Lidl is increasing minimum hourly pay from £9.50 to £10.10 outside London and from £10.85 to £11.30 within the M25.
The discounter said the rise, from March 2022, would make it the highest-paying supermarket in the UK, in an £18m investment, its biggest ever in wages.
The move would benefit more than 21,000 staff and 80% of its workforce across Britain, according to Lidl.
It means Lidl staff will receive at least 60p per hour more than the National Living Wage for over 23-year-olds.
The move brings Lidl’s investment into hourly wage increases to more than £50m over the past five years.
Lidl also gave all its frontline workers a £200 ‘thank-you payment’ this year in recognition of their work through the pandemic, and a £150 gift voucher to all employees last year.
“At Lidl, our frontline colleagues are the backbone of our business,” said Lidl GB CEO Christian Härtnagel. “They have worked tirelessly over the past 18 months of the Covid-19 crisis and are integral to our future success.
“We have ambitious plans to grow our business across Great Britain, and to do that we need to ensure we attract and look after the best talent at every level of our business. This year we feel incredibly lucky to be in a position as a business to go even further by making this significant investment in our incredible workforce, which will make us the best-paying supermarket in the UK.”
Lidl GB chief HR officer Nan Gibson said: “In 2015 we became the first supermarket in the UK to match the rates advocated by the Living Wage Foundation, and we are proud to have consistently increased wages every year since.
“There is no denying how hard our people work, more so than ever during recent times, and we’re delighted to be able to give our store and distribution centre colleagues the recognition they deserve and look forward to welcoming new colleagues to our teams in the months ahead.”
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