Communications Associate – Strategic Priorities

Job Title: Communications Associate – Strategic Priorities

Function: Customer, Communications and Marketing

Location: Hybrid – within our Nottingham office

Contract type: 12 months fixed term contract

Salary: £37,502 with potential to rise to £41,669 over 3 years

Closing Date: Friday 19 June 2026

NHS Supply Chain currently has an opportunity for a Communications Associate – Strategic Priorities to join our team during an exciting period of transformation, working to enable smarter, simpler, more connected care.

The Communications Associate – Strategic Priorities plays a key supporting role in the planning and delivery of strategic, system-wide communications that bring NHS Supply Chain’s 2030 strategy, business plan, and priority programmes of work to life.

This role ensures colleagues, customers, and stakeholders understand how our collective work contributes to delivering improved patient outcomes, value for the NHS, and transformative change across the supply chain.

Using a multi-channel, insight-led approach, the postholder provides expert counsel, creates compelling narratives, and leads communications activity that builds clarity, alignment, and engagement across the organisation.

The ideal candidate will have experience in internal and external communications within complex organisations, particularly in change programmes, with strong stakeholder engagement and content creation skills.

Every day you will….

Strategic Planning and Alignment

• Support the development and delivery of communications plans directly linked to the NHS Supply Chain 2030 strategy and annual business plan.

• Work collaboratively with strategic programme leads to ensure communication activity supports key milestones, decision points, and change impacts.

Programme Communications

• Support with the development and coordination of end-to-end communications for priority programmes, ensuring accuracy, clarity and alignment with the overall organisational narrative. Produce communication materials that build understanding, support change and reinforce programme objectives.

• Monitor emerging risks and issues, supporting the development of scenarios, mitigations and responses.

Content and Channel Support

• Support with the creation of high-quality, audience-led content including narrative frameworks, briefings, toolkits, presentations, stories, video scripts, intranet content and social content.

• Support integrated channel planning, ensuring effective use of digital, face-to-face, internal and leadership channels.

Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration

• Build strong relationships across NHS Supply Chain, enabling early visibility of developing programmes and priorities.

• Work with the wider Communications, Brand and Customer Voice team to ensure consistency, alignment, and clarity of messaging. Partner with key directorates to support cross-functional initiatives.

Measurement and Continuous Improvement

• Use insight, feedback and data to assess impact and inform improvements.

• Contribute to the development of standards, processes and best practice within the Communications function.

What can we offer you?

We want to reward you for your passion, enthusiasm, and hard work so we offer much more than a competitive salary:

• Hybrid working opportunities, giving you the flexibility to work collaboratively in the office and remotely.  
• We recognise our employees’ hard work and contributions with annual bonus schemes, long service, and colleague recognition awards. 
• 27 days holiday plus bank holidays.
• We are dedicated to your development, through in-house training, support, and access to external qualifications to maximise your potential.
• A focus on your well-being offering 1 day of paid well-being leave and free access to the 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme.
• Generous pension scheme (with us contributing 12% when you contribute 6%).
• Access to our Flexible Benefits Scheme, where you can choose from a variety of benefits such as Life Insurance, Critical Illness Cover, Income Protection, Health Cash Plan, Dental Insurance, and additional pension contributions that suit you.
• 2 days of paid volunteering leave allowing you to give back to your community. 
• Access to many discounts from the Blue Light Card to NHS Discounts.

NHS Supply Chain, who are we?

Our role is to support the NHS to save lives and improve health. We are a part of the NHS family, and our role is to source, deliver and supply healthcare products, services and food for NHS trusts and healthcare organisations across England and Wales.

We serve every NHS Trust and operate a national network of distribution centres, managing relationships with more than a thousand suppliers and delivering more than 8,000,000 orders each year to more than 17,000 locations. Doing all of this on behalf of the NHS gives NHS staff more time to focus on their main priority of providing excellent patient care.

 What skills will help you thrive in this role?

• A proven track record of working in internal and external communications, delivering communications plans and measuring success
• Managing communications in a complex organisation with many internal and external stakeholders
• Experience of communicating organisational-wide change programmes
• Experience of using Office 365 products and Adobe products
• Ideally having skills to plan, record, and edit podcast and video content
• Knowledge of using content management systems
• A proven track record of devising and implementing systems for evaluating the effectiveness of communications
• Outstanding interpersonal skills with the ability to develop strong relationships with colleagues and external partners
• Influencing and facilitation skills, highly organised, driving for simplicity and pragmatic outcomes
• Excellent organisational skills and the ability to manage a busy workload, balancing competing priorities and deadlines

Our Inclusive Commitment

At NHS Supply Chain, we are committed to building an inclusive environment where difference is not only valued, but celebrated, giving everyone the opportunity to thrive in their career. Developing our people is key to our success, so if this role sounds like the right next step in your career but your experience doesn’t match perfectly with the job advert, we encourage you to still apply.

Struggling to complete our application form, and require additional support? Reach out to our Talent Acquisition team at careers@supplychain.nhs.uk  who will be happy to help you with alternative ways to apply.

To keep our recruitment process efficient, we may close the advert early if application numbers are high. If you’re interested, we recommend applying promptly.

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