Your new role
As a Public Affairs Manager at Highways England you are responsible for developing and delivering our public affairs strategy and regional engagement programme to enable us to better connect with key stakeholders across the South. You will be working in a small, established team of public affairs professionals alongside other communications functions. You will work closely with senior leaders in the region to provide trusted public affairs advice on a range of issues. Highways England operates across the country and therefore you will be required to undertake some regional and national travel to attend events and meetings.
What you’ll be leading on
- Delivering Highways England’s public affairs strategy in the region;
- Developing and delivering a regional public affairs programme that builds familiarity with and support for Highways England and its work;
- Supporting senior leaders and regional teams in their stakeholder engagement activity;
- Monitoring and acting on external stakeholder sentiment;
- Delivering regional parliamentary engagement activity, including our regular surgeries for Members of Parliament;
- Providing trusted advice to our regional leadership teams.
To be successful
You will:
- Be an experienced public affairs professional with an excellent working knowledge of government and parliament;
- Have strong oral and written communication skills with an ability to bring clarity to complex issues;
- Be strategic and astute – able to see the bigger picture but with a real eye for detail;
- Have experience of dealing comfortably, confidently and discretely with senior stakeholders;
- Be organised and flexible, with an aptitude for dealing with changing and competing demands at short notice;
- Be driven, ambitious and able to work with high levels of autonomy;
- Ideally have a good knowledge of the political and stakeholder landscape nationally and in the South.
A bit about us
The Corporate Affairs and Communications Directorate is responsible for building and maintaining a robust and positive reputation for Highways England with all its audiences. The Directorate includes a full range of communications disciplines which provide support to the business including media relations, public relations, stakeholder engagement, creative, digital, marketing and internal communications.
Why you should join us
At Highways England we believe in a connected country. We are passionate about creating a culture where colleagues feel connected, included and enjoy greater wellbeing to achieve this. We’re proud that as an organisation we are continually striving to do better and actively encourage and support our colleagues to do the same with their careers.
So, if you put safety first, take ownership of your work, show passion for what you do, work effectively in a team, and demonstrate integrity in how you do it – then you’ll be a great fit for our organisation.