About the role
Involve is right at the forefront of changing our democracy for the better. Combining
innovative, high-quality practice with making a clear case for a democracy fit for the 21st century, we are showing exactly what our democratic future holds.
This Digital Communications Officer will sit in our Advocacy and Communications Function. The purpose of this function is to demonstrate why participation and deliberation are essential features for a healthy modern democracy and ensure that key audiences understand and support their use. Within this function, you’ll be part of our Communications team, working closely with a Communications Lead and Senior Communications Officer. The main focus of the role will be to bring digital expertise into everything we do, making sure our work and why it matters reaches new and existing audiences in compelling, accessible and engaging ways.
You’ll work closely with our Communications Lead to ensure our digital presence builds the political and public support we need to put people at the heart of decision making. You’ll also work directly with project teams, partners and commissioners to capture compelling stories from across our programmes —helping them communicate the work we’re delivering together, while ensuring this also supports our wider organisational priorities.
Our team is made up of members based all over the UK, with a larger group of Associate freelancers who help us deliver our work.
We are committed to offering our team support for personal growth at work. This includes whole organisation-wide training based on our organisational priorities and development goals, as well as individual training budgets to support each person’s development.
Key responsibilities
1. Project digital communications – Sciencewise (30%)
To support our clients and project team by:
- Coordinating day-to-day digital communications activity – plan, draft and schedule content across priority platforms (Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky) to maintain a regular flow of activity with a focus on science and society.
- Liaising with the Sciencewise consortium to support a steady flow of comms content.
- Liaising with dialogue partners and their comms teams to offer comms support in line with our guidance.
- Working with the Communications Lead to maintain communications guidance supplied to our partners, so that project outputs also support Sciencewise’s own communications and profile.
- Helping to identify key influencers, leaders and opinion formers for Sciencewise and engaging actively with their content.
- Coordinating the creation and delivery of the Sciencewise newsletter.
- Regularly reporting to the Sciencewise Programme Lead and Director, and attending relevant meetings.
2. Project digital communications – other projects (30%)
To support our clients and project teams by:
- Working with the Senior Communications Officer and project teams to plan and deliver time-bound digital communications activity for individual projects — such as promoting report launches, events or key project milestones.
- Providing practical communications support that helps projects run effectively and helping partners communicate about our shared work.
- Turning project outputs, events and reports into social series, carousels, short videos and explainers that work with platform cultures and public interests
- Updating and maintaining project web pages, ensuring content is clear, accessible and aligned with social activity.
- Supporting the creation and delivery of project newsletters, like the School for Everyday Democracy and others as they emerge.
- Working within partner or commissioner brand guidelines when required — including co-branded content and, occasionally, output produced entirely under partner branding.
- Flagging opportunities where a project’s content could benefit from deeper creative or design input, and route these to the appropriate colleague.
- Ensuring project digital communications are well-planned and delivered on time, in a way that also feeds into our wider organisational priorities.
3. Supporting corporate comms (20%)
- Working with the Communications Lead to grow our public-facing channels, helping test and deliver audience-building activity and content experiments, and feeding learnings back to the team
- Using insights about online behaviour and trends to inform how we reach target audiences and make our work feel relevant and accessible.
- Supporting the wider upkeep of the Involve website, while taking responsibility for publishing specific content – such as blog posts and news updates – ensuring it’s clear, accessible and consistent with our organisational tone and narrative.
- Coordinating and sending newsletters and email campaigns, including list management and basic segmentation.
- Helping to maintain accurate and up-to-date records on our CRM
- Tracking basic analytics on social and web (reach, engagement, growth, audience mix) and feeding back simple recommendations
- Sharing basic tips and examples with colleagues to help content perform well on social channels, escalating more involved training needs to your line manager
4. Contributing to organisational priorities and impact (10%)
- Contributing to elements of Involve’s organisational development including organisational priorities.
- Supporting the collection of evidence that demonstrates the impact of our work.
- Contributing both internally and externally to Involve’s culture of learning, reflection and development of our practice, to benefit Involve and the wider sector.
5. Contributing to all team activities (10%)
- Participating in team meetings, strategy sessions and away days
Other relevant duties may be undertaken as agreed with your line manager.
Key competencies
Essential competencies
Applicants must demonstrate the following competencies:
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a proven ability to tell compelling, social-first stories and translate complex subjects into simple, effective messages that speak to specific audiences.
- Ability to create compelling written, audio and visual content across a range of digital channels, with a clear understanding of platform-specific storytelling and good practice
- Experience planning and managing a content calendar across multiple digital channels, including scheduling and posting
- Sharp social listening and trend-spotting skills, with proven knowledge of good practice engagement tactics across social media channels
- Experience using analytics to evaluate and report on digital performance (e.g. Google Analytics, native platform insights), in order to adapt content accordingly
- Confident in relevant design and production software and tools (e.g. Canva, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma)
- Experience producing email newsletters using an email marketing platform (e.g. Mailchimp, HubSpot)
- Experience managing a website CMS
- Committed team player, embodying our values of collaboration, equity, independence, purpose and quality, and passionate about furthering our vision
Desirable competencies
The following competencies are desirable:
- Understanding of SEO and accessible, inclusive content practice
- Experience using a CRM to manage contact lists, segmentation and email communications
- Experience supporting and coaching others to communicate their own work effectively
- Awareness of how AI is shaping the way information is shared and consumed, and what this means for communications
- Knowledge of paid media platforms, e.g. Facebook Business Manager, Google Ads, Reddit Ads
- Experience shooting and editing photography and video
- Web design and/or basic coding skills
- We are genuinely interested in applications from people with all sorts of different backgrounds
Pay, location and benefits
Job Title: Digital Communications Officer
Pay band: £35,902 per annum
Hours: Full time (35 hours per week) or 0.8 full time equivalent (28 hours per week)
Start date: As soon as possible
Location: Flexible but must be comfortable with regular travel both for project work and for Involve team activities. Must be able to travel to deliver work across the UK.
Reporting to: Communications Lead
Leave: all staff get 25 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays and the period between Christmas Day and New Years Day (pro rata for part-time team members).
We’re actively building a diverse team and welcome applications from everyone. But simply having a diverse workforce is not enough. We aim to build an inclusive environment, where everyone can contribute their best work and develop to their full potential. We celebrate our differences, and recognise the importance of teams reflecting the communities they work with.
We can make reasonable adjustments to our interview process, and to working arrangements, according to your needs. If you are shortlisted for interview we will explain what the interview process will involve in advance and check with you if we need to make any adjustments so that you can interview fairly and comfortably. We will also cover any reasonable expenses to enable you to attend the interview. And we offer a flexible working environment so you can adjust your hours to suit your personal circumstances.
We are flexible on people’s locations, and run a hybrid working environment. We have done so since before the pandemic, and work hard to find the right balance to support flexibility and effective working relationships. We have physical offices in London and Belfast which are always available to work in. We are flexible in terms of either working from home, or working hybrid from home and a physical office.
You must also be able to travel for Involve internal meetings. You can expect to attend away days and co-working days with other Involve team members, as well as quarterly strategic team days and other training as required. Our team finds this really important in terms of building our shared culture, learning from and supporting one another, enjoying working in a team with shared values, developing our technical skills and having fun together to support our wellbeing at work.
The following benefits are available to staff:
- Workplace pension with employer contribution of 5%;
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Enhanced maternity and paternity leave packages for qualifying employees
- Participation in both external and internal training.
