External Affairs Manager

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

The External Affairs Team is part of the Communications and Digital Publishing Division. We provide expert external stakeholder engagement and communications strategic advice, and plan and deliver engagement activity on behalf of the ONS. We seek to build trust, reputation, reach and understanding with diverse audiences.

Are you ready to make a significant impact by creating, delivering and evaluating high-quality communications and engagement with stakeholders including from government, public, academic and business sectors?

We’re looking for someone with excellent external affairs and interpersonal skills to develop and deliver activity across a range of ONS priority work areas to help achieve our communications and organisational objectives. You will support and implement strategies to strengthen our relationships with key stakeholders. This role offers the opportunity to craft compelling external communications, oversee key engagement channels, and support the running of high-profile events.

Job description

We’re looking for an ambitious individual with strong communication and interpersonal skills to play a key role in the delivery of effective and targeted communications activity across Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES).

You will coordinate external engagement and deliver events and communications to a diverse range of stakeholders.

This exciting opportunity will enable you to use your external communication and interpersonal skills to work collaboratively with colleagues across a range of disciplines to produce targeted and effective external communications to diverse audiences.

You will help write and review content for external comms materials, support external events and be the point of contact for external audiences. You will also manage team in boxes and provide secretariat support where necessary. Removing milestones.

Role Responsibilities:

• Manage, promote and evaluate key SES events.
• Create a range of written, audience-tailored, stakeholder communications including newsletters, promotional plans, briefings and presentations.
• Bring directorate-specific insights and perspectives into broader communication strategies and planning.
• Offer high-quality advice on communications insights for external communications and social media to support teams.
• Ensure continuous improvement of links across business areas and the central communications teams.
• Plan and deliver external engagement activities and events to support delivery within SES.
• Work alongside your line manager to oversee all GovDelivery external communications (newsletters, releases, and emails) for SES Directorates, including Q&A, content creation, writing/editing, and distribution.

Please note in this role travel is required with an occasional overnight stay.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

You will be a high performing communications professional who can demonstrate the following abilities:

• Experience of designing and developing engaging, targeted communications assets suitable for use across a range of channels.
• Highly collaborative approach to establish effective working relationships, within own team, across the department and with external stakeholders and partners.
• Ability to use negotiation, judgement and diplomacy skills to influence stakeholders.
• Good communication and engagement skills, both oral and written, with an ability to tailor reports to influence and inform different audiences.
• Proven ability to organise and prioritise complex work-streams, tracking and reporting to drive tasks forward and achieve objectives.
• Ability to operate independently in a fast-paced and changing environment to develop, plan and lead on audience-centric strategies.
• Event management and experience of running online webinars for external audiences.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Insight - https://www.communications.gov.uk/publications/competency-framework/
• Implementation - https://www.communications.gov.uk/publications/competency-framework/

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £34,587, Office for National Statistics contributes £10,019 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Security Clearance:

The requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying.

A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance but the Department will need to consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records

Application process:

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Stage 1 – Application

The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, skills, experience, CV, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.

Your personal statement should be no longer than 1250 words. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.

Stage 2 – Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours and technical skills listed in the job advert.

Interviews will be held online via Microsoft Teams.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Sift - w/c 13th April 2026

Interviews - w/c 27th April 2026

Dates are subject to change

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment below.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Nathan Birch
• Email : recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission

Attachments

2721 Advert 1B Permanent - ONS National v1-00 Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)