Overview
Senior Communications Officer / Change Communications Lead. To lead the planning, development and delivery of strategic communications that support Cheshire East Councils Improvement and Transformation Delivery Plan. The postholder will be responsible for designing and delivering clear, compelling and high-impact communications that help staff, members, partners and residents understand, engage with and participate in the councils improvement journey.
The role will provide expert advice to senior leaders, drive forward proactive communications for major transformation programmes, and ensure that communication and engagement activity supports the councils four improvement priorities: Financial Sustainability; Good Governance and Decision Making; Leadership and Culture Change; and Improving Children’s Services.
The postholder will also contribute directly to strengthening organisational culture, embedding new ways of working, and helping the council move from crisis to stability through transparent, timely and effective communication.
You will have extensive, recent experience in leading and delivering effective and impactful, multichannel communications and engagement activity to internal and external audiences, to support and drive delivery of major transformational projects and programmes, and culture change, in large organisations.
Key responsibilities
* Co-developing the overarching communications and engagement strategy for the Improvement and Transformation delivery plan portfolio in partnership with the Corporate Communications Manager, ensuring it provides clarity, consistency and direction across six programmes.
* Working seamlessly with communications leads across the organisation to ensure messaging is aligned, updated and adapted as portfolio needs evolve - supporting them to interpret, refine and apply core messages within their own plans.
* Develop the high-level strategic narrative, ensuring the council communicates a cohesive, confident and coherent story about its improvement journey, the Target Operating Model, and organisational change (redesign) that is coming, through a range of channels including video.
* Feeding this strategic narrative into all programme and project-level communications and engagement plans, ensuring alignment and preventing duplication or conflicting messages.
* Establishing an effective cascade mechanism (briefing packs/toolkits, council-wide updates, staff events, digital channels, FAQs) that ensures core OFFICIAL messages reach staff, members, partners and residents in an accessible and timely way.
* Maintaining and managing a portfolio-level view of communications risks, supporting programme leads to identify issues early and develop proportionate and transparent responses for those identified.
* Supporting communication around the programme timeline, highlighting key milestones, dependencies and opportunities for coordinated organisation-wide communications and engagement.
* Identifying and driving opportunities for cross-council, joined-up communications, ensuring the transformation narrative is clear, consistent and shared across all services and directorates.
* Ensuring that communication activity supports cultural change, reinforces organisational values, and helps move the council from crisis to stability
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