Mission Communications Lead

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet.

The purpose of this role is to use communications to contribute to the success of Nesta’s healthy life mission, which aims to halve obesity by 2030. The post holder will lead on strategic communications for the healthy life mission, seeking and securing opportunities for Nesta to advance its policy agenda and build its public profile.

This includes proposing and planning communications, partnership development and management, public affairs activities; being the strategic lead for stakeholder relationships across the mission; and owning the mission narrative and messaging, ensuring salience and consistency of key messages and communications outputs.

The role will:

• Lead on strategic communications: translating and applying communications skills to a health context, providing tailored communications advice that is specific to the domain area to deliver high-impact communications activity for the mission.
• Draft and edit a variety of communications content, driving through from conception to delivery and evaluation.
• Act as strategic lead on healthy life mission stakeholder relationships: identifying target stakeholders, having an overview of engagement with them across the mission, planning and supporting engagement activities.
• Manage partnership communications with partners, from high profile industry partners to NGOs, identifying and mitigating risks to protect Nesta’s reputation and spotting and delivering on opportunities to enhance it.
• Use excellent project and people management skills to coordinate the smooth, efficient delivery and evaluation of a number of high-impact communications campaigns at any one time.
• Lead on discrete communications projects such as commissioning creative content, audience research or narrative development and testing.

This role sits as part of both the communications team (made up of specialists across media, marketing, events and content production), and healthy life mission team (including experts across policy, research, behavioural science, data science and design). The role does not have direct line management responsibility, but all communications and mission team members are expected to play a role in supporting the learning and development of more junior members of the team.

You should have the following skills and/or experience:

• Professional communications experience (essential): You will have proven experience of working in a communications or public affairs role. A creative thinker and experienced writer and editor, you will have experience of working on a variety of communications outputs designed to inform and influence different audiences and stakeholders, such as blogs, briefings and pitch decks.
• Managing integrated communications campaigns (essential): You will have proven experience of driving and delivering successful communications campaigns to achieve policy impact and influence.
• Project delivery skills (essential): You will have proven experience of delivering high-impact communications campaigns from conception to delivery and evaluation. You can proactively plan and deliver work, and identify and act on risks and find solutions.
• Strong interpersonal and networking skills (essential): You will have experience of applying these effectively to collaborate well with colleagues, build stakeholder relationships and develop partnerships.
• Knowledge of the UK health and/or food sector (essential): You will have knowledge of how the UK health and/or food sector works from experience gained in a heath and/or food-related communications role, either in the NHS, local or national government or the third sector. If you don’t have relevant professional experience, you will have a proven interest.
• Knowledge of political systems and government in the UK (desirable): You will have knowledge and understanding of how policy is made and developed, and of the wider political system, including central and devolved governments and parliaments, ideally gained in a professional context.

As with all members of the Nesta Group communications team, the postholder will also be at their best working in a collaborative, fast-paced environment, have a flexible approach and an appetite for taking on new tasks and challenges. They will also have excellent written and verbal communication skills and a proven ability to write for a range of different audiences.

What we offer

• Salary: circa £58,000 plus an array of benefits.
• Location: This role is based in London, with a hybrid working arrangement and a minimum of two days in the office.
• Term: 12 month parental leave cover.
• Hours: This is a full-time role, but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results. We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.