About the job

Summary

Join the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) and have a future that matters: Be proud; Be challenged; Be unique.

Job description

The Challenge

The Corporate Communications team is at the heart of DIO, sharing news and information about the crucial role that DIO plays within the Ministry of Defence.

Made up of four key disciplines; Strategy and Planning, Internal Communications, External Communications and Campaigns and Marketing, we inform, engage and influence a diverse range of audiences.

We are looking for creative communications professionals to join our growing team, who will help us to continue to transform and modernise our approaches and channels.

DIO has an exciting opportunity in its busy Corporate Communications team for someone who likes working with data, thrives on forward planning and can spot a communications opportunity when they see one!

We are looking for a Strategic Communications Officer to join our team to make sure that we are shouting about what really matters, and that our work is making a real difference. We need you to help us ensure that we’ve got the evidence we need to make the right decisions and recommendations, to develop communications plans based on evidence and to evaluate whether our communications work is ‘moving the needle’ in the right direction.

This challenging role needs someone that is prepared to help implement a culture of planning, evaluation, and evidence-based decisions to support a team of creative communications and marketing specialists who are focused on delivery and implementation. You will be well supported by a Senior Strategic Communications Officer and training will be available where required.

We employ approximately 4,900 staff from a very diverse range of professions, and we work across the world; in Germany, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands, Norway, Poland, Kenya, Belize, Nepal and Oman.

Responsibilities

Main Responsibilities

As DIO’s Strategic Communications Officer, you will be responsible for:

• Supporting communications planning, including both horizon scanning and short term planning, to ensure that the delivery of communications projects is joined-up and timely, and assisting with identifying opportunities to meet communications objectives

• Creating effective, evidence-based communications plans with SMART objectives

• Acting as an advisor on all elements of strategic communication as required; from audience insight and objective setting to strategy development, measurement and evaluation.

• Seeking new methods and tools for evaluating communications activities across internal, external, social, stakeholder and change communications

• Designing and delivering research to provide evidence based insight and context for communications objectives and acting as an intelligent customer when commissing external research agencies

• Producing reports which summarise the outputs, impact and outcomes of DIO’s communications activities

• Assisting with the management of DIO’s annual reputation measurement work

Desirable Experience & Skills

• Some experience of qualitative and quantitative research with audiences and stakeholders

• Producing reports on the conclusions of audience research and insight

• Developing communications plans to meet defined objectives

• Using social media analytics packages

Location

Flexible

The DIO corporate communications team is primarily based at Whittington Barracks in Lichfield (WS14 9TJ). We offer a flexible base location for this role and for candidates who wish to work more remotely, we will look to assign an alternative MOD establishment as their duty station. Some key Defence locations are listed but others will be considered.

Regular travel to the DIO HQ in Lichfield will be required, as well as visits to other Defence locations in the UK and possibly occasionally overseas.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

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

• Government-Communications-Professional-Competency-Framework, Insight - Level IOs Civil Service Levels 1 & 2
• Government-Communications-Professional-Competency-Framework, Impact - Level IOs Civil Service Levels 1 & 2