Communications and Engagement Manager

The Communications and Engagement Manager plays a key role in delivering high-quality, professional and responsive communications and engagement activity for Whittington Health to support the Trust’s ambitions. The post-holder leads on and supports a range of internal and external communications projects and campaigns, providing expert advice and support, shaping and delivering strategic communications and engagement activity and ensuring that all the materials the team produces is of a high standard.

The post holder will work in a dynamic and fast-paced environment, enjoying working at the heart of a busy NHS organisation, where no two days are the same. The role features the opportunity to make a real impact by helping to protect and enhance the Trust's reputation while communicating and engaging with patients, local communities, and colleagues across the Trust and wider health and care system.

The Communications and Engagement Manager is a key member of the Communications and Engagement Team. They will support a number of significant programmes, depending on the needs of the Team and the Trust, which may include the procurement of an electronic patient record, potential expansion of a Community Diagnostic Centre, a systemwide transformation of maternity and neonatal services, plus the rollout of a new clinical strategy and the Trust’s ambitions as a leader in Neighbourhood Working.

Main duties of the job:

• The post holder will own the planning delivery and evaluation of individual projects across a diverse brief.
• Delivery of projects and campaigns will include the design, creation and publication of a wide range of materials to execute them. This includes social and digital resources, physical assets, engagement materials and other tactical products such as proactive media releases and reactive statements.
• Managed by the Head of Communications and Engagement, the post holder will support the day-to-day running of the team, ensuring the delivery of regular communications activities, including populating and critically examining the planning grid, creating and/or supervising internal and external newsletters, webinars and town halls.
• They will lead or support on identifying and delivering engagement in the communities we serve, placing listening and involvement at the heart of developing our plans.
• The post-holder will regularly generate proactive media opportunities, and will develop plans to ensure that generated media opportunities support the strategic ambitions of the Trust, ensuring our vision, values and other key messages are clearly articulated.
• The communications team may flex over time depending on organisational need, but at the point of recruitment the post holder will line-manage two Communications and Engagement Officers, ensuring that they are supported to thrive in their role, and that their work is timely and of high quality.

Working for our organisation:

The Communications and Engagement Team operates in a demanding and busy environment. The team has a wide range of stakeholders including 5,000 staff and the 500,000 people the Trust cares for and supports at our hospital site and across the community. The team also builds and maintains positive relationships with regional and national health and care organisations and commissioners, local authorities, councillors and MPs, other local partner organisations, and local, regional and national media.

The Team plays a key role in managing and enhancing the reputation of the organisation. It leads and/or contributes towards campaigns, media management, communications with staff and external stakeholders, community engagement, corporate publications, patient information, service changes and major incidents.

The members of the Communications and Engagement Team also exemplars of the best of the Trust’s culture, living the organisation’s ICARE values, underpinning all their work with Equity. The team works innovatively, and team members are encouraged to keep building their knowledge within their roles and stay abreast of the leading edge of communications practice. The team is small and collaborative, and team members step in to support one another when necessary as priorities and capacities shift in the context of constant change across the NHS.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities:

Please see the Job Description and Person Specification for more information.

Person specification:

• Evidence of continued learning and development in communications and engagement.
• Membership of a professional body such as the CIPR or PRCA.
• Experience of complex communications and engagement activity.
• Experience of issues management, including crisis management and confident handling of stakeholders and media on contentious subjects.
• Experience of line management within a complex organisation.
• Experience of creating opportunities and working collaboratively with internal and external partners.
• Experience of using digital channels including social media to communicate with key audiences.
• Experience of project ownership, including planning, delivery and evaluation.
• Experience managing a budget for projects or campaigns.
• Experience of engagement with a diverse range of stakeholders.
• Experience in the NHS, or another politically high-profile setting.
• Experience of working innovatively, using new and emerging tools to improve impact.
• Experience of developing and delivering business cases.

Skills:

• Ability to command the confidence of colleagues, staff, Directors and Board members.
• Knowledge of myriad communication channels, their strengths and weaknesses.
• Politically astute with proven track record of developing networks.
• Proven ability to manage and deliver to deadlines and within resources.
• Proven ability to think and plan strategically and prioritise work programmes in the face of competing demands.
• Excellent written, and verbal/oral communication skills.
• Excellent numerical, critical reasoning skills.
• Effective negotiation and influencing skills.
• Ability to deal with highly complex or highly sensitive information.
• Ability to communicate effectively to a range of audiences, including those with significant barriers to understanding or acceptance or in a hostile or emotive environment.
• Ability to identify, lead and facilitate new initiatives.
• Ability to build relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, partners and interested parties.
• Significant influencing and persuasion skills.
• A good understanding of the NHS and the changing environment, including awareness and understanding of current and impending health policy developments.
• Understanding of current data protection and freedom of information legislation.
• Understanding of impact of current health policy developments on provider organisations.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Excellent political awareness and sensitivity.
• Excellent team player.
• Emotionally resilient and able to work to demanding timetables.
• Positive, and curious with creative energy and a bias to action.

SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS:

To comply with the Trust’s Safeguarding Children and Adults policies, procedures and protocols. All individual members of staff (paid or unpaid) have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This will require you to:

• Ensure you are familiar with and comply with the London Child Protection Procedures and protocols for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.
• Ensure you are familiar and comply with the London Multi Agency Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Pan London Procedures.
• Ensure you are familiar and comply with local protocols and systems for information sharing.
• Know the appropriate contact numbers and required reporting lines.
• Participate in required training and supervision.
• Comply with required professional boundaries and codes of conduct.

Whittington Health is committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Your application form – Provide only business email address for your referees – we are unable to request references from yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail accounts. Make sure you to include all evidence of where you meet the essential requirement on the jobs description as this forms the base of our shortlisting criteria.

Our processes – Please check your emails regularly as all correspondence from us will be via trac.systems – occasionally these emails will go into your Junk folder.

Employment at Whittington Health is offered subject to successful completion of a 6 month probationary period for all staff with the exception of GMC Registered Doctors.

Other important information – You must already have the right to work in the United Kingdom or fully meet the eligibility criteria for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa route. We welcome applications from candidates who require visa sponsorship; however, we can only consider these where all UKVI requirements are met. Before applying, please ensure that both you and the role satisfy the relevant UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) points-based system criteria, as applications that do not meet these requirements cannot be progressed.

Applications are welcome from people wishing to job share or work flexible patterns. We are committed to equal opportunities.

In submitting an application form, you authorise Whittington Health NHS Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process should you be appointed to the post.

If you are offered a role with one of the NLPSS partner trusts, as part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available). TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating.

Please note that during the recruitment process your Identity Documentation (i.e. passport, driving licence, visa, etc.) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, Infrared and Machine Readable Zone security features of the documents provided.

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

We would welcome applications from individuals who are from underrepresented groups in the organisation.

This post will require a submission for Disclosure to be made to check for any unspent criminal convictions.