Director of Communications and Engagement Full Time

Ref GSe71181

Be part of something special.

Be part of Bristol.

With 8,000 staff delivering healthcare across Southmead Hospital Bristol, Cossham Hospital, Bristol Centre for Enablement and within the local community of Bristol and South Gloucestershire, our aim is to provide our patients with best practice, high quality care and treatment that is comparable to the best in the world. We want to care for our patients in a safe environment and ensure that everyone has an outstanding experience.

We are committed to ensuring the meaningful engagement and inclusion of all relevant stakeholders, both internal and external, in this journey – the impact of these conversations will be particularly relevant in determining Acute service provision across Bristol and the wider area.  As such we are seeking an enthusiastic, innovative communications professional to be our new Director of Communications and Engagement.

As the Covid-19 crisis presents unprecedented challenge within a health and social care system already experiencing significant reform, our priorities at NBT are numerous and varied, from understanding how future staff will choose us as an employer of choice to working with patients and communities to manage new behaviours in terms of how care and treatment is now accessed. The Director of Communications and Engagement will be at the forefront of this change; and use proven engagement techniques and insight to inform strategic decision making.  Additionally, they will support our incoming Chief Executive to establish our position and narrative at a system level.  The individual will be jointly responsible for running the BNSSG Strategic Communications Cell, charged with providing coordinated, strategic communications leadership in support of transformational change to how health care for our population is delivered over the next five years and beyond.

The successful candidate will bring experience of reframing the narrative of an organisation and building its reputation as part of an improvement programme within a context of comparable complexity.  You will have the confidence to both advise and appropriately challenge across a multitude of stakeholder maps including internally at senior (Board) level and externally with partners. Persuasive, politically astute and emotionally resilient you will possess a track record of innovative communication management practice and of using audience insights to improve both internal and external communications.

Above all else, you will have a values set aligned to our own and be committed to embedding these in an approach to communications and engagement in order to increase staff engagement, improve outcomes and create a positive experience for our patients.