Senior Internal Communications Manager

• Location: Flexible - Southampton or Guildford
• Permanent

About the role

We have an exciting new opportunity for an established Internal Communications individual to join our fast paced and dedicated Marketing team. Your role will be to build and reinforce positive energy about the steps the firm is taking toward its ambition, with everyone internally. In doing so, you will ensure our people have enough information about changes, decisions and policies and are appropriately engaged in these.

As an expert in internal communications, you will have strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to build key relationships and manage expectations across the business. You will have the expertise to take accountability by owning the process, leading and doing things the right way.

We have a flexible way of working at Moore Barlow so are happy for this role to be based out of any of our offices along with some remote working, and will consider someone with strong internal communication and management experience to work on a part time basis.

Key tasks will include:

As the only dedicated Internal Communications person within the firm, the role is central to the planning, creation and execution of internal communications from end-to-end, in order to build the right internal culture and to support the employee experience of everyone within the business.

The objectives of the role are to:

• Build confidence in Moore Barlow and our future as encapsulated in our Purpose, the Moore Barlow Way of doing business, and our Ambition as a firm.
• Build a people-first culture, that lives our values and behaviours.
• Help our people understand the strategic priorities of the firm and the role they play in its delivery.
• Engage our people in the many changes taking place across the firm ensuring they understand and feel involved in these.
• Support managers in communicating and engaging their reports in the above by providing leadership in the best practice of internal communications, and practical support.

To achieve the above the role needs to:

• Develop and execute an annual communications strategy across the firm’s internal stakeholder groups. Be accountable for the practical implementation and rollout of this and evaluating the success of it.
• Work closely with, and support, senior leaders from the Executive Board and Divisions to ensure individual and group messaging are appropriate to objectives and aligned.
• Advise and support key internal change work streams where activities will impact on our people, or where internal communications are key to the success of the activity.
• Synthesise and group broad and multiple communication topics and areas into accessible and digestible messages that also provide sufficient context of how they fit into the wider programme.
• Define and manage our internal communications vehicles, evaluating and evolving these as necessary. Ensure communication timing and frequency are appropriate, transparent and prioritised, embracing the channels, tools and media available (e.g. Video, Email, Intranet, Firm-wide meetings etc)
• Determine the most effective ways to leverage the firm’s intranet as a key platform for internal communications, in doing so reducing the volume of firmwide emails.
• Partner and collaborate with the People team as necessary to ensure internal communications help build the right employee experience, to support our people through changes, reducing adverse impact of these, and to ensure communications accurately reflect any Policies and/or legal requirements related.
• Build relationships and navigate the business adeptly to source stories and content that demonstrate our strategy in action.
• Be an ambassador and advocate for Moore Barlow, applying the brand and visual identity consistently across all channels and activities.
• Ensure appropriate approvals ahead of publication in line with Senior Leadership’s requirements.

What we look for:

We are inspired by different perspectives and looking for people who share:

• Significant experience in Internal Communications at this level
• A strong track record in developing and delivering multi-channel internal communications strategies. Able to balance the need to engage and communicate at a time of significant change whilst moderating the number of firm-wide communications being sent out via email.
• Has developed a deep inherent understanding of what best-in-class internal communications look like (typically developed by working in a large business or an agency working for large businesses) and what is required to deliver them. At the same time understands what’s important and effective to the internal communications of a mid-sized business.
• Superb stakeholder management skills with a proven ability to provide communications counsel to senior leaders, winning their confidence and to provide leadership of internal narrative.
• Working in semi-autonomous environments where needs outstrip the capacity to deliver on them
• Excellent workload prioritisation, comms planning and expectation management skills
• Able to deliver against multiple projects, with multiple deadlines
• For those needs it is not able to meet directly, able to persuade others of a more achievable course of action and/or facilitate others to deliver against them
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage and inspire internal stakeholders:
• Strong copywriting and copy-editing skills
• Experience writing speeches, emails, or video scripts on behalf of business leaders
• Content and narrative development for firm-wide meetings
• Strong proof-reading skills with a keen attention to detail
• Executing best practice internal communications through a variety of different channels
• Excellent Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and MS Office 365 skills. Use of Monday.com beneficial.

How to apply

Interested in a career at Moore Barlow? Please send your CV and cover letter to the Human Resources team at recruitment@moorebarlow.com

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It is our policy to provide equal opportunities for all employees and prospective employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion. Decisions in these areas will be made by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of ethnic origin, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation or disability.