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 someone with a background in external affairs or public affairs.

Key Requirements:

• Ability to build 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 insight.
• 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.
• Understanding and preferably experience of delivering communications and engagement in a demanding, fast-paced environment.
• A strong passion for understanding and implementing the latest communications trends.

Key Accountabilities:

• Helping to build effective and proactive relationships with key stakeholders and partners that can contribute to the objectives of the Department of Health and Social Care.
• Supporting the provision of strategic advice to ministers, senior policy colleagues and communicators on stakeholder engagement to support both the delivery of campaigns and policy development.
• Horizon scanning and providing stakeholder insight that gets beneath the surface of stakeholder positions and issues.
• Gathering intelligence and analysing the effectiveness of external engagement to help inform current and future engagement strategies and sharing stakeholder intelligence in a way that is engaging, timely and purposeful.
• Contributing to the development and design of stakeholder intelligence tools that meet the needs of the business.
• Supporting the development and delivery of effective stakeholder engagement strategies across the Department.