit Union have been providing savings and fairly priced personal loans to Birmingham City Council employees for many years and we are delighted that they can now offer this new salary sacrifice scheme to WHMAT employees, to support financial wellbeing with key benefits such as: -
- Deduction directly from net pay salary via payroll
- No bank account fees
- Ability to sub divide your account for specific purposes (e.g. Holidays, Special Events, Christmas)
- Access to pre-paid Visa Debit card
- Local telephone support
- Participation in annual dividend
Eye care voucher scheme
All employees who use display screen equipment are entitled to free regular eye tests and/or a contribution towards glasses in accordance with WHMAT’s eye sight testing policy.
Equality Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I)
At WHMAT, we embrace our diverse staffing demographic. In our most recent Equality and Diversity questionnaire in October 2020, the responses indicated a diverse workforce profile made up of 51.5% White British, 28.92% Asian and 19.58% from 11 other ethnic groups, with 10 religion/belief categories identified. All age brackets from 20-24 through to 65+ are represented.
WHMAT is committed to supporting diversity and equal opportunities in the whole employee life cycle, from recruitment to promotions. We want our staff to be role models to the diverse communities that we serve. We are fully committed to creating a stimulating and supportive learning and working environment based on mutual respect and trust. This will allow staff and students to reach their full potential, regardless of their unique protected characteristics.
We believe that diversity in the workplace starts with recruitment. We anonymise all applications at the shortlisting stage to minimise any conscious or unconscious bias and to ensure that we are focussing solely on a candidate’s ability to meet the essential criteria for the role based on their application.
Our approach to Equal Opportunities is set out in our Equal Opportunities Policy.
