Policy and Influencing Manager

We’re looking for a Policy and Influencing Manager to help us achieve our ambition to improve urban health in the UK and beyond. Policy and Influencing is a fast-developing function at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation, established to turbo-charge our influence on decision-making to improve urban health and health inequity.

Working across the organisation - in particular with colleagues leading our urban health programmes - the Policy and Influencing function applies the insight generated by our programmes to raise the profile and influence decision-making on the issues we work on. You will be an experienced public affairs and policy professional with experience influencing national decision-making.

Working with teams across the organisations, you will lead the development of compelling influencing strategies for each programme, and deliver innovative and varied policy and influencing activity to achieve these strategies. This is a rare opportunity to work in a genuinely innovative organisation that is able to test new approaches and is willing to take risks: we are looking for someone who enjoys testing new ways of working as we explore how we can best achieve impact, whether acting alone or with our partner organisations.

You will bring sharp political insight and a passion for complex, of the moment policy issues to work closely with programme colleagues to maximise the impact of our urban health programmes. This might involve commissioning original research to support our policy development process, working with partner organisations to design campaigning partnerships, or funding others to trial new ways of involving communities impacted by health inequity in the policy decision-making process.

You will work with the Head of Policy and Influencing (Impact on Urban Health) on Parliamentary and Government engagement for your programmes, and will work very closely with Communications Managers assigned to each programme to create impactful communications to influence.

You’ll be excited by the opportunity to work at an organisation that prioritises diversity, equity and inclusion in all we do, whether in terms of the impact we seek to have in the external world on health equity, but also in the ways we work.

As Policy and Influencing Manager, this may mean working with partners to explore how we can support their own influencing activity, designing research and policy reports that bring the voice of people most impacted by the issues we work on to the debate or exploring ways to develop our own policy positions in an inclusive and equitable way. You will be a team player, who enjoys working in a matrix across multiple teams within the organisation.

About us: Impact on Urban Health is part of Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation. Our collective mission is to build the foundations of a healthier society. As a member of the team, you have a real opportunity to shape our work and the impact we can have. This is fuelled by our desire to be more than the sum of our parts. We’re curious, we think big and we’re not afraid to take risks. As part of our team, you will work alongside talented people from a mix of personal and professional backgrounds. We are a Living Wage employer and support flexible working, part-time roles and job shares. Though our ambitions are serious, this is a friendly place to work with lots of opportunities to meet and socialise with colleagues. We believe there is immense power in diversity and aim to recruit and nurture talent who think and act differently.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver compelling influencing strategies for two of our Urban Health Programmes.
• Develop investment partnerships with a particular influencing focus within these programmes.
• Act as a source of policy expertise and political insight for colleagues across the organisation, proactively briefing on key political events and policy developments.
• Develop a policy bank of evidence-based and up to date policy for each programme, key messaging and policy asks to maximise the impact of the insight generated by our work.
• Lead horizon scanning to identify proactive and reactive influencing opportunities, and deliver this activity, in partnership with internal and external colleagues.
• Work closely with Communications Managers to develop and deliver impactful communications to influence.
• Bring a diversity, equity and inclusion lens to all our policy and influencing activity, whether in how we work with partners or in our own systems and processes.

Role responsibilities are not exhaustive, and you would be reasonably expected to take on wider tasks that are commensurate with the level of your role.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Excellent interpersonal and networking skills at all levels.
• Enjoys working in places with a clear and ambitious mission, a matrix structure and ways of working that challenge the norm.
• Willingness to prioritise diversity, equity and inclusion in all our work.
• The ability to develop expertise and familiarity with different policy areas quickly.

Knowledge, experience, and qualifications:

• Experience working in public affairs and policy in a UK setting, with impact on policy making in Westminster Parliament and/or the devolved administrations.
• Experience developing impactful influencing strategies and delivering activity to achieve these strategies.
• In depth understanding of the UK political environment and operation of Government.
• Expertise in public policy, ideally in issues relating to health equity or social justice.