Communications Designer

About the role

As a Communications Designer within the Content Hub, your role is to create effective, innovative, and engaging visual communications. In doing so, you will help to tell the Partnership’s stories, joining the dots so that our Partners don’t have to.

You’ll work collaboratively with Partners in the Content Hub and the Strategic Communications team usually across a number of projects at the same time. You will be used to working to tight deadlines and be able to prioritise your work effectively.

Your content will have a broad reach, so you will take an audience first approach to planning and design of your communications. Your communications must be accessible to all - so you will apply up to date accessibility standards to all of your work.

You’ll bring specialised graphic design experience to the team - they’ll look to you to provide innovative ideas to engage our Partners in what’s happening in their business. You should expect your work to span digital and printed media.

Through the Communications capability you’ll have the opportunity to develop and stretch personally and professionally to achieve your potential.

In addition to your contractual pay, any time worked between 22:00 - 06:00 will attract Night Premium at a rate of £- per hour. This will also apply to existing Partners who have enrolled onto Enhanced Hours Premium arrangements.

At a glance:

• Salary: £36,500.00 - 54,800.00 FTE per annum, based on skills and experience.  This is a part time position and therefore the salary will be pro-rata

• Contract type: This is a 12 month secondment/fixed term opportunity 

• Hours and location of the role:

  • 17.5 hours per week

  • Preferred working pattern Monday full day, Tuesday full day, Wednesday AM half day

  • Your home location will be our London Head Office

  • The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office, both Bracknell and London, and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The team attend the office once every fortnight as a minimum to connect and attend key meetings on more of an ad-hoc basis

Key responsibilities:

• Act in accordance with the Partnership’s purpose, behaviours, and democratic principles, constructively participating in co-ownership, and demonstrating to customers and each other that it is a better way of doing business. Share your knowledge, experiences, ideas and opinion to improve the Partnership, speaking honestly and frequently

• Communications and engagement strategy - play your part in delivering and developing (ongoing) our agreed communications and engagement strategy

• Collaboration - embrace team working to support your team-mates with workload, ideas and well-being whenever possible and work with other communication teams and the Content Hub to ensure alignment of message and activity

• Culture - help create the conditions for all Partners to thrive and consistently make their best contribution

• You’ll work in a matrix team of Partners from across communications and in other business areas - acting in accordance with the Partnership behaviours

• Actively share your skills and experience to broaden thinking and upskill technically

• Your development - invest in your personal and professional development to achieve your potential, by doing more, doing better, or doing different

• Listening and influencing - ensure you connect with key stakeholders and Partners so you can create, inform or influence the best outcomes to deliver our engagement strategy

• Planning - contribute to our Jira planning tool and regularly review to ensure the activity happens at the right time

• Feedback and measurement - ensure feedback is used to continuously improve your work and demonstrate to stakeholders that objectives are being met

• Creativity - ensure you draw from internal and external innovation to ensure our approach is not static and continues to excite our audiences

• Partnership knowledge - ensure you have a solid understanding of the Partnership Plan, performance against plan and the narrative and you understand and share back with the team the priorities and challenges of the business areas you support

• Communication/engagement/technical innovations - Use and build your internal and external networks - and online and elsewhere - to keep abreast of the latest communication and engagement advancements, including technology, and feed these into the strategic thinking of the team

You will have proven experience of these key skills, outcomes and deliverables:

• Effective people engagement through professional visual communications and graphic design, ensuring engagement is appropriate to the audience, content and business priority

• To provide the visual look and styling of key strategic pieces where strong visual communications and specialised graphic design is required

• To create a variety of materials for all audiences and channels; such as infographics, illustrations, branding, posters, leaflets, animated gifs etc.

• Develop creative ideas and concepts that uphold the JLP Brand Guidelines, choosing the appropriate medium and style to meet the outcomes and objectives

The successful candidate will evidence the following skills:

Design and creativity:

• Generate ideas, alternatives, or possibilities to solve problems and leverage opportunities

• Excellent working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite - especially InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator

• Explores possibilities and acts on instinct to generate well-formed concepts, theories and ideas, and understands how these contribute to business objectives

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Influencing decisions and stakeholders:

• Works collaboratively through active listening and assertive communication to reach win-win outcomes

• Adapts style to influence stakeholders and keeps Partnership interest as the forefront of decision making

Detail orientation:

• Pay close attention to all of the small particulars when working on a task or project by focusing closely on each project, constantly find ways to finish tasks efficiently

Excellent communications skills:

• The ability to understand, digest and present ideas and concepts to a variety of stakeholders

• The ability to take often complex information and help communicate it in an engaging and accessible way

Essential skills and/or experience you’ll need: 

• Highly proficient in the use of design software i.e. Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator - need demonstrable visual design skills and a strong portfolio

• Degree or equivalent in Art and Design

• Ability to manage and deliver multiple projects simultaneously

• Experience of working collaboratively with a multi-disciplined team

• Experience in design / communications, either agency or in-house

Desirable skills and/or experience you may have: 

• Understanding of people engagement principles

• Basic understanding and use of Adobe Premiere Pro

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The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.