Actively Interviewing
This organisation is scheduling interviews as applications come in. They're ready to hire as soon as they find the right person. Don't miss your opportunity, apply now!
External Affairs and Strategy Specialist
Location: Home Based, Expectation of travel
Working Hours: 37
Contract Type: Permanent
Salary: £38,960.00 - £48,960
Flexibility in terms of hours and possible part time hours to be considered.
Please note: The salary listed reflects the full earning potential for this role. Starting salaries depend on experience and progression within the band.
About Waythrough
Waythrough was formed in 2024 following the merger of Humankind and Richmond Fellowship. Together, we’ve created one of the largest mental health and social support charities in England.
Every year, we support around 125,000 people through nearly 200 services – and it’s all made possible by our 3,500 brilliant staff and volunteers.
Make a real difference in your community
Are you passionate about helping others live safer, healthier, more independent lives? Join our team at Waythrough and support people facing challenges around mental health, substance use, housing or domestic abuse. This is more than just a job – it’s a chance to build meaningful relationships and create lasting change.
About the Role
As the External Affairs and Strategy Specialist, you will help shape Waythrough’s external influence, ensuring the organisation understands and responds to an increasingly complex political, policy and social environment. Working closely with senior leaders, you will support strategic decision-making, build key partnerships and drive campaigns and policy projects that create positive change for the people we support.
This is a home-based role with some travel required, including attendance at our joint All Party Parliamentary Group (five or six times per year), and service visits, team away days and wider meetings as required. . You will work closely with colleagues across the organisation, particularly the Communications team, to ensure our external voice is informed, impactful and rooted in lived experience.
Key Duties
- Monitor and interpret political, policy and sector developments, identifying emerging risks, opportunities and trends.
- Build strong relationships across Waythrough to identify subject matter experts and ensure external positions are informed by operational and lived experience.
- Lead and coordinate elements of national campaigns, maintaining momentum and working collaboratively with Communications colleagues to maximise impact.
- Brief senior leaders on external affairs issues and provide high-quality research, papers and recommendations to support organisational decision-making.
- Represent Waythrough at parliamentary groups, policy alliances, external forums and partnership meetings.
- Develop policy submissions, consultation responses, speeches, presentations and campaign materials.
- Build and maintain relationships with senior stakeholders, including parliamentarians, sector bodies and partner organisations.
- Ensure the voices of the people we support remain central to all advocacy, policy and campaign activity.
About You
You are a confident and proactive relationship builder who thrives in a complex and fast-moving environment. Working as part of a small team, and with support and coaching from the Director, you'll be comfortable seeking out expertise across the organisation, collaborating with a wide range of colleagues and influencing senior stakeholders.
You have excellent communication skills, a strong understanding of politics and policy, and the confidence to work closely with directors and executive leaders. You can balance multiple priorities while maintaining focus on what matters most, and you are motivated by ensuring that campaigns, policy positions and external messages are genuinely informed by the experiences and voices of the people we support. Above all, you'll bring initiative, curiosity and a willingness to get stuck in and make things happen.
What We Offer
We value the people who make a difference every day. Alongside meaningful work, you’ll enjoy a comprehensive benefits package:
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27 days’ annual leave, rising to 32 after 1 year (plus bank holidays)
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Pension scheme with 4.5% employer contribution, matched up to 6.5%
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Life assurance (3× annual salary)
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Enhanced sick pay and family-friendly pay
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Birthday leave and the option to buy up to 5 extra days’ annual leave
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Professional fee reimbursement for relevant qualifications
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24/7 online GP access and Employee Assistance Programme
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Recognition and long service awards via our Way to Go and Aspirations portals
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£500 Recommend a Friend bonus
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Cycle to Work scheme and Credit Union membership
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Discounts via Blue Light Card, Charity Discounts, Extras and Tickets for Good
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Free will writing service and wellbeing initiatives throughout the year.
Inclusion and accessibility
Waythrough is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and communities, especially those with lived experience of the issues we support.
We have signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme - all applicants are welcome, and adjustments can be made to enable fair participation.
