About the Role
Oxford University Press (OUP)—the world’s largest university press—is looking for a Head of Corporate Affairs to join its busy Group Communications team, which is responsible for building and maintaining our reputation, and for engaging and communicating with our 5,000-strong global workforce.
Reporting into the Group Communications Director, you will head up one of the two Centres of Excellence, sit on the Group Communications senior leadership team, and contribute directly to the development of the function’s overarching strategy.
Within the Corporate Affairs centre, you will be responsible for internal communications, news and PR, corporate reporting, and communicating about our mission. The focus of the team will be to deliver powerful, engaging, integrated communications that tell a compelling story, build trust with our audiences, and enhance our reputation as an organization. You will be working on a breadth of activities, from internal initiatives to connect our people with our mission and future direction, to insightful thought leadership campaigns that demonstrate OUP’s global expertise.
You’ll manage the Senior Internal Communications Manager and Senior News & PR Manager, as well as our two divisional Communications Managers, helping to ensure that our central communications and divisional communications are as aligned as possible. You will also work very closely with our Head of Brand & Digital Communications to maximize performance and resourcing across the two Centres of Excellence.
Through this role, you will interact regularly with senior leaders, including our CEO, and colleagues from all over the world to support their communications requirements and provide best-practice consultancy.
This is a really exciting, varied role for someone who likes working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment and who has a passion for communications, and for helping a high performing team to continue to thrive.
We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.
About You
You’ll be a communications professional with excellent written and verbal communication skills. You’ll be enthusiastic, motivated, a strong team leader, passionate about our mission, and eager to make a positive difference to our team, and our work.
The specific skills we’re looking for include:
Solid background in corporate communications, encompassing strategic experience and practical operational knowledge.
Effective leadership and influencing skills.
Experience of issues management.
Experience of working with senior leadership.
The ability to build strong, effective working relationships.
An excellent standard of English, both written and verbal.
Knowledge of best practice in corporate reporting.
Desirable:
Experience of matrix management.
An understanding of the global publishing, education, and/or research sectors.
Management experience.
Benefits
We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind we offer 25 days’ holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3-days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect to working patterns, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.
We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.
This role comes with the added benefit of private medical insurance and a management bonus.
Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.
Queries
Please contact
[email protected] with any queries relating to this role.
We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.