Research Manager, Living Wage Foundation

Living Wage Foundation 

The Living Wage Foundation was launched in 2011 by Citizens UK to tackle in-work poverty and ensure that workers earn enough to live on and participate in family and community life. Citizens UK is the home of community organising with diverse civil society alliances set up to develop leaders to work on the issues that matter to them, such as the Living Wage. Other projects include Parent Action and Sponsor Refugees to add depth to the impact of Citizens UK’s work.

The Living Wage is a movement of businesses, organisations and people who believe that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The real Living Wage is an independently-calculated hourly rate based on the cost of living and announced each October ahead of Living Wage Week, our annual celebration of a growing network of over 15,000 Living Wage Employers.

The Living Wage Foundation celebrates employers that voluntarily choose to pay the real Living Wage through an accreditation scheme that recognises a long-term commitment to fair pay and has secured pay rises for 475,000 low paid workers. Over recent years, the Living Wage Foundation has built on the success of the real Living Wage by creating new responsible employment standards – Living Hours and Living Pension – for those employers who want to go further and provide the security workers need now and in the future.

The Living Wage Foundation is part of Citizens UK – a community organising charity which works with a broad base of institutions across the political spectrum. At the Living Wage Foundation, we take a deliberately broad-based approach and accredit all organisations who pay the real Living Wage to their directly and indirectly employed staff and are committed to tackling in work poverty. As a team we work across a range of industries and sectors to achieve this mission. We seek pragmatic coalitions in order to progress specific campaigns, and partnership around a particular issue such as Living Wage, does not imply an endorsement of broader purpose and policies.

Citizens UK

Citizens UK is the biggest, most diverse and most effective people-powered alliance of local communities working together for the common good. Our mission is to develop leaders, strengthen civic organisations and make change. Our 550 member communities are deeply rooted in their local areas and connect every day to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Through the method of community organising we enable people experiencing powerlessness to develop their leadership and come together with the power and strategy to make change.  

This leads to hundreds of neighbourhood improvements - from zebra crossings outside primary schools to renovated public toilets in cemeteries. And it leads to some of the biggest campaign impacts in the UK, such as winning over £3 billion of wages through the UK Living Wage campaign, securing a legal cap on the cost of credit to control exploitative lending, and ending the detention of children for immigration purposes. We enable local campaigns to grow into large-scale social change projects such as the Living Wage Foundation, Parent Action and Sponsor Refugees that form an integral part of our theory of change. The most prominent of these is the rapidly growing Living Wage Foundation with a network of almost 15,000 accredited Living Wage Employers across the UK. 

At Citizens UK, our organisers and project staff work within communities and ‘organise across difference’. There are various project roles and management, operational, communication, finance and HR roles that support the organisation and project staff and organisers to deliver on this mission and work. This work is rewarding and can be challenging; it requires a personal commitment to inclusion, a willingness to listen and disagree respectfully, and an interest in working in an organisation where our staff, member institutions and leaders will come from a diversity of backgrounds and often hold views that may be very different from our own. More information about how we operate within this context, and build trusted relationships across difference can be found on our website and is covered in induction. Onboarding and navigating this relational culture, and type of work, is supported by line managers and further training.

Purpose 

The Living Wage Foundation has an exciting opportunity to join our dynamic team as a Research Manager. We are looking for an individual with quantitative research expertise and a desire to influence positive social change to join our Research Team. Previous experience in conducting research on the UK labour market is desirable but not essential. Reporting to the Senior Research Manager, the Research Manager will: 

• Contribute to the design and management of our research programme on labour market conditions, low pay, in-work poverty, and insecure work. 
• Conduct rigorous quantitative and qualitative research (mainly quantitative) to understand how existing working conditions such as low pay and insecure work - and potential improvements - affect workers, businesses, and society. 
• Provide thought-leadership on areas relevant to LWF’s work, including on areas like low pay, insecure work and cost-of-living, and relevant policy developments.  
• Communicate research findings verbally and in writing to influence employers to pay the real Living Wage, and to grow recognition and understanding of the Living Wage Foundation and the social policy issues it works on.  
• Provide input into in-house research standards and quality assurance.  
• Have direct line management responsibility for a researcher. 
• Build relationships with external partners, including commissioning and managing research conducted by other organisations. 

About the Application Process

We work within diverse communities bringing people together. In line with our Inclusion value, we would love to see applications from LGBTQIA+ people, people from racialised communities, people living with disabilities and people of faith, all to better represent the communities we work in. We want our employees to have the working conditions that allows them to fully participate, be able to be their best authentic selves and thrive doing so, and we have employee networks to support staff. Even if you don’t quite meet all the required criteria still consider applying, as we invest in our employees and support them to develop the skills and knowledge required to deliver their role.

For questions and reasonable adjustments regarding your application including information in a different format, or our recruitment process, please contact us. 

Got any more questions?

