The Opportunity
Salary: £37,336 to £40,221 per annum
Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week
Contract type: Fixed term or Secondment, 12 months
Location: Hybrid - County Hall, Chichester and working from home
Interview date: w/c 24 June 2024
As the Senior Communications Officer, you will directly support the communication and engagement activities in the development of the Council's Digital Strategy and subsequent delivery programme. As a significant cross cutting change programme you will be the driving force to positively establish and deliver the required communication and engagement strategies.
Harnessing your communication expertise, knowledge and influence, you will own, shape and deliver internal and external campaigns and engagement with stakeholders across a range of channels and media forums. Your creative ideas and ability to drive target specific messages is key to delivering success. In addition, your ability to foster and establish relationships across all stakeholders is important to this significant change programme.
You will establish an extensive relationship network across the organisation with a variety of internal and external teams, partners and stakeholders. Through regular planning, monitoring and evaluation you will help achieve the benefits of the change programme ensuring that these are understood, the outcomes are recognised and realised.
What are we looking for?
- You will need the ability to hit the ground running, with a hands-on and can-do attitude to your work.
- Offering a mix of office and remote working, you'll need to be able to manage your own workload, juggling competing priorities and organising your work to meet deadlines.
- You will be comfortable making decisions and exercising initiative.
- You will be able to apply focus when conducting research, preparing plans, delivering activities and analysing feedback, and will use your creative skills to develop campaigns that are in line with the council's brand values and reputation.
For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.
Working for us
As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:
- an excellent local government pension scheme
- generous holiday entitlement of 27 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
- a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
- maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
- volunteering opportunities
- training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
- a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
- health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans
For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.
Further information
The reference number for this role is CRS00841.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Chloe Chatfield (Recruitment Specialist) at . For issues or queries regarding your application please contact .
Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position.
To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to 3 years referencing and a health check.
Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.
We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.
CC