Senior Communications Business Partner

Job description

About the role

We're searching for a creative, strategic and talented Senior Communications Business Partner to join the John Lewis Partnership .

Team culture is very important to us: we’re an enthusiastic and ambitious team with a passion for communicating fairly, imaginatively and transparently with Partners, who co-own our business.

You’d initially take the lead on partnering our emerging lines of business (John Lewis Money and Build to Rent) and our corporate functions including Technology, Finance, Strategy, Sustainability, Safety and Security; developing relationships with senior leaders and anticipating their communications needs. Working closely with your colleagues in corporate PR, you’d lead on enterprise-wide campaigns such as our financial results, sharing progress against our Partnership Plan and the rollout and safe use of AI tools.

If you’re a great communicator, who likes planning, enjoys challenges and wants to be part of a team that genuinely enjoys what they do, we’d love to hear from you.

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Salary range - £55,300.00 - £83,000.00

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Contract type - This position is a 12 month contract

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Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The team aims for around 2 days a week in the office to connect and on a more ad-hoc basis to attend key meetings.

Key Responsibilities

You will have proven experience of these key skills, outcomes and deliverables:

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Communications and engagement strategy: play your part in delivering and developing our agreed communications and engagement strategy.

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Collaboration: embrace team working to support your team-mates with workload, ideas and wellbeing whenever possible and work with other communication teams and the Content Hub to ensure alignment of message and activity.

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Culture: help create the conditions for all leaders and Partners to thrive and consistently make their best contribution.

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Leadership, coach and mentor: lead a matrix team from across the Communications directorate and in your business partnering area in accordance with Partnership behaviours. Actively share your communications and engagement skills to broaden thinking and develop those you work with. Coach leaders to improve their communication skills.

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Team development: lead and support your team to adopt a continuous improvement mindset. Build the capability of the team, including your own. Tools, templates and channels: contribute to the team’s range of tools and templates to ensure excellence and consistency of delivery; help develop our suite of channels with the goal to ultimately reach all Partners.

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Tone of voice and written style: ensure the ‘Partnership’ tone of voice and writing style is adopted across all communications, as appropriate, so that Partners choose to read/watch/access our communications, as they do in their personal lives.

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Listening and influencing: ensure you connect with key stakeholders and Partners so you can create, inform or influence the best outcomes to deliver our engagement strategy.

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Planning: contribute to our Grid planning tool and regularly review to ensure the right messages and activity at the right time.

Essential skills /experience you’ll need:

·  A solid understanding of engagement theory and demonstrable practical success in employee engagement
·  Experience in developing engagement strategies and plans across multiple business areas
·  Experience in change communications (TUPE, mergers and acquisitions, restructures etc.)
·  A sound knowledge of modern communication channels
·  Proven experience in stakeholder management and influencing senior employees
·  Knowledge of effective measurement techniques
·  Leadership communication skills and coaching experience
·  Outstanding copywriting, communications design and creativity skills.

The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:   

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.   

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.   

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.  

 

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