Closing Date
2025-10-21
Job Title: Communications Manager
Location: Worthing, Hybrid (2 days in the office)
Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: 37/ week (flexible working arrangements considered)
Salary: £45,000 - £50,000 DOE
Southern Water is on a transformational journey. As we move into our largest delivery programme yet—doubling investment to £7.8bn over the 2025–30 regulatory period—we’re looking for a Communications Manager to help shape and share our story.
Our purpose is clear: to provide water for life—to enhance health and wellbeing, protect and improve the environment, and sustain the economy. This role sits at the heart of that mission, supporting our reputation rebuild strategy and helping us connect meaningfully with our customers, stakeholders and communities.
About the Role
Reporting to the Senior Strategic Communications Manager, you’ll be part of our Strategic Communications and Social Media team within the Corporate Affairs Directorate. You’ll lead the creation and delivery of multi-channel PR campaigns that raise awareness, build understanding and drive engagement.
Key responsibilities include:
1. Developing creative, insight-led campaigns that showcase our environmental efforts, community impact, innovation and operational excellence
2. Managing proactive and reactive social media plans in collaboration with internal teams
3. Overseeing the production of digital assets including videos, graphics and blogs
4. Using customer and stakeholder insight to shape content and evaluate performance
5. Supporting crisis and issues management, including recovery communications and reactive statements
6. Building strong relationships across internal communications, media, PR, stakeholder engagement and brand teams
7. Ensuring joined-up planning and delivery across all communications channels
About You
You’ll be a proactive and creative communicator with a proven track record of delivering integrated PR campaigns that make an impact. You’ll be comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-profile environment and bring a collaborative, solutions-focused mindset to everything you do.
We’re looking for someone who:
8. Aligns PR activity with organisational goals and reputation strategy
9. Has strong writing and editorial skills, with the ability to turn technical information into compelling stories
10. Is experienced in producing content for digital platforms and managing social media channels
11. Can prepare external statements, long and short form communications and social media posts with confidence
12. Thrives under pressure and can make rapid, reliable decisions
13. Brings high personal integrity and handles sensitive information with discretion
Additional Requirements
14. Ability to manage multiple priorities and tight deadlines with resilience and flexibility
15. Comfortable with ambiguity and able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances
16. Strong stakeholder engagement and collaboration skills
Package
This role will be full time Monday to Friday with a hybrid approach to working between our Durrington (Worthing) office and home, 2 days a week, generally on a Monday & Tuesday.
You will also be involved with the incident rota for emergency comms, 1 week in 6 (STC).
We are offering a salary of £45,000 - £50,000 per annum depending on skills and experience as well as other benefits including:
• Generous pension up to 11% company contribution
• 25 days annual leave
• Life assurance equal to 4x salary
• Salary sacrifice electric car scheme (after 6 months service)
• Health Cash Plan
• Full funded eye tests
• Two paid volunteering days a year
• Occupational health service
• Discounts with over 800 popular retailers
• Digital GP service
• Study support may be available for job-related qualifications
• Competitive maternity leave and flexible return to work options
• Cycle to work scheme
Join our Communications and Social Media team and see how far your career could progress with a company committed to career progression, training and development opportunities, our customers and the environment.
Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?
If this role isn’t quite what you’re looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at Southern Water, you can register your details here: Introduce Yourself (myworkdaysite.com)
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.
Privacy Statement:
Please note: If you are an existing Southern Water employee, you will need to confirm within your application that your Manager is aware of your application.
All applicants must be eligible to live and work in the UK. You will need to provide evidence of eligibility (e.g. a passport or long birth certificate and proof of NI) and current proof of address (dated within the last 3 months), will be required as part of the recruitment process. If you do not meet these criteria, your application will not be considered.
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