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: Senior Communications Insight Manager
Grade:    Band B/SEO – permanent
    
Location: National
Directorate/Unit:    Communications & Information Directorate/External Communications
Team:    Insight & Evaluation

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 looking to appoint an ambitious, and experienced senior 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 sources – 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 leading role in embedding insight and evaluation across all MOJ’s key priorities. This includes all stages and aspects of a campaign life-cycle – from developing behavioural objectives and identifying pre-campaign research solutions for specific audiences to embedding insight into creative and communications strategies – and evaluating impact against objectives. 

You’ll be motivated and enthusiastic about communications – and how insight underpins and optimises all our work. You will use your strategic vision to identify opportunities to innovate and your influencing skills to embed insight and evaluation best practice across all of our communications disciplines – such as media, strategic communications, social media, digital marketing, and corporate communications.

You’ll have a strong attention to detail and an ability to manage multiple projects with challenging deadlines – with an interesting and varied mix of stakeholders. 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 organising focus groups with victims of crime to training press colleagues on social listening to presenting insight in engaging ways to senior stakeholders.  

You’ll join a growing, happy, and 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 value learning and development – and 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. We’re looking for motivated people who want to join our team, manage exciting projects, drive forward innovation and best practice and... make a real difference!

You will report into the Head of Insight & Evaluation. 

Responsibilities

•    Ensure teams have a good understanding of insight and evaluation approaches for communications (including GCS Evaluation Framework and industry best-practice), and lead on the development of pre- and post-campaign research and evaluations 
•    Provide clear and up-to-date understanding of audience motivations, barriers and behaviours and recommendations on how to reach them
•    Lead on developing social media insights on relevant topics – via our social listening platform Brandwatch
•    Confidently upskill others outside of the core team in the use of insight and evaluation best practice to support the department’s objectives 
•    Ensure that the data and insights we collect lead to genuinely actionable insights to help inform future comms activities – especially when measuring our overall comms 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 
•    Work collaboratively with a range of colleagues in the digital team, campaigns team, press office, external affairs, corporate comms, design agency (Design 102), special advisors, 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 

•    Proven solid 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
•    Strong analytical and technical skills such as questionnaire design, data analysis, storytelling with data, GA/UA and social listening
•    Proven account management experience, with ability to commission and lead research projects against agreed objectives, and to ensure high quality agency delivery
•    Ability to tackle complex research questions with determination and attention to detail, and draw evidence-based conclusions and recommendations
•    Ability to work confidently with a range of colleagues, external partners and ministers, and to influence direction of work
•    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 specific 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 michael.maccormack@justice.gov.uk.

Behaviours

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

•    Seeing the Big Picture
•    Communicating and Influencing 
•    Making Effective Decisions

And these GCS competences:

•    Insight
•    Ideas

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £39,868, Ministry of Justice contributes £10,804 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.