Kirklees Council UK Jobs – Engagement Officer

To apply for this job you must be an employee of Kirklees Council for the duration of the recruitment process – up to and including the start date – and have successfully completed your probationary period.

Please note that if you work for an Academy you are not an employee of the Council.

Building on some of the fantastic work delivered during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve recently developed an ambitious Data and Insight Strategy. To support and enable delivery of our Strategy, we’re in the process of building a new Data and Insight Function within the Council.

The role will be predominantly home-based with some travel to Kirklees, regional and national meetings required as part of the role.

For more information about our data and insight ambitions, and current data and insight vacancies, please visit our Data and Insight Careers page.

About the role

This exciting new role will be undertake high quality consultation and engagement activities and help services make effective use of customer insights from these activities across the Council.

You will provide technical expertise and advise on the design and delivery of consultation and engagement activities.

You will bring new innovative consultation and engagement methodologies to life and ensure Kirklees is driving good quality modern consultation and engagement.

To help you deliver, you will be supported by a range of data and insight specialist teams covering areas such as data analytics; data visualisation; data engineering and development; spatial data management and research and evaluation.

We know we need to take people with us on the journey, so you will need to work closely and collaboratively with colleagues in all Council Services to improve data literacy and embed a data & insight culture.

About you

We are looking for someone who shares our energy and ambition for how customer insight can be used to make a tangible difference to outcomes for people and places.

You will have proven experience of working with consultation and engagement projects and be confident in building trusted relationships with colleagues at all levels. You will be committed to continuous improvement and have a desire to succeed – individually and as part of a team.

You will have the knowledge, skills, experience and expertise work on a broad range of consultation & engagement projects and be confident in your ability to develop, implement and embed best practice standards, tools and approaches, ensuring quality is central to everything we do.

If you are looking for a role that is challenging and hugely rewarding, and you have the skills and ambition we are looking for, we would love to hear from you.

About us

Kirklees is set in the heart of beautiful West Yorkshire and has a growing population of c440,000. With the two major centres of Huddersfield and Dewsbury, it also encompasses several smaller towns. It is well served by both rail and road networks and is close to Leeds and Manchester.

We are a metropolitan single tier authority, the 13th biggest local authority in the UK in terms of population. We have an elected leader and cabinet structure, and a very talented and dedicated workforce.

We are committed to building a strong local democracy and offer many exciting career opportunities for those who want to help us achieve this. We value our workforce and want everyone to have their say.

We are a modern and progressive council, committed to family friendly, flexible and agile ways of working – as well as offering many other benefits including a generous pension scheme and annual leave entitlement of 27.5 days a year (plus public holidays). We’re committed to staff development and continuous improvement.

For an informal discussion about the role, please contact Anna Bowtell (Consultation & Engagement Lead) at [email protected] or [email protected] (Senior Consultation & Engagement Officer).