Communications and Engagement Manager

Forestry England

Hours
37 hours per week

Length of contract
July 2028 

About the Organisation

We are England's largest land manager, looking after the nation's 1,500 woods and forests. Forests flourish with careful planning and expert management. We’re landscapers and foresters on a vast, nationwide scale: we shape landscapes for people, timber and wildlife. We work in partnership across government, with charities and private companies. Before 1 April 2019, Forestry England was known as Forest Enterprise England. Forestry England is part of the Forestry Commission family.

About the role

The Communications and Engagement Manager is a new role for Forestry England’s Central District. The district Marcomms team is small, and we have identified a significant opportunity to expand our communications to help our audiences better understand our work, build our supporter base, and keep our workforce informed, engaged, and motivated to do their jobs effectively. Reporting to the District Marketing & Communications Manager, the role will be responsible for delivering internal and external communications strategies and a workplan for Central District.

This will focus on promoting the work of Forestry England and telling the story of the nation’s forests, highlighting the wide-ranging benefits they provide for climate, nature, people and the economy. This will involve communicating not just what we do, but why we do it. Sitting within the Recreation & Public Engagement function, this role will work closely with national communications colleagues, and teams across the district, including Sustainable Land Management, Civil Engineering, Ecology & Heritage, Woodland Creation and Business Support.

This will involve meetings both online and in-person, and occasional representation of the district at events and forums. While there is no line-manager responsibility, the role will work closely with the Marketing & Communications Officer (who will provide administrative and implementation support) and will benefit from peer support from the Marketing Manager and direction from the Marketing & Communications Manager.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities:

• Implement the district communications strategy and workplan to effectively support district priorities and targets.
• Develop and deliver engaging and effective proactive communications content for the district to support brand-building and supporter development (emotional engagement and connection to cause, donor motivation, increase membership and volunteer numbers) across multiple channels and touchpoints
• Become the district’s lead storyteller – bringing our work to life so that people see beyond forests as places to visit whilst championing our position as industry leaders and building understanding of forestry as a critical, future-facing sector delivering sustainable timber and environmental benefits.
• Manage and deliver reactive communications in the district to protect the organisation’s reputation, maximising opportunities as they arise. This includes incident management, communications around district development projects (such as new facilities being installed, or other investment works), visitor behaviour management, stakeholder engagement and support for forestry operations.
• Deliver effective internal engagement, including editorial ownership of the district’s weekly staff newsletter, identifying appropriate content for the national intranet and external channels, and supporting the wider programme of internal staff events, meetings and engagement activity.
• And any other tasks, reasonably requested by your line manager.

Skills, Competencies, Experience & Attributes

Essential Professional & Technical Experience:

• Proven experience in a communications role with responsibility for delivering activity and outcomes
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience creating engaging content for different channels and audiences, working to brand guidelines
• Confidence using digital tools such as website content management systems, social media platforms and content creation tools
• A collaborative, team-focused approach, with the ability to build strong working relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders
• Creative thinking, with experience generating content to meet communications objectives within tight budget constraints
• An eye for detail with the understanding that all communication represents the organisation and our work, so needs to be accurate and correct
• A self-starter, able to identify and act on priorities, and work unsupervised 

Desirable Professional & Technical Experience:

• An understanding of, or strong interest in, forestry, conservation, sustainability or land management issues
• Budget management experience
• Video production expertise
• Experience of internal communications within a large, multi-departmental organisation

Required Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in communications or a related field is desirable; however, we recognise that candidates may be qualified through relevant experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Forestry England contributes an average of 28.97% towards your pension.
• 25 days holiday a year, rising by one day every year of service, up to 30 days (pro-rated for part-time employees) plus additional days off such as bank holidays.
• STaR is our employee benefits scheme offering discounts on everyday supermarket shopping, as well as other things such as hotel stays, clothes, mobile phones, other electrical items, medical and car insurance, holidays, gym discounts, household bills, Headspace wellbeing app.
• Free parking at Forestry England sites and free entry to our National Arboretums at Westonbirt and Bedgebury.
• Commitment to lifelong learning through career development. Forestry England will support your career development in a variety of ways, including continual professional development, support for individual learning plans and sponsored membership of professional bodies.

Working locations

• Sherwood, United Kingdom
• Occasional weekend working to support events.

How to apply

• You will be asked to write a 200-word statement on your relevant experience and career history, along with a personal statement of no more than 500 words. You will be assessed on both during sifting. More details about how to apply are listed on the application form.
• Successful candidates will undergo a criminal record check and the government baseline personnel security standard check.
• If you require any reasonable adjustments, please email [email protected].
• If you're planning to use AI to support your application, please ensure you've read our guidelines here first. 

Interviews

• The Behaviours being assessed at interview are:
  • Seeing the Big Picture
  • Working Together
  • Managing a Quality Service
  • Communicating and Influencing

Policies

Forestry England is part of the Civil Service. The Civil Service has a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS). This means candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria during the application process will be guaranteed an interview. We also offer a Redeployment Interview Scheme to current civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the role. This role is also part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans and Prison Leaver Recruitment initiative. 

Within Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016, it is essential that applicants should have the ability to provide conversation in accurate spoken English. Our recruitment process makes appointments based on fair and open competition and merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles. If you feel your application has not been treated in line with/according to these principles and you wish to make a complaint, please email: [email protected]

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