If you would like further information on the role, the organisation, or our commitment to addressing under-representation and the development and progression of all colleagues, we would be happy to answer any questions.

We will be holding a webinar on Tuesday 26th November, 1-1.30pm where anyone can attend to find out more about the role, all enquiries welcome. In the past, candidates have found this a helpful space for understanding whether the role is right for them.

Please register for the webinar via the application form.

If you’d like to know more but cannot attend the webinar, please contact us. 

Main Responsibilities 

This role sits within the communications team. Working as a Research Manager for the Living Wage Foundation, your main responsibilities will include:  

Strategy Development:

• Contribute to the design and management of a research strategy for the Living Wage Foundation, effectively planning a timeline of future projects that combines to grow the Foundation’s influence, intelligence and impact. 
• Work across the Foundation’s communications, programme and business development teams to understand and support research and intelligence needs around Living Wage accreditation and the diversification of the Foundation’s work. 
• Support the Foundation’s communications team to embed data and research findings across traditional media, social media and website communications, including by identifying external hooks to showcase new or existing LWF Research. 

Build and manage projects and achieve work targets effectively:

• Design and deliver high-quality research projects within the Living Wage Foundation’s research programme, focusing on the labour market, low pay and in-work poverty.  
• Conduct quantitative analysis of secondary datasets, including the Labour Force Survey, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, the Family Resources Survey and Understanding Society. 
• Commission, design and analyse primary polling of individuals and businesses. 
• Commission and manage research conducted for the Foundation by external organisations. 
• Conduct qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups with low-paid workers and employers. 

Reputational and risk management:

• Identify potential reputational risks related to research and proactively develop appropriate protocol, messages and standards to mitigate risks, including through appropriate quality assurance processes 
• Design and conduct evaluations of the Foundation’s programmes and impact, and build the evidence base on the benefits of the Living Wage to workers, businesses and society. 

Materials development and dissemination:

• Managing individual reports and projects, with full ownership of the planning, methodology, report writing, dissemination and evaluation. 
• Disseminate research findings through written reports, articles, blogs and presentations. 
• Plan and react to regular data releases from the ONS relevant to low pay, labour markets and in-work poverty. 

External Relationships:

• Build and manage relationships with research organisations, academics, think tanks and employer networks. 
• Identify and develop strategic partnerships with a range of stakeholders – including project partners and funders to support the Foundation’s work.  
• Represent the Foundation at meetings and events, including speaking on panels and in roundtables on research- and policy-related issues. 

Internal Relationships:

• Support wider research and intelligence needs and projects across Citizens UK. 
• Provide research support to colleagues where required, including by responding to data-requests and providing input on project-specific research activity where required. 
• Work with Citizens UK community organisers, members and leaders to promote civic engagement with and ownership of the Living Wage campaign. 

Learning and Expertise:

• Become in-house expert on issues relevant to LWF’s diversification work.   
• Monitor developments in public policy and develop appropriate proposals for what these mean for LWF’s work.  
• Demonstrate ability to support members of the team in designing and delivering research outputs, including providing input on in house research standards.  
• Support the training and induction of team members, and work collaboratively with the wider team to ensure that we are meeting the expectations of our network and stakeholders. 

Generate income and resources:

• Manage budgets, and identify opportunities to attract funding for research projects. 

Person Specification 

(D) Desirable, (E) Essential 

Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional qualification (D) 

Experience:

• Proven, comprehensive experience in a research or analytical role (E) 
• Experience of building and managing successful relationships and partnerships with research organisations, funders, and other stakeholders (E)  
• Experience of conducting or managing research related to the labour market, low pay or in-work poverty (D) 
• Sound knowledge and understanding of public policy issues relating to the UK labour market, especially around low pay and insecure work (D) 
• Experience of commissioning and overseeing research projects delivered by others, and/or applying for or delivering externally funded research (D) 
• Experience of line management or mentoring junior staff in a professional setting (D)  

Key skills and knowledge:

• Excellent quantitative research skills, and knowledge of a range of quantitative research techniques (E) 
• Knowledge of secondary datasets related to the labour market, such as the Labour Force Survey and Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (E) 
• Ability to work with Microsoft Excel, and at least one other statistical software package for analysis (e.g. SPSS, Stata, R or Python) (E) 
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in a range of formats (e.g. briefings, reports, blogs and presentations) (E) 
• Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to build and manage internal and external relationships (E) 
• Ability to act on own initiative, to introduce and develop new projects and ideas (E) 
• Understanding of the key drivers of in-work poverty in the UK and broader labour market dynamics (D) 
• Qualitative research skills and experience using a range of techniques (D) 

Personal qualities & values:

• A proactive approach to all areas of work, with a ‘can do’ attitude and a flexible approach to work demands (E) 
• Strong attention to detail, with the ability to sense check data and critically review findings outlined in research reports and briefings (E) 
• A strong commitment to the Living Wage campaign and principles of Citizens UK (E) 

Interviews: 9th & 10th December (TBC).