WHAT DOES A COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER DO?

Published: August 19, 2024 - The Communications Officer contributes to the development and implementation of strategic communication campaigns, ensuring alignment with the Faculty’s priorities. Plays a vital role in promoting academic research, leveraging appropriate channels to enhance recognition and impact. Supports various communication projects, staying informed on the latest marketing trends to deliver effective and up-to-date communication strategies.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Communications Officer

1. Communications Officer Duties

  • Article Writing: Write articles and relevant stories that matter in the current zeitgeist.  
  • Point of Contact: Act as the point of contact for both external and international Thales parties.  
  • Digital Media Creation: Create and deliver the best digital media for all digital platforms.  
  • Channel Management: Maintain and coordinate the digital internal and external/social channels, together with international colleagues.  
  • Project Coordination: Contribute to and/or lead integrated communications projects, working with other teams, external organizations, and suppliers to deliver objectives to a high standard and on time.  
  • Message Communication: Communicate effective, accurate, and consistent messages to internal and external audiences promptly.  
  • Content Creation: Produce excellent written materials including news articles, blogs, promotional copy, reports, and other communications.  
  • Engaging Content: Create and curate high-quality, engaging content for a range of digital and non-digital communication channels, including the intranet, websites, newsletters, events, and social media.  
  • Design Coordination: Coordinate and support the design and creation of documents, presentations, marketing materials, corporate publications, and digital media including infographics, photography, and videos.  
  • Performance Monitoring: Monitor, measure, and report on the results of communications activities, and make recommendations for future improvements.  
  • Marketing Research: Conduct marketing research, including competitor analysis, and surveys or focus groups with staff and customers.  
  • Trend Awareness: Keep up-to-date with new communications trends and techniques.  
  • Brand Champion: Be a champion for the Guinness brand, ensuring it is applied consistently and effectively across all communications.

2. Communications Officer Details

  • Relationship Building: Build and maintain excellent working relationships with colleagues, senior managers, wider business teams, and external stakeholders.  
  • Administrative Support: Handle day-to-day admin, including responding to internal and external inquiries, mail merges, organizing and attending meetings, writing agendas and/or minutes, and updating communications databases.  
  • Mailbox Management: Monitor, respond to, and triage queries through the Faculty mailbox.  
  • Approval Management: Approve the release of communications to mailing lists.  
  • Newsletter Support: Assist in the creation of newsletters and other communications.  
  • Website and Social Media: Update the external-facing website and manage Faculty social media channels.  
  • Communication Tools: Use a variety of communication tools and techniques to efficiently and creatively deliver the Internal Communication strategy, online and in person.  
  • Event Management: Keep colleagues connected as we navigate hybrid working, including running virtual events.  
  • Intranet Rollout: Support the rollout of the new staff intranet and engage with colleagues to ensure a successful launch.  
  • Well-being Communication: Work closely with HR to communicate the well-being strategy, supporting colleagues through challenging times.  
  • Channel Maintenance: Maintain day-to-day communication channels, including delivering weekly newsletters.  
  • Engagement Monitoring: Promote and monitor levels of engagement in the workplace EUA region.  
  • Portal Management: Assist in running the EUA Portal, checking, and uploading content.

3. Communications Officer Responsibilities

  • Brand Value Enhancement: Assist in improving brand value in the EUA region by standardizing logo usage and ensuring adherence to corporate guidelines.  
  • Brand Personality: Contribute to the enhancement of the brand personality through targeted initiatives.  
  • Product Placement: Support brand promotion via product placement opportunities in films, games, and model creation.  
  • Story Collation: Collate and edit brand stories from the EUA region to support GHQ's external brand narratives.  
  • Press Release Management: Edit customer advisories, and global press releases, and create EUA-specific press releases and social media posts.  
  • Website and Media Management: Assist in managing the EUA website, ensuring accurate content publication, and monitoring media coverage.  
  • Promotional Materials: Provide promotional materials for sales support and local offices, such as brochures, flyers, and targeted advertisements.  
  • Article Generation: Generate ideas for articles and features, engaging contributors from various business sectors across the EUA region.
  • Design Collaboration: Work with an external design agency on design and layout.
  • Stakeholder Feedback: Regularly assess stakeholder views on publications and monitor magazine success.
  • Project Communication Support: Provide communication support for projects, including newsletters, videos, and workplace campaigns for CSR initiatives, IT development, and HR.

4. Communications Officer Accountabilities

  • Event Coordination: Assist the communications team in the coordination of industry events and conferences within the region.  
  • Gift Distribution: Coordinate with offices for the supply and distribution of gifts and giveaways, respecting the communications budget.  
  • Giveaway Approval: Review and approve branded giveaway requests.  
  • Merchandise Management: Assist in the creation, ordering, and distribution of calendars, notebooks, and event merchandise.  
  • Budget Preparation: Assist in the preparation of the communications budget and collate actual quarterly spending for the region, highlighting any differentials between budget and actual expenditure.  
  • Internal Communications: Contribute to the development and implementation of internal communications strategy, measure and evaluate the effectiveness of internal communications.  
  • Content Creation: Write, edit, and manage regional newsletters and event media releases in consultation with the Communications Team and regional staff.  
  • Visual Identity Compliance: Support the Content Manager in ensuring internal and external communications align with the visual identity guidelines and associated communications policies.  
  • Inventory Management: Manage the operations and inventory for branded uniforms, merchandise, and promotional items in consultation with the Content Manager.  
  • Media Management: Prepare daily organizational media reports and manage the media distribution list.  
  • Media Inquiries: Participate in an on-call roster for media inquiries.

