Head of Advocacy and Engagement

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Key Information

Job title: Head of Stakeholder, Advocacy & Engagement

Salary: circa £85,000 (depending on skills & experience)

Band: 4

Contract type: Permanent

Contract details: Full Time

Location: Palestra, Southwark/Hybrid

Application closing date: Wednesday 4th June @ 23:59

Hybrid working within this role enables a balance of 50 per cent of time split between the office and home over a 4-week period. Hybrid working arrangements can evolve subject to business requirements.

Overview Of Role

The Head of Stakeholder, Advocacy and Engagement is a crucial part of our Communications and Corporate Affairs directorate. Our role in Communications and Corporate Affairs is to make sure our organisation meets its strategic objectives by building support for our work with our colleagues, politicians, stakeholders and partners and in the media.

The job holder is the principal lead for all TfL strategic communication and development of TfL's productive partnerships and strategic relationships with national and regional organisations to enable TfL to deliver the Mayor's vision and strategy to fulfil TfL's business priorities.

The job holder will be required to develop and monitor long term engagement strategies and plans to support our relationships with businesses, statutory watchdogs, transport campaigning organisations, road user lobbies (including the freight and coach community) and groups that represent the accessibility, environmental, voluntary and community sectors.

Key Accountabilities

• Develop and implement a comprehensive integrated stakeholder engagement strategy on issues of importance to TfL's reputation and long-term sustained investment with key stakeholders and their influencers, ensuring TfL's reputation and high ethical standards are maintained.
• Advise, brief and prepare the Commissioner, ExCo and senior managers on an effective contact programme with external audiences to support strategic relationship-building.
• Generate meaningful insight and analysis of core stakeholders' agendas, including on policy and current operational issues. This includes challenging our organisation on our positions or policies when appropriate intelligence suggests sufficient negative external response is likely. This ensures our key stakeholders' views are reflected appropriately, improving the quality of our decision and policy-making, and putting stakeholders at the heart of what we do, further enhancing our reputation.
• Identify and develop relationships with key senior individuals in our core stakeholder audiences such as business groups and non-governmental organisations, and acting as TfL's main point of contact for our non-elected stakeholders. Through developing a detailed understanding of their objectives, communication and information needs, the post holder will ensure strong, credible and meaningful collaboration, and achieve third-party advocacy from the widest possible range of sectors.
• Build and ensure collaborative relationships across Communications and Corporate Affairs (CCA), Customer and Strategy and wider TfL to enable achievement of TfL and Mayoral goals.
• Monitor effectiveness of stakeholder engagement strategy and revise strategy where necessary to best enhance TfL's reputation.
• Resourcing, deployment, development and ensuring performance and engagement of the Stakeholder, Advocacy and Engagement team driving collaboration and integration.
  
  

Skills

Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Exceptional influencing and negotiating skills, and comfortable with the highest level of opinion-former. (Essential)
• Proven ability to build strong collaborative relationships with senior colleagues and external stakeholders. (Essential)
• Politically astute, with a sound awareness of the key policy issues affecting transport decisions in London. (Essential)
• Excellent presentation and organisational skills. (Essential)
• Exceptional analytical ability. (Desirable)
• Strong commercial awareness and financial acumen, with an ability to achieve value for money. (Essential)
• Excellent people management and development skills. (Essential)
• Evidence of a practical understanding of the complexities of high-profile public sector organisations operating in highly challenging political and institutional environments, with experience of crisis management. (Essential)
  
  

Knowledge

• Educated to at least degree level, or with equivalent relevant qualification or suitable experience. (Essential)
• Excellent understanding of the strategic issues and needs of London (Essential)
• Knowledge of the public policy environment, accessibility issues and business development. (Essential)
• In-depth understanding of the importance of the relationship between business strategy and stakeholder communications. (Essential)
• Knowledge of crisis communications approaches is preferred. (Desirable)
• Strong working knowledge of developments and emerging good practices in transport in the UK and globally. (Desirable)
• Thorough understanding of the challenges London faces and TfL's corporate strategy. (Essential)
  
  

Experience

• Proven experience in influencing at the highest levels internally and with external decision-makers. (Essential)
• Extensive experience of strategic campaigning – preferably with an excellent understanding of transport issues – with an excellent understanding of the key stakeholder sectors covered by the role. (Essential)
• Experienced in thriving in a busy and politically-complex communications environment, dealing with issues of national, regional or local relevance. (Essential)
• Proven record of conceptual and strategic thinking. (Essential)
• Excellent record of delivering results on time and within budget. (Essential)
• Managing a high-performance team establishing individual and departmental priorities, objectives and targets. (Essential)
  
  

Application Process

Please apply using your CV and a cover letter with a maximum of 2 pages. PDF format preferred and do not include any photographs or images.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. We want to represent the city we serve, which will help us become a more innovative and efficient organisation. Our goal is to make our recruitment as inclusive as possible. We are a disability confident employer who guarantee an interview to any disabled candidate who meets all of the essential criteria.

Benefits

In return for your commitment and expertise, you will enjoy excellent benefits and scope to grow. Rewards vary according to the level of role but mostly include the below:

• Final salary pension scheme
• Free travel for you on the TfL network
• Reimbursement of 75% of the cost of a standard class Ticket for National Rail travel from home or 75% reimbursement on a 28-day flexi ticket
• 30 days annual leave plus public and bank holidays
• TfL is committed to work-life balance, operating a hybrid working approach where business and role requirements allow
• Private healthcare discounted scheme (optional)
• Tax-efficient cycle-to-work programme
• Retail, health, leisure and travel offers
• Discounted Eurostar travel
  
  

We will make every effort to give you as much notice as possible, however some interviews/assessments could be organised at short notice.