The Living Wage Foundation has an exciting opportunity to join our dynamic team as a Research Officer. This is a new role designed to grow our analytical and thought-leadership work, working closely with the Research Manager and collaborating across the Foundation’s teams. We are looking for a highly motivated and organised individual with quantitative research expertise, and a desire initiate new streams of work that grow the Foundation’s intelligence and proactively influence change.

About us: Citizens UK is a people power alliance of diverse 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 £1.5 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, Parents and Communities Together (PACT), Sponsor Refugees, and Refugees for Justice, 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 nearly 9,000 accredited Living Wage Employers across the UK. 

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.

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 November during Living Wage Week, our annual celebration of a growing network of over 10,000 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 over 340,000 low paid workers.

The Research Officer will:

• Design and lead individual research projects related to the labour market, low pay and in-work poverty.

• Conduct quantitative and qualitative research that supports the Foundation’s accreditation and communications work.

• Support the Research Manager and wider team in managing large datasets and responding to ad-hoc data requests where required.

• Provide thought leadership on in-house research standards, strategy and planning and areas relevant to LWF strategic priorities.

• Work with the communications team on research led press activity, including press releases for new research, comment pieces and blogs.

Main Responsibilities

This role reports into the Research Manager. Working as a Research Officer in London for Citizens UK your main responsibilities will include:

Conducting and commissioning research:

• 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.

• Design and analyse primary polling of individuals and businesses.

• Conduct qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups with low-paid workers and employers.

• Manage relationships with external research partners

• Disseminate research findings through written reports, articles, blogs and presentations.

• Support wider research and intelligence needs and projects across Citizens UK.

Project and programme management: 

• Contribute to the research strategy of the Living Wage Foundation, including through the proposal and design of future projects..

• 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.

Data Management and thought leadership:

• Manage timeseries datasets, including updating, merging and analysing when new data is released.

• Plan and react to regular data releases from the ONS relevant to low pay, labour markets and in-work poverty.

• Become in-house expert on issues relevant to LWF’s diversification work. 

Communications:

• Support the Foundation’s communications team to embed data and research findings across traditional media, social media and website communications.

• Work with the Foundation’s communications team on research led stories, both planned and ad-hoc.

Relationship management:

• Provide research support to colleagues where required, including by responding to data-requests and providing input on project-specific research activity where required.

• Represent the Foundation at meetings and events, including speaking on panels and in roundtables on research- and policy-related issues.

Person Specification: (D) Desirable, (E) Essential

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)

• Experience of commissioning and overseeing research projects delivered by others, and/or applying for or delivering externally funded research (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)

• Project or programme evaluation skills, including cost-benefit analysis techniques (D)

• Qualitative research skills (D)

• Understanding of the policy and campaign landscape in the UK (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)

• A strong commitment to the Living Wage campaign and principles of Citizens UK (E)

If you wish to get in touch, please use the candidate portal within Applied.