Salary: £25,501 per annum plus £3,000 London weighting per annum

Hours: 37.5 hours per week (some unsociable hours and flexible working available) 

Contract: Permanent

Based: London (flexible working arrangement available)

Key Dates:

• 18th March (midnight) – Applications close

• 28th March - Interview date

Citizens UK

Citizens UK is a people power alliance of diverse local communities working together for the common good. 

Our mission is to develop leaders, strengthen civic organisations and make change. Our 550 member communities are deeply rooted in their local areas and connect every day to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Through the method of community organising we enable people experiencing powerlessness to develop their leadership and come together with the power and strategy to make change. 

This leads to hundreds of neighbourhood improvements - from zebra crossings outside primary schools to renovated public toilets in cemeteries. And it leads to some of the biggest campaign impacts in the UK, such as winning over £1.5 billion of wages through the UK Living Wage campaign, securing a legal cap on the cost of credit to control exploitative lending, and ending the detention of children for immigration purposes. We enable local campaigns to grow into large-scale social change projects such as the Living Wage Foundation, Parents and Communities Together, and Sponsor Refugees, that form an integral part of our theory of change. The most prominent of these is the rapidly growing Living Wage Foundation with a network of nearly 9,000 accredited Living Wage Employers across the UK. 

Living Wage Foundation

The Living Wage Foundation was launched in 2011 by Citizens UK to tackle in-work poverty and ensure that workers earn enough to live on and participate in family and community life.

The Living Wage is a movement of businesses, organisations and people who believe that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The real Living Wage is an independently-calculated hourly rate based on the cost of living and announced each November during Living Wage Week, our annual celebration of a growing network of over 9,000 Living Wage Employers.

The Living Wage Foundation celebrates employers that voluntarily choose to pay the real Living Wage through an accreditation scheme that recognises a long-term commitment to fair pay and has secured pay rises for over 300,000 low paid workers.

Purpose

The Living Wage Foundation has an exciting opportunity to join our dynamic team as a Communications Officer. We are looking for an exceptionally motivated and organised individual who enjoys working in a fast-paced, high-profile communications environment.

The role will support the objectives of the Living Wage Foundation by communicating our work to a wide range of audiences, including senior business leaders and politicians, through a mix of communications channels: social media, media outlets, website and internal communications channels.

The post holder will be responsible for day-to-day social media channels and will support the development of press campaigns to build awareness of the Living Wage Foundation’s work. The role will work closely to support the Communications team’s work and help communicate work from the wider-team and network.

The role is also responsible for key communications with our network of over 9,000 accredited Living Wage Employers, including our monthly newsletters, blogs and case studies to celebrate our network of accredited employers

The position would suit an applicant with strong written and communication skills, with experience of working within either a communications team, busy press office, or media outlet.

Main Responsibilities

This role reports into the Communication and Marketing Manager. Working as a Communications Officer in the Living Wage Foundation for Citizens UK your main responsibilities will include:

Social and Digital Media

• Oversee our digital channels to raise awareness of the Living Wage, champion responsible employers and grow our movement

• Monitor, manage and schedule posts for our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts, tailoring the content to different channels and audiences.

• Field social media enquiries from the public and our networks of supporters and employers to connect them with the Living Wage campaign.

• Design and implement engaging digital engagement campaigns for Living Wage Employers and supporters, and to support Living Wage Foundation campaigns.

• Design communications collateral to increase engagement on social media, including editing of videos for uploading online and creation of social media graphics.

• Improve our digital offering for our network of accredited Living Wage Employers.

• Liaise with the Living Wage and Citizens UK team to keep up-to-date with news to share with key stakeholders

• Collate and summarise content to schedule newsletters and updates for our varied audiences.

• Develop our plans to build consumer support for Living Wage products and services

Media

• Contribute to media strategies and plans that help to win public and political support for the Living Wage Foundation and its work

• Write compelling press releases, blogs and opinion editorials to promote the Living Wage Foundation’s work

• Work with colleagues to develop case studies and ensure stories of low pay and the Living Wage are told effectively across all our internal and external communications channels

• Build effective relationships with the media, colleagues and other stakeholders to find new ways to raise our profile

• Monitor and evaluate media campaigns and reports

• Participate in the out of hours duty press.

• Website

• Sourcing and creating original content for both the Living Wage Foundation and external websites, including creating blog posts, news, guidance and general pages.

• Auditing and reviewing existing website content to ensure it is effective and up-to-date.

• Support on development of new website.

• Support pre-existing core teams and create/develop new core teams to provide leadership at institutional and cluster levels

General

• Administrate and facilitate communications team meetings.

• Support organising key campaign moments and events run by the communications team including the Champion Awards and Living Wage Week

Key Skills for Role

• Strong written communications

• Ability to create content for, and manage, social media channels

• Ability to work within a team

• Clear evaluation skills

• Ability to interpret media landscape

• Ability to build strong relationships with colleagues and external stakeholders