About the job

Summary

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Communications Directorate is looking for a Senior External Affairs Manager to join one of the biggest and busiest departments in Whitehall.

Whether it’s the NHS, adult social care, obesity, cancer, mental health – the list goes on – health and care is at the forefront of the media and political agenda every day.

The Communications Directorate leads the conversation about health and care by engaging people through innovative communications. However, we cannot achieve this mission without working with our health and care stakeholders.

The External Affairs team builds and maintains trusted relationships with a range of influential organisations and individuals to create an awareness and understanding of government policies. The team proactively engage with DHSC’s stakeholders who represent what the department’s audiences are thinking and feeling, as well as gathering and analysing insight to improve the impact of DHSC communications.

We are looking for someone with a background in external affairs or public affairs. You will play a key role in building strong working relationships with a range of organisations and individuals, gathering stakeholder intelligence to help deliver effective communications and engagement campaigns and departmental and Ministerial objectives.

Working with the Head of External Affairs, you will play a key role in building and managing strong working relationships with a range of organisations, gathering stakeholder intelligence to help deliver effective communications and engagement campaigns and develop policy.

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I):

The Department of Health and Social Care celebrates diversity and the value it brings in creating a fair and inclusive environment, where everyone can achieve their potential.

Once you become a member of our team, we are not only interested in what you can bring to communications, but also our culture and values, including commitments to staff health and wellbeing, and our Diversity & Inclusion working group.

We actively welcome applications from anyone who shares the communications directorate's and wider department's commitment to diversity and inclusion, while ensuring candidates who apply through the Disability Confident Scheme requiring adjustments are supported during our recruitment process.

Job description

Ensure communications strategies are supported by rigorous monitoring and reporting of stakeholder comment, as well as careful identification and mapping of key stakeholders.

Initiate both reactive and proactive stakeholder engagement strategies, thinking creatively about the most effective way to engage stakeholders, and considering the risks and benefits of different approaches.

Provide strategic advice on stakeholder engagement strategies to ministers, senior policy colleagues and communications colleagues, and manage the delivery of those strategies once agreed.

Manage evaluation of external affairs activities, using these results to continuously improve the quality of stakeholder engagement.

Proactively manage relationships with a range of external stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Ability to build and manage strong, positive working relationships with people of all levels across a range of organisations and influence colleagues on how to analyse and make best use of stakeholder intelligence.

Strong communications skills, including the ability to tell a compelling story with both quantitative and qualitative insights.

Good analytical skills, with the ability to provide incisive and timely insights that will help the Department shape and plan communications and engagement and policy development.

Experience of developing and using stakeholder intelligence to build external affairs campaigns and applying audience insight to communications activity.

Experience of delivering communications and engagement campaigns in a demanding, fast-paced environment.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing

Technical skills

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

• GCS Competency: Insight - Core
• GCS Competency: Ideas - Core
• GCS Competency: Implementation - Core
• GCS Competency: Impact - Core