Job title: Public Affairs Manager (Part Time - 0.6FTE)

Job salary: £46,000 - £51,000 per annum (1FTE)

Job location:
Edinburgh (hybrid-working - WeWork office) or;
London (hybrid-working – London office located in SE1)

Deadline: May 17th, 2024

Purpose of the job

The Public Affairs Manager plays an important role in developing and managing Smart Energy GB’s engagement activity to ensure awareness, understanding and advocacy of the smart meter rollout among political and professional stakeholders.

Reporting to, and with the support of, the Senior Public Affairs Manager, you will devise and deliver effective public affairs plans to influence political and professional stakeholders in Scotland and Wales as well as in local authorities across Great Britain to persuade them to advocate for the benefits of smart meters.

Working as part of a talented and creative team, you will help to deliver a dynamic public affairs programme which will bring the importance of smart meters to life, galvanise support and get opinion-formers behind smart meters.

Whilst primarily focusing on delivering public affairs activity and programmes to Scottish stakeholders, you will also support the delivery of our Welsh political and stakeholder activity as well as our GB-wide local authority strategy, communicating to and encouraging local authority leaders to understand and advocate for the benefits of smart meters.

You will provide strategic advice to the Head of Policy & Public Affairs and the Director of Corporate Affairs on the political and stakeholder landscape in Scotland and Wales, and the impact of public affairs approaches and activity.

Key tasks and responsibilities

• Manage Smart Energy GB’s public affairs activities in Scotland, including our outreach and advocacy to opinion-forming audiences, Smart Energy GB events and our presence at external events held by third parties
• Support Smart Energy GB’s public affairs activities in Wales, including outreach and advocacy to politicians, events in the Senedd and our presence at external events
• Develop and deliver a programme of activity to advocate to stakeholders in the Scottish Parliament, Senedd, local authorities and the third sector across GB about the smart meter rollout and our policy positions
• Identify opportunities and produce written and other materials for external and internal publication, including stakeholder magazines (e.g. Holyrood Magazine), newsletters and website texts for third party organisations.
• Support the delivery of Smart Energy GB’s post-general election strategy to MPs and develop relationships with newly elected and returning Scottish and Welsh MPs
• Develop and deliver resources for use by elected representatives and other opinion-formers across Great Britain.
• Develop and deliver presentations and workshops on behalf of Smart Energy GB as required
• Keep abreast of relevant political and policy developments, alert colleagues and provide summaries and proactive responses as required
• Attend Smart Energy GB events and represent the organisation at third-party events for political and stakeholder audiences.
• Draft content for senior management briefings and official correspondence
• Ensure teams across the organisation are aware of public affairs activity in Scotland and Wales, and seek input from other departments as required to inform future plans
• While this post can be based in either Edinburgh or London, it will involve travel across Great Britain and occasional evening and weekend working.

Skills, experience, and competencies

Essential

• Knowledge of the workings and dynamics of Scottish politics at all levels
• Knowledge of third sector and business stakeholder organisations in Scotland and experience in influencing them
• Ability to take on responsibility and use initiative to prioritise work and to work effectively under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Excellent communication skills (verbal/writing) with first-rate attention to detail
• Creative thinking when it comes to developing outreach activity

Desirable

• Knowledge of the workings and dynamics of Welsh politics and local government
• Knowledge of third sector and business stakeholder organisations in Wales and experience in influencing them
• Excellent presentation and public speaking skills
• Appreciation of the objectives and activities of Smart Energy GB
• Appreciate the diversity of the people and communities of Great Britain and embrace this diversity in your approach to work

Welcome to Smart Energy GB. It’s our task to engage everyone in England Scotland and Wales with the national rollout of smart meters - and we are all thrilled to have this once-in-a-career chance to communicate with the whole of our diverse nation.

Every British home and microbusiness has the opportunity to upgrade to new gas and electricity smart meters, which will utterly transform the way we all buy and use energy and pave the way to a smarter, more energy efficient future. It’s one of the biggest technological and infrastructural investments of our time, the smart meter rollout has already converted just over 50 per cent of British households. The goal for this voluntary technological upgrade is to engage every household in Great Britain, and so there is a continuing critical role for Smart Energy GB in the years ahead (government has recently indicated that Smart Energy GB’s campaign should continue until at least 2025, and potentially beyond).

