External Communications Manager

at  Severn Trent

Hello. We’re Severn Trent and we think water is wonderful. Oh, and we’re pretty keen on people too.
24 hours a day, 365 days a year we serve 4.8 million households and business across the heart of the UK. Each cuppa drank and every toilet flushed is only possible because of the 9,500 brilliant team members working across our patch.
We welcome people from all walks of life and celebrate individuality. We know diverse minds, experiences and backgrounds help us to learn and better serve our customers and the communities where they live.
If you want to do more because you care, we’d love to talk to you. There really is something for everyone here.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

Providing an essential service to millions of customers across our patch means we have an extremely busy press office that operates at a national and regional level. To help protect and promote our reputation with the media, our customers and our stakeholders, we’re looking to recruit an experienced External Communications Manager.
In this role, you’ll drive industry leading media coverage that helps to influence and change perceptions, as well as building trust. With your vast experience in campaigning, you’ll use strategic thinking to create brilliant solutions, as well as your storytelling expertise to explain tricky topics in a way people understand.
You’ll shape corporate and consumer communications campaigns that change hearts and minds, and influence at the highest level. You’ll have responsibility for the delivery and project management of 360 activity on major investment projects and key topics such as the environment as part of the integrated team.
Being able to thrive in a fast-paced and constantly moving environment, you’ll also be delivering effective issues management in our busy press office, building trusted relationships and offering brilliant counsel to our senior management team. In addition, you’ll have a brilliant contact book of influencers, journalists and potential partners and you’ll also organise and take part in national, regional and trade media engagement.

Some of your other key accountabilities will include:

• Craft compelling narratives and strategies to influence opinion and behaviour change
• Developing a comprehensive thought leadership programme
• Collaborating with regulatory, public affairs and research teams to communicate the company position on key topics to build advocacy
• Lead on developing our influencing strategy and identify opportunities for original evidence-based stories, case studies and content
• Leading the development of corporate and reputation social media engagement
• Delivering headline grabbing stories that capture journalists and customer imagination, across all platforms to deliver significant reach and coverage that supports our strategic priorities
• Create short- and long-term trust building PR campaigns
• Developing relationships with journalists, and influencers to help generate positive media coverage
• Responding quickly to media enquiries, organising media interviews, briefing spokespeople and representing the company yourself in interviews
• Confidently managing issues and liaising with the media in the event of incidents and providing communications advice to senior members of our operational and management teams
• Working with the broader Communications and marketing team and business to deliver PR campaigns and initiatives that support business objectives and consumer behaviour change

We’re looking for our new External Communications Manager to be a great communicator, both verbally and written as well as having the passion and creativity to bring new ideas to the table to help make our service even better. You’ll have a proven track record of working in a fast paced and busy press office, with demonstrable experience of creating engaging content, and leading on high profile multi-channel influencing campaigns, with up-to-date and excellent knowledge of PR developments, media landscape and best practice.
You’ll have the ability to work well and calmly under pressure across all disciplines in a large and complex organisation.
You’ll have the skills to deliver effective communications during incidents and will be knowledgeable on how we protect and enhance our reputation with our customers through the media.
We need someone who is willing to learn all about our complex organisation, making contacts at all levels, and who can make the service we provide even better.
The right skills and experience are important. But if you have the right character, positivity and a caring attitude we want to talk to you too.
We welcome people from all walks of life and celebrate individuality as we know diverse minds, experiences and backgrounds help us to learn and better serve our communities. We want people who show up and get involved. Those who are ready to be part of something bigger and who want to make a difference because they care.
Is that you?