Vacancy: Head of Policy and Public Affairs

We are now recruiting for a Head of Policy and Public Affairs, on a permanent contract, working full-time, in a field based role.

About the role

The Head of Policy and Public Affairs ensures that BCS' policy and stakeholder engagement is joined up and effective across our strategic aims; these include influence, public benefit, convening expertise and supporting the development of the profession.

This is a leadership role which works with the executive team, senior leaders and senior volunteers to build support for our policy aims and for BCS’ mission to make information technology good for society.

The Head of Policy supports and advises the Director of Communications to ensure BCS’ research, policy positions, key messages and expertise are understood and supported across a range of external stakeholders and forums. Stakeholders include government departments, MPs, civil servants, special advisers and public and private sector organisations. Key channels the role will work through include cross-sector policy groups, APPGs; parliamentary launches, receptions and roundtables; written policy papers and consultation responses, speeches and briefings.

The role will also take a lead in ensuring that the organisation is informed about current and approaching policy changes to inform strategic decision making to safeguard our relevance, impact and market offer.

The role holder will be skilled at managing complex stakeholder environments, work with exemplary tact and diplomacy and be comfortable and credible at senior leadership level. They should also be able to balance and activate the expertise of our members across a variety of channels.

Key responsibilities:

• Integrate and align policy influence and stakeholder engagement across the three BCS Management Directorates (MDs) of Institute; Education and Public Benefit; and Learning and Development.
• Support the executive team and other relevant directors to manage and activate key policy themes within their spheres, for example, support for Chartered status, the value of membership, growing and broadening computing education, diversity and inclusion, digital skills, ethical practice.
• Support BCS Boards (including Influence Board, Fellows Technical Advisory Group (F-TAG), Community Board, Council, Trustee Board) and Specialist Groups to contribute effectively to BCS’ policy and stakeholder engagement, with the aims of promoting the value and social impact of membership.
• Cultivate external relationships – and support executive team to cultivate external relationships – that allow us to anticipate, influence and react to policy changes for the strategic benefit of the Institute.
• Map, grow and health-check influential relationships with external policy-related stakeholders; in particular, relationships with policymakers, tech sector representative organisations, civil servants and parliamentarians, to ensure BCS becomes the ‘go to’ professional body for thought leadership on societal information technology issues.
• Ensure BCS’ policy priorities and positions on current topics are aligned with our PR, media relations and social media activity, through regular meetings with key internal teams and regular observations of published outputs.
• Represent BCS as a spokesperson in external forums at senior level (e.g. APPG Roundtables, government department workshops) to communicate the organisation’s priorities, increasing their profile, comprehension and support amongst key stakeholders and enhance our reputation.
• Lead the production of high quality, impactful policy content to inform and steer purposeful debate and raise BCS’ reputation. Specifically, lead the production of relevant pro-active position papers and responses to government consultations, in partnership with key senior BCS leaders, relevant members and external stakeholders.
• Advise CEO and deputise for Directors at senior leadership team meetings as required.
• Continually monitor and assess impact of policy activity against agreed team KPIs, as well as regularly reviewing processes, practices and outcomes to ensure quality of service and make recommendations for ongoing improvements.

BCS is dedicated to providing training and development to help all staff realise their potential, and also offer a generous benefit package.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT are committed to promoting equality at every opportunity as an employer. This statement and our policies are designed to ensure our recruitment and employment practices and procedures actively promote equality of opportunity and value diversity.

All applicants must be eligible to work in the UK upon application.

PLEASE NOTE: This vacancy may be removed before any listed closing date once a sufficient amount of applications have been received.

In the event that we receive a high number of applications for this vacancy, we may be unable to provide an individual response to every candidate, therefore if you haven’t heard back from us within 4 weeks of the closing date, please consider your application unsuccessful on this occasion.