Our campaign is one of the most far-reaching of any campaign in the country. We are talking to consumers from all backgrounds, across the whole of Great Britain. Our legal duties mean that we have a particular need to make sure that consumers who are harder to reach or need greater support are not left behind (already an important part of our responsibilities and likely to be an increasing focus over the period leading to 2025).

It’s an exciting time to join one of the most talented and creative teams in the country. We have an exciting mission, and we pride ourselves on having a fully inclusive working environment.

We love what we do. We are flexible, eager to learn and hugely motivated by this chance to be part of one of the biggest-ever behaviour change campaigns, which brings with it benefits for both individual households and the environment.

We’re looking forward to meeting you, and hope you’ll be as fired up about the challenge ahead as we are.

The Smart Energy GB team

Smart Energy GB is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity. We use data to measure the effectiveness of our attraction and selection methods to ensure that they are fair and equitable and that opportunities at Smart Energy GB are accessible to people from all backgrounds.

We actively encourage applications from currently under-represented groups. We have identified ethnic minority, lower socio-economic background, disability and gender as the key areas we would like to focus our recruitment efforts in.

What do we do at Smart Energy GB to promote diversity and inclusion?

Every person who applies for a role at Smart Energy GB is asked to complete a diversity questionnaire and they are asked whether or not they consent to their diversity data being taken into consideration at the shortlisting stage.

Disability Confident Scheme

We have the Disability Confident Leader status and we are committed to making our recruitment practices as inclusive and fair as possible for all applicants. Disability Confident is a government scheme designed to help us make the most of the talents of those with disabilities and/or health conditions in the workplace.

All disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements of the job as set out in the job description and person specification will be guaranteed an interview. If there’s anything we can do to make our interview process or working environment more inclusive and to meet your particular needs please let us know. Our offices have full wheelchair access.

We consider our commitment to the Disability Confident scheme in many aspects of our work life, including our offices. We moved to a new London office in September 2021, and having an accessible layout was a high priority in this search.

All In Champions

We’re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels like they belong. That’s why we’re proud to be one of the first organisations awarded All In Champion status, as part of the Advertising Association, ISBA and IPA’s initiative. To achieve this, we provided evidence that we have adopted the first six actions from the All In Action Plan – improving the experience and representation of:

• Black talent
• Disabled talent
• Working-class talent
• Women
• Asian talent
• Older talent

You can read more about how to become an All In Champion and what it means here.

Rooney Rule

We are building a team that is able to understand the needs of and effectively communicate with the whole of our diverse nation. We want our team to reflect the diversity of the wider population. This includes the representation of people from ethnic minorities and lower socio-economic backgrounds. We apply the Rooney Rule to achieve this.

Subject to consent, out of the candidates who meet the essential selection criteria for the role and who are from ethnic minority or lower socio-economic backgrounds, at least one will be shortlisted for the next stage in the recruitment process, which is usually an interview.

Every member of our team goes above and beyond, helps one another out and contributes to the achievement of our ambitious goals. We think it’s only right for us to reward them accordingly:

• Competitive pension scheme
• 25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• Gym memberships
• Private medical insurance
• Annual health check
• Annual eye test
• Season ticket loan
• 5 annual volunteer days
• £1,000 (net) work anniversary gift
• Local discounts with Better Bankside Buzz Offers
• Option to buy additional annual leave
• Option to take out a personal loan
• Cycle to work scheme
• Free standard breakfast and healthy snacks provided in the office
• An in-house wellbeing programme, Thrive

Thrive

We take our role as an employer seriously and work hard to create a great place for people to work. But we also have an opportunity to support our employees outside work. In order to do so, we’ve rolled out Thrive; a programme to help our people live healthier, feel better and deal with life’s curveballs.

Through our employee assistance programme we’re all able to, anonymously and confidentially, access financial, medical and mental health advice if we would ever need it. We’ve even extended this offer to our employees’ immediate families. Throughout the year we also invite various experts, such as mental health and wellbeing coaches to help us live life a little smarter.

Alongside this, we also have the ‘Thrive Room’ in our London office, which is used as a private and comfortable space. It can be used for people to take time out, meditate, pray, or for new mums returning to work who may be breastfeeding and need to express milk.