5. Communications Officer Functions

  • Strategy Development: Contribute to local communications strategy development and direction in consultation with the state office executive team and national office business areas.  
  • Content Creation: Write and edit a range of communication materials, including articles, documents, web content, presentations, and other materials.  
  • Project Management: Undertake and occasionally lead project tasks and activities, including potential management of consultants and suppliers.  
  • Networking: Build and maintain effective network relationships with officers at various levels of the AEC and a range of stakeholders.  
  • Process Improvement: Contribute to continuous improvements by identifying and implementing improved work practices and processes.  
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Provide support and guidance to both the Senior Communications Officer and Senior Communications Manager, as well as senior members of NHS Digital on all aspects of stakeholder engagement and public affairs.  
  • Communication Support: Support the development of a variety of communications materials, for example, for parliamentary engagement, external international and domestic events, and speeches.  
  • Research and Analysis: Actively engage with strategic stakeholders such as departmental bodies.  
  • Stakeholder Relations: Support the development and management of domestic and international stakeholder relations and public affairs strategy.  
  • Collaboration: Work collaboratively with partners across the Arm Length Bodies to develop a joined-up approach to engagement with shared key stakeholders.  
  • Relationship Management: Develop, monitor, and maintain effective working relationships with key internal and external partners.  
  • Collateral Development: Craft, develop, write, edit, proof, and budget relevant collateral required for communication campaigns and strategies.

6. Communications Officer Overview

  • Client Liaison: Be a key contact for clients and work with them to understand their priority projects and objectives.  
  • Strategic Advice: Liaise with communication experts across City Communication to provide comprehensive strategic advice and reporting.  
  • Strategy Development: Assist with the research, development, implementation, and evaluation of communication strategies and campaigns.  
  • Communication Delivery: Deliver communication advice and activities.  
  • Trend Awareness: Keep up to date with marketing and communication research, theory, and new trends.  
  • Project Management: Manage a variety of communication tasks on various projects.  
  • Plan Development: Work with the Manager, Marketing and Communication, to contribute to the development and delivery of the Faculty Marketing and Communication plan.  
  • Strategic Support: Ensure that the Faculty’s strategic priorities are appropriately supported by central and local communication efforts.  
  • Service Delivery: Contribute to managing the delivery of communication services across the Faculty to meet local requirements in research promotion, stakeholder engagement, student retention, and other relevant areas.  
  • Research Promotion: Play a key role in the promotion of Faculty research to increase recognition of academic contribution, identifying and leveraging the appropriate channels through which to build the profile of the Faculty and its high-performing academics.  
  • Enterprise Alignment: Identify Faculty research that aligns with the agreed enterprise focus areas with the potential to achieve high-level exposure and impact.  
  • Showcase Efforts: Work with the central Marketing and Communication team to showcase these efforts through enterprise channels.

7. Communications Officer Roles

  • Communication Strategy: Developing and implementing communication strategies for a range of projects, reports, and events.  
  • Effectiveness Monitoring: Monitor these strategies’ effectiveness and adjust communications practices based on what works and what does not, including developing key messages, social media campaigns, press releases, media outreach material, and more.  
  • Editorial Support: Provide editorial support and ongoing feedback to program staff to translate research into compelling key messages and stories that resonate with priority audiences.  
  • Staff Training: Provide support to program staff so they have the necessary skills to communicate key messages through different communication channels (e.g., traditional media, social media, online, etc.) and to act as public ambassadors for IISD.  
  • Event Promotion: Assist in the promotion and hosting of the team’s virtual events, such as webinars.  
  • Media Relations: Cultivate and manage relationships with journalists and influencers, particularly in Canada, to get coverage of the work in key publications.  
  • Social Media Management: Manage Resilience Program social media accounts to keep them relevant, timely, and engaging to reach key audiences.  
  • Content Management: Maintain the Resilience Program’s content on IISD websites using content management systems (WordPress and Drupal).  
  • Content Creation: Assist in developing blog posts, stories, infographics, and videos that make IISD's work accessible to non-expert audiences.  
  • Coordination: Help the Resilience Communications Team coordinate with IISD’s core Communications team to ensure the Resilience Program’s work is included in broader, IISD-wide communications activities.  
  • Brand Compliance: Ensure brand coherence and compliance with existing IISD communications practices across all IISD websites and publications (new and existing).  
  • Image Selection: Identify and select images to communicate IISD’s work in publications.  
  • Best Practices: Continuously discover and share new industry best practices to maximize efficiency.  
  • Digital Media Archives: Maintain digital media archives including photos and videos.
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