About the job

Job summary

This position is based Nationally

Job description

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Job Title:    Communications Insight Manager
Grade:       Band C/HEO – permanent
Location:    National
Directorate/Unit:    Communications & Information Directorate/External Communications
    

The Ministry of Justice supports a range of issues that have a profound impact on people’s lives. We are at the heart of the justice system, and our priority work ranges from prison reform to rehabilitation and support for victims.

We are seeking an ambitious and enthusiastic Communications Insight Manager to join a top-quality insight and evaluation team that sits at the heart of our Communications Group. Our work is varied, challenging, and rewarding – our ambition is to lead the culture of insight in MOJ – with a laser-focus on our audiences and making our communications, campaigns, and marketing audience-focused and impactful. 

Our audiences are diverse – including potential prison and probation officers, victims of crime, potential employers of ex-offenders, prison leavers, international lawyers and many more. We use a blended mix of insight – including primary and secondary research, social listening, digital analytics, audience segmentations, and behavioural insight – to build a knowledge base about our audiences to shape and inform communications plans and strategies.

So, what does the job entail? 

You’ll play a key role in delivering insight and evaluation projects spanning across all MOJ’s key priorities. This includes helping embed insight across all stages and aspects of a campaign life-cycle – from supporting the development of behavioural objectives and pre-campaign research solutions for specific audiences to embedding insight into creative and communications strategies – and evaluating impact against comms and policy objectives. 

You’ll be motivated and enthusiastic about communications – and how insight underpins and optimises all our work. You will support the development and delivery of the team’s strategy of embedding insight and evaluation best practice across all our communications disciplines – such as media/press, strategic communications, social media, digital marketing, and corporate communications.

You’ll have strong attention to detail and an ability to work across multiple projects with challenging deadlines – with an interesting and varied mix of stakeholders. With our support, you’ll work with insight teams across government departments, policy and strategy teams in MOJ – as well as external research providers and suppliers. The role offers lots of opportunities for variety from drawing insights and recommendations from social listening, polling or focus group data, to drafting survey questionnaires, setting up online monitoring dashboards for a campaign and presenting insight in engaging ways to the rest of the directorate.  

You’ll join a growing, collaborative team with vision and determination in demonstrating the value of insight and evaluation across comms while expanding our audience-focused culture in our communications group. We pride ourselves on having a positive team culture and value learning and development – we encourage innovation to progress our ambition to be the best insight team across Whitehall. We work on difficult and challenging issues, and as a team genuinely care about the impact our work can have in optimizing our comms activities. Alongside the day-to-day, we are continually upskilling our colleagues on insight and evaluation good practice, and we encourage the team to play an active role in the I&E community across government. 

This is an excellent opportunity for someone with a good blend of communications/marketing and research experience from a public and/or private sector role, with a desire to learn and grow within the team. We’re looking for motivated people who want to join our team, work on exciting projects, drive forward innovation and best practice and... make a real difference!

You will report into a Senior Communications Insight Manager. 

Responsibilities

•    Support the planning and implementation of detailed insight and research projects to inform communications strategies and delivery
•    Write, prepare and present insight and evaluation reports to internal and cross-government audiences
•    Develop a clear understanding of our audiences' motivations, barriers and behaviours – and support the delivery of recommendations on how to best reach our audiences
•    Manage multiple insight projects to deadline - focused on delivering insight and evaluation to support communications and campaign objectives
•    Develop social listening searches and dashboards – becoming an expert on social listening methodologies and best practice
•    Support teams across communications and the wider department with use of insight and evaluation tools and techniques
•    Support the training of others outside of the core team in the use of insight and evaluation best practice to support the department’s objectives
•    Engage colleagues creatively and innovatively across the whole of comms in a variety of ways with insight and evaluation – including bringing data to life visually and ensuring that the data and insights lead to actionable insights that help inform future comms activities
•    Work collaboratively with a range of colleagues in the digital team, campaigns team, press office, external affairs, corporate comms, design agency (Design 102) and private office
•    Take on occasional out-of-hours work, in agreement with the Head of Insight & Evaluation to manage and deliver exciting research and fieldwork projects

Person specification 

•    Market research experience, ideally across both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and focussed on communications insight
•    A passion for, and knowledge of best practice insight and evaluation techniques for communications, including social listening
•    Understanding of insight, data and evaluation methodologies and best practices to measure and inform communications outcomes
•    Account management experience, with ability to manage multiple research projects against agreed objectives, and to ensure high quality and timely delivery
•    Ability to work on answering complex research questions with problem-solving approach and attention to detail
•    Proactive, with good organisational and planning skills
•    Ability to work confidently with a range of colleagues and external partners and to support the delivery of communications-focused insight
•    Experience of working to tight deadlines, managing uncertainty and complexity to deliver business objectives
•    Very strong written and verbal communication skills (including an attention to detail), including presentation skills; you will be transforming complicated data into easy-to-understand actionable insights for a diverse range of audiences. 

Application process

We will be using success profiles to assess your communication and delivery abilities. 
As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete a CV and provide examples of Civil Service behaviours (PDF) and competences based on the Government Communication Professional Competency Framework (PDF).
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Applications will be sifted on CV and personal statement.
Please provide a personal statement up to 750 words, to set out how your experience and skill-set makes you an excellent candidate for the role. In the event of a large number of applicants, applications will be sifted on the personal statement.
The interview will consist of questions that will be assessed against the behaviours and competencies listed in the specification.
Interviewees will be asked to deliver a short presentation as part of the interview process; further details will be provided nearer the time.

If you have any initial questions or want to discuss the role further – please contact arthur.hoffmann1@justice.gov.uk.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

•    Seeing the Big Picture
•    Communicating and Influencing 

And these GCS competences:

•    Insight
•    Ideas

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £32,827, Ministry of Justice contributes £8,896 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.