Job summary
- Main area
- Communications
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- 12 months (Fixed Term/ Secondment)
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job ref
- 188-THQ1010724
- Employer
- University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Innovation Centre, Science Park
- Town
- Chilworth
- Salary
- £50,952 - £57,349 pa or pa pro rata
- Closing
- Today at 23:59
- Interview date
- 02/08/2024
Employer heading
Senior Communications and Strategy Manager
Band 8a
Job overview
Health Innovation Wessex (HIW) is delighted to offer a fantastic opportunity to work with us.
Please see below for a detailed job description of the role.
Main duties of the job
At Health Innovation Wessex we improve people’s health, achieve excellence in healthcare and boost innovation and growth in our region’s life sciences and healthcare sector.
We are looking for a skilled communications professional to join our small team for 12 months to cover maternity leave, delivering across a broad remit in health and care's innovation landscape. You’ll draw on your significant corporate and strategic experience and specialist knowledge to address communications challenges and opportunities with innovative solutions. You’ll have extensive experience in preparing, implementing and evaluating effective communications and engagement strategies and plans for a range of programmes involving different stakeholder groups.
We are an ambitious organisation, looking for passionate and motivated people to join us with a proven track record of delivery. You will need tenacity to succeed, great communication and project management skills, an ability to build new relationships quickly, and the capability to use influencing and negotiating skills to develop understanding and gain cooperation. We welcome applications from people with a wide range of past experiences and networks – an appreciation of the challenges involved with communications and transformation in the NHS is an advantage to succeed in this role. Applications for secondment are welcomed.
Working for our organisation
Health Innovation Wessex (HIW) is a company limited by guarantee, owned by the NHS and University Members with staff hosted by University Hospital Southampton.
Based at Southampton Science Park in Chilworth in a bright modern office easily accessible from the M3, M27 and Southampton Parkway train station, the location offers free parking with a café area and networking spaces on site. 27 acres of the Science Park site are designated a protected Conservation Area and open to staff.
We are keen to ensure that staff enjoy a successful work/life balance and offer flexible working dependent on the requirements of the role. Our hybrid working framework provides for in a minimum of 2 days in office or out visiting partners/stakeholders and home working aligned to business needs. Health Innovation Wessex endorses personal development and provides training allowances to help you deliver in the role and meet your career and organisational goals.
We also have a proactive approach to wellbeing in line with our core values of being Innovative, Inclusive and Collaborative, with staff engagement groups shaping the organisation’s culture and driving initiatives to allow our people to flourish despite times of challenge, change and high demand.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Main Responsibility
The successful postholder will lead and manage several complex communications projects, lead the communications strategy for Health Innovation Wessex, and lead varied operational aspects of the communications team’s delivery. You will work across the organisation in a matrix manner; working beyond the remit of communications and often leading strategic areas of work for Health Innovation Wessex and contributing to the objectives of the national Health Innovation Network and its commissions.
General Duties
- To take a leading role in the running of the Health Innovation Wessex communications function, with clear accountability and responsibilities for relationships, communications strategies, plans and delivery for assigned work portfolios and projects. This includes the project management of specialist communications activities to support the spread and adoption of innovation into the local NHS system, requiring strategic and sensitive decision-making, autonomous working and sound reasoning; all of which supports the overall strategic objectives of Health Innovation Wessex.
- The role is the formal deputy to the HIW’s Associate Director (AD) for Communications, which includes managing and evaluating communications projects and campaigns; managing the communications function in the AD’s absence; and providing advice and guidance to all HIW staff, including the executive team and other senior managers, clinicians and academics in their work at/with HIW.
- Shape, deliver and support the ongoing communications strategy and digital communications projects for Health Innovation Wessex – advising on engagement with partners, members, stakeholders, innovators, national commissioners and other organisations to underpin the organisation’s business (innovation) spread and adoption objectives. This includes planning and organising team activity with an appreciation of longer-term issues and workloads; ensuring plans complement and feed into broader operational plans and organisational strategic aims.
For additional information, please refer to the job description and person specification.
Person specification
Qualifications / training required
Essential criteria
- Degree in English, Marketing, Communications or Business Studies; or relevant HND, Degree, NVQ4 or first level professional qualification (or equivalent qualification or experience).
- Educated to degree level with a postgraduate qualification in either: journalism, marketing, public relations or related field, or equivalent experience.
- Significant experience across the entire communications, marketing, and engagement mix; highly skilled in various professional communication specialities.
- Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development.
Desirable criteria
- Website Management Training and Qualifications
Previous or relevant experience necessary
Essential criteria
- Able to draw upon significant communications, corporate and strategic experience to generate original ideas and innovative solutions, where precedents may not exist, through the provision of appropriate in-depth specialist, or broad management, knowledge, and advice
- Excellent copywriting and editing skills, with experience in deployment across the digital marketing mix
- Extensive experience of preparing, implementing, and evaluating effective communications and engagement plans for a range of projects/campaigns with tangible examples of successful delivery.
- Extensive experience of preparing, implementing, and evaluating effective communications and engagement plans for a range of projects/campaigns with tangible examples of successful delivery.
- Experience of leading junior staff, including delegation, support, direction, and general management techniques.
- Experience of managing complex media enquiries.
- Significant experience of successfully operating in a politically sensitive environment.
Desirable criteria
- Proven experience of the unique interface health innovation networks hold between the NHS, academia, research, and small to medium-sized innovative businesses.
- Proven experience of the unique interface health innovation networks hold between the NHS, academia, research, and small to medium-sized innovative businesses.
- Good knowledge of local suppliers.
- Experience of recruiting and retaining communication staff and teams.
- Evidence of ongoing professional development.
Values and behaviours
Essential criteria
- Able to demonstrate behaviours that meet the Trust Values. Patients First, Always Improving, Working Together.
- Able to demonstrate behaviours that meet Health Innovation Wessex values. Innovative, Inclusive, Collaborative, Achieving, Trustworthy
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Charlotte Forder
- Job title
- Associate Director - Communications
- Email address
- [email protected]
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