Volunteering and Community Engagement Officer

Job summary

The Volunteering and Community Engagement Officer’s role balances these two pivotal and complementary areas of work.

Community engagement is our work across all forest beats to ensure our woods are welcoming and safe for local communities to use and enjoy, reaching out to community groups to facilitate visits and increase understanding and support for our work.

The volunteering part of the role provides specialist support to those offering volunteering opportunities at both our forest beats and our main recreation sites, adding value and ensuring best practice as we increase the number and quality of volunteering opportunities in line with Growing the Future to 2031.

This post sits within the Recreation and Engagement team which consists of four recreation hub teams, Haldon Forest, Cardinham, Forest of Dean, Wyre & the Marches, and specialist functions such as community engagement, learning, volunteering, marketing and communications.

The role can be based anywhere within the district, with frequent travel around the district a necessary part of its success.

Job description

Key responsibilities & accountabilities

Volunteering – approximately 75%

• Create and implement the West district Volunteer Plan, identifying areas in need of support at both our main recreation hubs and our wider forest and opportunities to maintain and grow volunteer activity and diversify participation
• Support and promote volunteering opportunities, ensuring best practice is followed and a strong health and safety culture is emphasised.
• Provide support for staff managing volunteers throughout the district, including dealing with challenging situations as they arise. Tasks include reviewing volunteer agreements, ensuring volunteers are registered on the volunteer database, carrying out FISA checks on practical work parties, and providing advice on welfare provision, as well as monitoring and auditing volunteer management
• Carry out regular site visits to review and support volunteer good practice; joining in with volunteer activities to get a sense of the work being done and build solid relationships with staff and volunteers alike
• Coordinate volunteering activity including corporate volunteering and partnership working. Organise and run corporate volunteer days in conjunction with the Recreation Projects Manager in line with the National guidance on corporate groups
• Coordinate the shadow volunteer programme in West
• Keep clear, concise and accurate record keeping using the Volunteer Management CRM system, ensuring all staff who manage volunteers understand the database and input details regularly and accurately
• Recruit and induct new volunteers; book, facilitate and on occasion deliver training sessions
• Keep up to date with volunteering internally by attending Volunteer Network Meetings, Teams catch up calls and linking in on a 1:1 basis with the team. Run two West-district in-person volunteering meetings a year – in winter and summer – to pass on knowledge and troubleshoot.
• Liaise with national colleagues and champion volunteering, telling the story of our volunteers to volunteers, wider staff teams and externally.
• Actively seek feedback from volunteers to help develop our ideas
  

Community Engagement – approximately 20%

• Lead our community rangers in their work across the district, with regular monthly team catch ups online, and hosting two face-to-face meetings a year in autumn and spring to brainstorm issues and showcase best practice
• Travel around the district to support development of work – this could include walking to remote areas to troubleshoot particular issues with teams, helping design community questionnaires, or representing Forestry England at public events
• Lead on the creation of community plans, including the district schedule and budget for plans, public engagement events, templates where appropriate, and production of the final plans
• Provide advice and guidance on day-to-day issues around forest ops engagement and day-to-day community work issues
• Evolve how we engage around forest plans, ensuring we are reaching out to the right audiences and gathering their views as part of the process
• Lead and proactively support volunteers and members of staff to deliver community engagement programmes and events
• Support the development of key relationships with third-party stakeholders
  

General – 5%

• Manage the community engagement annual budget, reporting to the Operations Manager for Marketing and Communications on a monthly basis
• Demonstrate and proactively support safe working practices, review risk assessments, and share messaging, training, updates and lone working support for the community team
• Encourage rangers to share good news stories nationally and locally, internally and externally

This role’s grade usually contains line management duties. At present there is no line management attached to this role, but this might be added in the future.

Person specification

Skills, knowledge & experience

Essential professional and technical experience

• Experience of working collaboratively with organisations, community groups, volunteers and local people, confident in starting new conversations and building relationships
• Experience in creating and developing engagement packages and programmes
• Experience of working with communities facing disengagement with local services or experiencing levels of deprivation and additional barriers to making decisions about their community.
• Experience and confident in running events and public engagement
• Able to build and maintain effective relationships with partner organisations, including networking with other agencies and departments.
• Ability to act as a trouble shooter, arbitrator, problem solver and crisis handler.
• Reliable and self-motivated, ability to work independently and without close supervision
• Able to act in a professional manner and with integrity at all times, understanding and adhering to professional boundaries
• Able to challenge inappropriate behaviour sensitively and diplomatically
• Discretion and confidentiality combined with sensitivity and diplomacy
• Able to work independently as well as part of a team.

Qualifications

Essential

• Functional skills in Math’s and English.

Behaviours

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

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £33,854, Forestry Commission contributes £9,807 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

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.

How to apply…

We cannot accept applications via email. Please follow the steps outlined below. Any CVs and/or personal statements sent outside the system will not be considered for shortlisting.

You will be asked to write a 200 word statement on your relevant experience and career history, along with a personal statement of no more than 500 words. You will be assessed on both during sifting. More details about how to apply are listed on the application form.

The Behaviours being assessed at interview are –

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Managing a Quality Service

You may also be assessed on Experience and the Technical Success Profile at the interview. The technical element will include a presentation to be prepared in advance and delivered during the interview.

Successful candidates will undergo a criminal record check and the government baseline personnel security standard check.

If you require any reasonable adjustments, please email fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk.

If you're planning to use AI to support your application, please ensure you've read our guidelines here first.

Read more about our application process and working with us on the Forestry England website.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo an enhanced (or equivalent) criminal record check.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

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk
• Email : fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk

Further information

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of appointment on the basis of fair and open competition and appointment on merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles.If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact FCE by email: englandhr.services@forestryengland.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission, which regulates all Civil Service recruitment.

Attachments

Volunteering and Communitty Engagement Officer JD Opens in new window (pdf, 177kB)