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In December 2021, WellPower implemented a $50,000 minimum wage for staff.
We at WellPower are national leaders in behavioral health. Our approach to serving our communities – meeting people where they are, serving those who have been given up on by everyone else, continuously developing new and better ways of helping people thrive – is based on the belief that we can, and must, change the landscape of behavioral health in the state of Colorado.
This landscape starts “at home” with how we support our staff and make sure they have what they need to be successful in our work. Over the past several years, senior leadership and our board of directors have been determining how we can implement a living wage across the organization. Everyone involved has been fully supportive of this goal and committed to raising the bar for how the behavioral health field supports our staff.
Now, after this groundwork and in collaboration with our union representatives, we have finalized an arrangement to pay a living wage to all staff across the organization. We established a minimum rate of $24.04 per hour, or $50,000 per year, and made market adjustments to bring the average pay for each job to the 60th percentile of market rate – not just among other community mental health centers but across all of healthcare.
This is an opportunity to take a stand and change the way the whole system values those who answer the call to work in behavioral health. We believe that people working in this field should be paid a living wage, in Colorado and beyond. We want to show that this is a step worth taking and to encourage other organizations to take this step with us.
We also hope this is meaningful progress not only in supporting current staff, but in making it possible for more people to do this work, both at our organization and at other providers that serve our community.
To explore job opportunities and learn more about our culture, please visit our Careers page.
Thank you for being with us on this journey.