About the job

Summary

Do you have a passion for graphic design? Do you want a job that enables you to use that passion to make a positive contribution to society?

We are looking for a creative graphic design professional to join the communications team at the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).

The VOA is the Government’s property valuation expert. Our business rate and council tax valuations underpin more than £60 billion of local government taxation, funding vital public services.

But we cannot do it alone. We need to engage our staff & work effectively with our partners, to explain our plans and priorities. We also need to communicate effectively and clearly with our customers. High quality, innovative graphic design is key to help us achieve these aims.

Job description

Joining us in this communications role, you will work alongside another graphic designer in our content and channels team to deliver innovative graphic design content to engage and inform our internal and external audiences.

We are looking for a creative, focussed individual, experienced in and passionate about graphic design. You will be comfortable using design software to create engaging products that are underpinned by evidence, data and research. You will have strong editorial and analytical skills in order to design content for internal, stakeholder and public audiences. This means being comfortable with industry language as well as with corporate and management information and having the energy and passion to bring a wide range of source material to life in meaningful and exciting ways.

You will need to be a good team player both within the Communications team and with key stakeholders in the business. You will need to show an appetite to learn as you will have the chance to expand your design skills in the role, working with up-to-date design software. You will have good planning skills, able to interpret briefs as well as the ability to work well under pressure and have the capacity to meet tight deadlines when required.

As part of the content and channels function in the communications team there will also be opportunities to support the delivery of other channels as part of the role.

Key responsibilities

• Use design software to create clear and engaging content across a range of communications platforms.

• Ability to create graphics, diagrams and social media content that communicate complex ideas in a way that is simple enough for everyone to understand.

• Use your professional design skills to create campaign identities, corporate publications and simple animations that work across multiple channels and platforms.

• Project and client management: able to manage projects to tight deadlines

• Experience in developing video content, both behind the camera and managing video production.

• Analyze our design products and make recommendations on how we can improve to achieve our communications objectives.

• Research and investigate best practice in communications & graphic design to contribute to continuous improvement. This includes the understanding and application of accessibility standards across all design outputs.

Key knowledge and skills

• Use of graphic design software

• Video creation/ editing

• Project/client management

Responsibilities

Person Specification

Essential Criteria:

- Experience of developing content for a range of communication channels

- Experience of using design software, including Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator

- Excellent design and content creation skills to translate complex ideas and information into clear, concise, compelling messages to tight deadlines

- Able to implement and safe guard the correct use of the agency’s brand and logo across all channels

- Ability to design creative and innovative content in collaboration with policy colleagues

- Capable of building strong stakeholder relations and experience of working across directorates and functions to deliver corporate goals

Desirable:

- Educated to degree level in a relevant subject or equivalent level of experience of working at a similar level in specialist area

- Experience of video editing using Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects

- Understanding of government accessibility guidelines.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

We offer a range of flexible working options, a generous leave allowance that starts at 25 days and goes up to 30 days after 5 years’ service and a pension scheme. Maternity, adoption or shared parental leave of up to 26 weeks with full pay followed by 13 weeks statutory pay and a further 13 weeks unpaid, and paternity leave of 4 weeks at full pay.

The most popular parts of our reward package include:

• Pay – in the few years, we have increased both the minimum and maximum pay points for everyone in the VOA and implemented a new pay scale specifically for qualified surveyors.

• Pension - we make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 26% of their salary.

• Working hours and location flexibility – everyone in the VOA has some opportunity to work from home, and we support a full range of flexible working options including part time, part year, compressed hours and job shares.

• Family friendly policies – including four weeks of paid paternity leave

• Personal support – we offer extensive special leave to help balance your life and work commitments, a variety of non-financial rewards (including a Cycle to Work scheme of up to £4000) and we work with professional providers to provide occupational health and full mental and physical wellbeing services.

Download the Employee Value Proposition for full details of the benefits of being a VOA employee at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/valuation-office-agency/about/recruitment