Sightsavers Hiring for Head of Content and Stories at Haywards Heath RH Full Time

Sightsavers is looking for a Head of Content and Stories – a 12–13-month fixed term maternity cover contract role within our expanding campaigns and communications team.

Contract: 12-12 Month Fixed Term Maternity Cover Contract

Hours: This is a full-time role with some flexibility around hours worked and some home working

About the role

The content and stories team brings together content production and story gathering functions into one creative team. As well as delivering in these dedicated areas, we are responsible for responding to creative briefs on strategic communications projects. We develop long term creative campaigns and tactical content assets which inform, engage and persuade our priority audiences and help fulfil our communications, campaigning and organisational objectives.

We are looking for a passionate and talented interim Head of Content and Stories who can guide and inspire the team, providing creative and ethical leadership while continuing to embed our processes and adapt our approach based on learning.

The role has responsibility for implementing the creative strategy, ensuring our creative pillars and ethical storytelling principles guide everything we produce. And for championing ethical storytelling across the organisation, promoting the principles and consulting on fundraising materials.

The Head of Content and Stories needs to provide strong management to the team managers and work with them to ensure the three strands of the team collaborate and communicate effectively. The role also needs to manage the budgets for the team and for the directorate’s story collection and content production activity.

About you

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in leading creative development and delivering innovative campaigns as well as extensive experience in story collection. To succeed in this role, you will need:

• extensive knowledge and experience of devising and implementing successful content and story approaches to deliver strategic communication objectives
• a proven track record of developing and delivering creative communication campaigns that achieve high level change
• experience of creative thinking and brief management and leadership
• experience of managing a content and stories function as part of a wider communications department (or being part of function and contributing to the running of the team)
• experience of leading a team of creative professionals in balancing a challenging workload
• experience of working in, and knowledge of, international development issues
• experience of working in a politically sensitive environment and providing communications advice as it relates to ethical content policies and practices to senior colleagues
• experience of critically assessing creative materials
• experience of devising and maintaining systems and processes to ensure creative projects are delivered effectively
• the ability to operate with a high degree of flexibility in covering a range of activities and responding to urgent requests
• the ability to consistently horizon scan, model best practice and learn from success and failure to drive continuous improvement and innovation across content and story methods and practices
• demonstrable understanding of ethical storytelling issues and the integral role it plays in delivering strategic communications

This is a brilliantly varied role, please read the full job description for further details. As an equal opportunity employer, we actively encourage applications from all sections of the community. Sightsavers is a Disability Confident Leader and qualified people living with a disability are particularly encouraged to apply.

Benefits

Sightsavers offers some fantastic benefits. Our comprehensive benefits package includes generous annual leave allowance, pension, season ticket loan, cycle to work scheme, discounted gym memberships and wellness discounts. If you choose to work in or are visiting our collaborative, modern office space, you will find it an easy 20-minute train journey from Brighton or 45 minutes from London.

Next steps

To apply for this opportunity, please complete an application via our recruitment portal. We are particularly interested in learning of your motivations for applying. Please note that there will be an expectation that you can occasionally visit our modern and collaborative offices in Haywards Heath, West Sussex (RH16 3BW)

We anticipate that remote interviews will take place in late August 2022 and the evaluation process will include a role specific task to be completed by shortlisted candidates in advance of this.