External Communications Business Partner
Salary: £50,518 pending 2024/25 pay award
Position: Permanent, Full Time, 37 Hours per week
Location: Birmingham/ Hybrid
We are brave, we are ambitious, we are honest, and we are Citizen!
Are you passionate about shaping brand perception and enhancing reputation? As the External Communications Business Partner at Citizen, you'll play a pivotal role in ensuring our brand remains a beacon of excellence. Your strategic insights and coaching approach will drive impactful external communications, engaging content, and robust reputation management.
What your role involves:
- Brand Strengthening: Lead a team of external communications specialists to fortify our brand through effective communication strategies
- Strategic Leadership: Collaborate with the Head of Communications to enhance customer relationships, identify investment opportunities, and foster partnerships
- Customer-Centric Approach: Utilize data insights to tailor customer communications, ensuring alignment with their needs
- Content Development: Create compelling content for key corporate documents and leverage it for PR across media and digital channels.
- Content Leadership: Lead the External Communications Specialist in delivering engaging, strategically effective content for customers, media, and stakeholders, emphasizing strong storytelling
- Customer Communications: Oversee exceptional customer communications, providing informative, accurate, and compelling content that brings customer experiences to life
- Media Relations: Lead both reactive and proactive media relations, including out-of-hours provision and monitoring
- Crisis Communications: Ensure senior leaders are well-prepared for media interviews and handling crises
As our External Communications Business Partner, we need you to have:
- Experience of developing and delivering communication strategies
- Experience of working in a complex organisation
- Experience of working with and influencing a senior team
- Media relations experience, particularly in a crisis situation and extensive knowledge of crisis communications provision
- Professional copywriting skills
- Experience of using CMS (ideally Umbraco)
- Expert understanding of measuring the ROI on communications activity
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office, Teams, Sharepoint, key social media platforms - paid and organic and media monitoring platforms
We will be an employer of choice and invest in our people
To deliver the best services for our customers we need employees who are passionate, committed and engaged. We will create a culture where every individual feels comfortable and confident to be themselves and the wellbeing of our employees is a priority. We will work together as one team and embrace our Citizen values.
We will attract and retain the best and brightest professionals, support them to achieve their potential, and reward and recognise them for the fantastic work they do.
Competitive terms and conditions
- Annual leave starts at 25 days per year plus bank holidays and increases with length of service
- Annual leave purchase scheme - option to buy up to an additional 5 days per year
- Enhanced family leave (maternity, paternity and adoption)
- Organisational Sick Pay
- Generous Pension Scheme - The option to contribute 4%, 6% or up to 10% which Citizen will match
- Life cover of three times your annual salary if you join the pension scheme
Health and Wellbeing
- We provide IT and Home Office equipment to support hybrid working
- Occupational Health
- EAP - a 24/7 telephone counselling service providing free, confidential advice.
- Cashback scheme - cashback on optical, dental, prescriptions and a range of other medical costs meaning the costs are covered for employees. The scheme also offers GP Access, digital Physiotherapy app, retail vouchers and discounts, discounted gym memberships and more!
- Access to Citizen's Wellbeing initiatives and Wellbeing platform
Learning and Development
- Extensive learning and development opportunities.
- Opportunity to study for a professional qualification
- Opportunity to join the Staff Consultative Forum and EDI Forum
Find out more about our benefits here: Citizen | Benefits (citizenhousing.org.uk)
We adopt a proactive approach to safeguarding to ensure everyone accessing our services can do so without fear of harm, abuse or neglect. As part of our recruitment process, we carry out robust safeguarding checks.
Further information on our selection process and Equality and Diversity commitment can be found at www.citizenhousing.org.uk.
Closing date: 6th September 2024
Interview dates: Week commencing 9th September 2024 (to be confirmed)
Please note we will be reviewing applications throughout the campaign and may invite candidates to interview at any time. We reserve the right to close this role earlier than the published closing date should a suitable candidate be identified.