Registered Charity
More than 1000
Our vision is to break down the barriers that stop people getting the support they need to live a life they value.
Thank you!
Why this role matters
Good ideas, strong evidence and inspiring stories only create change if the right people understand and act on them. This role exists to ensure that the case for physical activity reaches the right people, in the right way, at the right time, and that it moves them to act. You’ll develop compelling narratives grounded in insight, evidence, and behavioural science, helping partners across the system create greater impact and supporting Yorkshire Sport Foundation in leading and influencing far beyond its own boundaries.
Responsibilities
Strategic comms leadership
• Develop and lead a long-term strategic marketing andcommunications approach aligned to our Active Partnership role
and Sport England priorities
• Use behavioural science, audience insight and evidence to shapehow the system understands physical activity and inequality
• Identify the beliefs, motivations and barriers of key audiences anddesign communications that influence action
• Ensure all communications activities support YSF to influencestrategic stakeholders
• Advise the organisation on how messaging can support policy, investment and system change
• Develop Yorkshire Sport Foundation’s reputation as a trusted strategic voice
Influence & stakeholder engagement
• Shape communications that influence policy, investment and practice across local authorities, health and education systems
• Support senior leaders to land key messages with senior stakeholders
• Equip partners with messaging that helps them to demonstrate and amplify the impact they make
• Translate complex insight and evaluation into clear narratives and messages
Insight-led communications
• Embed audience insight and behavioural science into messaging
• Combine data, evaluation and lived experience to demonstrate impact whilst ensuring communications reflect communities
authentically
• Build a learning approach to testing, adapting and improving messaging effectiveness
Organisational leadership
• Lead and develop the strategic marketing and communications function
• Set standards for when communications activity should, and should not, happen
• Maintain humility while strengthening clarity of impact and purpose
Channels & delivery
• Plan and deliver integrated marketing and communications campaigns across digital, media, content and internal channels, ensuring activity aligns with organisational objectives and brand standards
• Produce and oversee high-quality content (copy, press materials, web, social, email and collateral) while coordinating agencies, suppliers and internal stakeholders to meet deadlines and budgets.
• Monitor performance using analytics and insight, report on outcomes and continuously optimise campaigns and messaging to improve engagement and reach.
Other
• To lead on YSF public affairs and policy work in partnership with the CEO
• Strategic comms planning with the Active Partnership National Organisation and other leading Active Partnerships ensuring consistency of messaging across England
• To support the marketing of events across Yorkshire
• To work flexibly to respond to changing organisational requirements and carry out any other duties which may arise from
time to time
• To follow policies and procedures in relation to other matters, e.g.Health and safety, safeguarding, GDPR, financial procedures, etc.
What we’re looking for
We know great candidates rarely tick every box. If you have strongskills across most of the areas below and believe you can add value, we’d love to hear from you.
• Skills in both operational and strategic marketing and communications
• Ability to influence policy, investment or organisational behaviours
• Ability to design and deliver communications strategies that change decisions
• Skills in translating evidence and insight into persuasive narratives
• Understanding of behavioural science and audience-centred communications
• Able to operate with credibility and humility in partnership environments
• Comfortable working where success means others receive recognition
• Strategic thinker who challenges activities that lack purpose
• Commitment to reducing inequalities
• Strategic narrative and messaging development skills
• Senior stakeholder influencing and facilitation skills
• Ability to simplify complex evidence and communicate in engaging ways
• Leadership and team development skills
Other
• Ability to travel independently around West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire.
• Ability and willingness to work to our organisational values
Please make sure you demonstrate your ability to meet therequirements of the job by giving clear, concise examples of how you meet each of the requirements in the What We’re Looking For section of the job description.
We recognise and welcome our responsibility to remove any barriers in our Recruitment and Selection process for disabled people. We have tried to do this, but if you have a disability and identify any barriers in the job description or employee specification, please tell us of these in your application. We are committed to making reasonable adjustments
to the job wherever possible and it would help us to know your needs to do this.
