Assistant Communications Officer

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA); York; On-site; GBP 28,000 - 35,000; Full time

Job summary

A government department in York is seeking an Assistant Communications Officer to support local communications and enhance organizational reputation. The successful candidate will assist in creating multi-channel communication plans, develop engaging content, and utilize evaluation tools. Strong communication skills and the ability to manage multiple work streams are essential for this position. This role offers an opportunity to impact important environmental issues.

Qualifications

• Experience in creating and delivering communications plans.
• Ability to develop engaging content across various media.
• Proficient in using evaluation tools to gather insights.

Responsibilities

• Assist in multi-channel communications plans.
• Support evaluation of communications effectiveness.
• Create content for news articles and social media.
• Monitor issues and provide reporting advice.
• Build relationships within the communications team.

Skills

Strong communication skills

Experience in multi-channel communications

Ability to handle multiple streams of work

Passion for evaluation

Tools

Digital communication tools

AI tools for monitoring

Job description

Overview

We are recruiting two Assistant Communications Officers within Defra Group Communications, working on Local Communications. Local Communications teams plan, deliver and evaluate strategic communications activity to help Defra, the Environment Agency, and Natural England deliver their organisational priorities. They also help to identify, plan for, and respond to incidents and high-risk reputational issues such as flooding, pollution, and disease outbreaks. Local communications teams work closely with operational delivery teams and other specialist communications teams to advise on, plan, and deliver communications activities that support behaviour change, warning and informing. Our teams manage reputation through our newsdesk that deals with live media enquiries. You will need to be able to develop good relationships with a wide range of staff and be a strong communicator. You\'ll be confident working across a range of channels and have experience in handling multiple streams of work simultaneously. You\'ll also have a passion for evaluation and be able to utilise evaluation tools to gather data and insights to support the team in showcasing the work we deliver.

• Assisting with the creation and delivery of multi-channel communications plans across media, stakeholders and multiple channels, working with policy, operational and external delivery colleagues.
• Supporting the evaluation of our communications to help us continually improve how we communicate with our target audiences.
• Working with teams and external partners to create accurate and engaging content - news articles, op-eds, blogs and social media content such as graphics, videos, imagery - and repurposing this across a variety of channels.
• Using digital and AI tools to provide issue monitoring, reporting and rebuttal advice to Defra and the arm\'s-length bodies (ALBs) Group Communications support.
• Developing close working relationships within the wider communications team and key stakeholders across the business.
• Contributing to a forward planner to support planning for key communications milestones.
• Protecting and enhancing the reputation of Defra group by supporting colleagues with horizon scanning, issues management and internal communications.
• Contributing to incident response communications rotas, including out of hours, delivering timely warning and informing messaging and public information to act.

Diversity and Disability Confident

Disability Confident A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to .