Job title: Public Affairs Officer

Job salary: £39,000 per annum

Job location: London, SE1 (hybrid working, minimum 2 days per week in the office)

Deadline: 13th February 2022

Purpose of the job

Working within our Corporate Affairs team, you’ll be working on public affairs projects across England, Scotland and Wales to inform opinion-formers in politics and third, public and private sectors, and persuade them to advocate for the benefits of smart meters.

Working as part of a talented and creative team, you’ll help to deliver a dynamic programme of innovative communications, events and materials which will bring the importance of smart meters to life, galvanise support and get opinion formers across the country behind smart meters.

Key tasks and responsibilities

• Support the Corporate Affairs team to create and deliver campaigns that build stakeholder support for the smart meter rollout and protect SEGB’s reputation

• Draft and deliver accurate, audience-appropriate written materials suitable for political and stakeholder audiences (including letters, briefings, summaries, e‑newsletters, videos and campaigns) that usually require minimum review before sign off

• Undertake meetings with external organisations and parliamentarians

• Prepare clear briefing materials and relevant notes for internal and external meetings. Ensure timely communication and delivery of follow-up actions and maintain positive stakeholder relationships

• Work with the Public Affairs Managers to develop materials, assets and events for a range of public affairs audiences on key areas of interest for SEGB. This will include our private renters, local and microbusiness activity

• Attend and represent Smart Energy GB at third‑party events for political and stakeholder audiences across Great Britain

• Coordinate with the Committees, All‑Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) and Cross-Party Groups (CPGs) Smart Energy GB participate in, and monitor for any new APPGs/CPGs with which we should be engaged

• Keep abreast of relevant public affairs developments, alerting colleagues to relevant developments. Provide concise, timely and accurate analysis of political and sector activity, including regular written summaries that prioritise relevance and clearly set out implications for SEGB’s work and audiences

• Provide support to SEGB team members speaking at external events and conferences, supporting development of speeches, presentations and briefings where necessary. Proactively identify and suggest speaking opportunities for colleagues at all levels

• Assist the Public Affairs Manager with the management of our external political monitoring service, including ensuring that team members are receiving appropriate updates and participating in any reviews of the service

• Work closely with colleagues within Corporate Affairs, and across SEGB, to ensure coordination of outreach and messages for GB‑wide political audiences. Coordinate the responses meetings for SEGB, which supports joint organisation‑wide responses on issues around the rollout

• Lead on the day-to-day organisation and administration that supports the smooth running of the Policy and Public Affairs function, including but not limited to:

  • Invoices and POs

  • Travel and accommodation bookings

  • Organising Policy and Public Affairs folder on SEGB cloud storage programme

• Provide support to the Policy team as needed, including attending and providing written updates for events/webinars, drafting report summaries, general admin and other ad hoc tasks as required

Skills, experience and competencies

Essential

• Ability to produce high‑quality written materials that require minimal revision and are aligned with SEGB’s tone and quality standards

• Excellent communication skills (verbal/writing)

• Attention to detail, ensuring accuracy, consistency and quality control across all drafted materials, including political briefings, communications and stakeholder outputs

• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise effectively and take a proactive, self‑directed approach to delivering work, including balancing competing deadlines across political monitoring, stakeholder communications, events and other activities

• Appreciate the diversity of the people and communities of Great Britain and embrace this diversity in your approach to work

Desirable

• Experience in public affairs project delivery

• Good knowledge of the workings and dynamics of the UK Parliament and Whitehall departments

• Good knowledge of public sector stakeholder channels

• Commitment to own professional development and seeking out best practices from other organisations

• Appreciation of the objectives and activities of Smart Energy GB

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 approximately 70 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.

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 beyond 2025).

It’s an important time to join one of the most talented and creative teams (c70 FTE) in the country to deliver marketing and communications campaigns. We have an exciting mission, and we pride ourselves on having a fully inclusive working 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 want every candidate to have a fair and comfortable experience during the application and interview process. If you require any reasonable adjustments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our People Team – we’ll do our best to support your needs. You can email us at [email protected]

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

If consent is given, of the candidates who meet the selection criteria for the role and who are from ethnic minority or lower socio-economic backgrounds, we aim for at least one to 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.