Director of Marketing and Communications
Vacancy Salary: £85,000
Vacancy Location: Sunderland
Contract Type: Full Time
Status: Permanent

The Vacancy

About the role:

Gentoo is a Registered Provider of Social Housing with 28,500 homes in Sunderland and over 1,000 amazing colleagues. Our core purpose is to provide safe and decent homes for our current and future customers, and we are passionate about providing a great service to our colleagues and the 60,000 people in the City of Sunderland who live in our homes.

We’re looking for a Director of Marketing and Communications who will not only help us deliver our corporate strategy and will enable engagement with our customers, neighbourhoods, communities and colleagues. As Gentoo’s Director of Marketing and Communications, you’ll deliver and drive the PR, corporate communications, colleague communications and corporate affairs strategy, protecting Gentoo’s reputation, building brand awareness, and generating support and promoting and engagement to deliver our corporate strategy.

You will be accountable for the development and delivery of the corporate and colleague communications, reputation management plan, engagement strategy and be responsible for internal change messaging. You’ll role model our values, provide effective and authentic leadership, and grow colleague engagement. Engaging teams to provide clear direction, motivation, and coaching, enabling them to perform at their best and drive the delivery of our strategic plans.

It’s a new era at Gentoo and a great time to join us. We have new values developed by our colleagues for our colleagues - people are at the top of our agenda. We have also just refreshed our Corporate Strategy and have six priorities:

We know our customers
We provide great homes
We help communities to thrive
We are a great place to work
We spend our money wisely
We are well-governed

A background in social housing isn’t essential however the regulatory requirements within are important as is getting it right for our customers and colleagues.

Due to the customer and team nature of the role, we are looking for a Marketing and Communications Director who can be based at Gentoo’s head office in Doxford Park, Sunderland, working on a hybrid basis, a blend of office and home working. We are unable to support remote working for this role.

The role is subject to a basic DBS paid for by Gentoo.

A full recruitment pack is available to download at www.gentoogroup.com/careers

What we are looking for:

Experience at Director level – with experience of leadership in a customer
focused organisation in either the public or private sector

Experience at a senior level, leading communications, marketing, PR for
customers and colleagues.

Outstanding leadership skills and experience in leading a marketing and communications function within a customer-focused organisation, with a strong track record in leading and developing high-performing teams.

Values and drives equity, diversity and inclusion of people and thought

Experience in implementing PR and marketing campaigns, multi-faceted colleague and customer communications solutions and delivering to exceptional levels.

An awareness and passion for a wide range of media tools, you will bring comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the media landscape across online and offline communications and the marketing planning process.

A full UK driver's licence, and the ability to meet the travel requirements of the role.

Some of our great benefits include:

31 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) with an option to purchase up to 5 additional days per year.
12.30 pm finish on a Fridays
Flexible and hybrid working.
Free Health Cash Plan, with cashback for dental, optical, physio, wellbeing therapies and more, with some free child cover.
Access to private healthcare through the Health Cash Plan.
Competitive Aviva pension scheme - Gentoo will contribute up to 10% based on your personal contribution.
Salary sacrifice electric vehicle scheme
Enhanced family-friendly leave
Car mileage allowance if you use your personal vehicle for business purposes.
Life assurance cover to the value of 3 times your annual salary.

Closing date:

09-Aug-2024

The Company

We're a housing association that provides more than 60,000 people in Sunderland with a place they can call home. We're a values-driven organisation, with a clear vision, a social purpose and a commitment to investing in people, place and property. We believe everyone has the right to live in a good quality home they can afford and invest millions of pounds every year in keeping our existing homes safe, secure, and compliant.

We're also playing our part in addressing the UK housing crisis locally, by building hundreds of new, modern and contemporary homes for rent in Sunderland - homes that meet the needs of local people. Not only do we provide vital housing - we support our tenants, residents and communities by investing in services that help people live their best possible life.

This includes helping people to work, victims of domestic abuse and anti-social behaviour, young people to live independently, as well as a wellbeing service that supports our elderly tenants and residents.