CALUM CARSON

Research Coordinator (North)

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Institution: University of Leeds, Business School

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Discipline: Work and Employment Relations

  

Contact:  c.carson@worldofworknetwork.co.uk

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What’s your research about?

My research PhD focuses on and around the voluntary decision by public, private, and third sector employers to formally (and voluntarily) accredit their organisations as Living Wage Employers with the Living Wage Foundation, and as the central part of this accreditation form a firm commitment to paying all contracted staff at least the Living Wage rates set by the Foundation as the minimum level of pay required for a worker to afford an adequate standard of living in the UK today. The central objectives of the project are to explore not only employers’ initial decisions for adopting the Living Wage within their organisation, but also the impact and effect that implementation has had on them since them: on for example employees’ performance, attitude and behaviour in the workplace, as well as any changes in rates of sick/absence leave, staff retention levels, the quality of candidate at the interview stage, and so forth. Finally, it will explore both the symbolic and practical implications of the existence of the Living Wage campaign and Living Wage Employers at a time when employment conditions for those at the bottom end of the wage scale are becoming ever more precarious.

 

Tell us something interesting about yourself?

Outside of my research I am a keen photographer, a passion I developed whilst working as a researcher at the International Labour Organisation from June to December 2016: my photos can be found here.

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