Communications and Engagement Specialist - Waste Regulation - Deposit Return Scheme and Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility - 25914

Do you want to be at the forefront of making the UK a cleaner, greener, more sustainable nation? Have you got a passion for communicating inspiring messages to colleagues and building support for new initiatives? Then we may have the role for you.
We need 2 experienced, confident, and creative individuals to lead our communications & engagement activities to support the roll out of innovative new recycling initiatives across the waste and resources industry.

You will be a visible leader and excellent communicator, effectively coordinating across teams and business units. Your leadership will ensure that communications and engagement work is prioritised and delivered, and you will excel at identifying opportunities to maximise the impact of our communications, enhancing delivery across the business.
You will be supporting the Waste Regulatory Reform team in the Environment and Business Directorate. Successful candidates will be aligned to lead on one of the following projects, with scope to contribute to other business priorities:
The first is the implementation of Deposit Return Schemes across the UK. These schemes will incentivise the public to recycle various drinks containers by providing a refund upon the return of drinks containers. This scheme will reduce littering and boost recycling and the circular economy in the UK.
The second is the delivery of the Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for packaging waste. This scheme builds on the success of the current producer responsibility programme, by ensuring that businesses who place packaging materials onto the market, contribute to the cost of recovering and recycling those materials, moving the UK closer to a circular economy.

Effective internal and external communications work is vital to the success of these schemes across the waste management industry. These roles may also offer the opportunity to work across other exciting new developments throughout the waste regulatory reform programme

You will be supporting the Waste Regulatory Reform team in the Environment and Business Directorate. This dynamic team is developing and implementing a variety of new waste reduction and recycling initiatives to further enhance the UK’s waste management approaches, in line with DEFRA’s 2018 ‘Waste and Resources Strategy’
This team engages with numerous stakeholders, including central government, industry, local authorities, and the public, so offers a very wide range of experiences for new candidates.

• Motivate and inspire colleagues, providing leadership and direction to plan and deliver timely and effective communications
• Work across multiple teams and departments and adjust style and approach to suit a range of audiences
• Develop communications strategies for long term and/or high-profile change and development programmes, ensuring maximum engagement
• Able to convert technical / specialist language into publicly understandable formats.
• Collate and share successes, improvements, and performance metrics, making best use of our data to tell our story
• Build and sustain excellent working relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders, and influence others, including senior colleagues.
• Make use of a wide range and style of communications on a variety of platforms to reach our target audiences
• Work to tight deadlines to deliver accurate, engaging messages
• Improve the impact of our communications by collating and making full use of feedback

As a dispersed team, we offer flexibility over the office base location for this role, with the option to work from home, with occasional travel to key locations across England, to attend face to face events.

You will have the opportunity to take on an incident role when joining the Environment Agency. There are a vast range of roles available to suit individual personal circumstances and full training will be provided. Your line manager will support you in balancing the different aspects of your role.

If you would like to discuss the role please contact the below persons via email to arrange a call back:

Nikki Collins
Senior Advisor, Deposit Return Scheme, nikki.collins@environment-agency.gov.uk

or
Sarah Watkins
Senior Advisor, Extended Producer Responsibility, sarah.watkins@environment-agency.gov.uk

Listens and questions to understand and engage. Conveys information and ideas clearly, accurately and persuasively through speech and writing.

Please tell us about a time when you have demonstrated this competency at the appropriate level for this role.

Presenting a case in a convincing and attractive way that will win people over, encouraging them to follow plans willingly; often succeeding where logic and reason alone would fail.

Please tell us about a time when you have demonstrated this competency at the appropriate level for this role.

Develops and maintains effective working relationships.

Please tell us about a time when you have demonstrated this competency at the appropriate level for this role.