Newcastle City Council - Communications Champions

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Role purpose  
Time commitment  
Role specification

Role purpose

Each directorate is asked to name a ‘communication champion’, whose dual role is to:

• Act as the champion for effective communications across the directorate – promoting best practice in internal and external communications and being a conduit for links between the Communication and Marketing team and relevant contacts in the directorate.
• Act as the ‘client’ representative for their directorate – both in contributing a service perspective to corporate communication policy development and key initiatives, for example the forthcoming review of Citylife magazine. The communication champion will manage the service level agreement between their directorate and the Communication and Marketing team including holding a six-monthly SLA progress review.

Time commitment

The communications champions will meet as a group for around 90 minutes approximately every six weeks. In addition, there will be two meetings per year between each individual champion and the Communication and Marketing team management to review and manage the SLA.

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Role specification

This is a strategic role, and should ideally be filled either by a member of the DMT or a senior manager reporting to a DMT member, so as to be able to represent the directorate authoritatively. It is important that the person nominated for this role has, or is given time to develop, a good overview of, and links throughout, their directorate.

For continuity, it would be helpful if a deputy is also named to ensure continuity in the absence of the communication champion.

The communications champion will contribute to establishing and reviewing systems to monitor services under the service level agreement

The communication champion would not be expected to routinely take on a time-consuming, detailed, operational role. For example, the communication champion will be asked to contribute thinking to the forthcoming review of Citylife, but will not be expected to sit on an ongoing editorial board.

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There have historically been operational requirements asked of the communication champions, including:

• Passing 'Team Brief' to managers to deliver to their teams (every two months)
• Raising awareness of opportunities to enter staff and services for awards
• Involvement in the annual staff awards

The communication champions in this new, better defined role would instead be asked to identify local solutions for these needs. Communications champions may be involved in, or arrange directorate representation for, related communication activities

It is intended that this refocusing would distract them less from their day job, whilst also leaving more time for strategic tasks, such as:

• championing plain English and accessibility in their directorate, making sure everyone is aware of guidelines.
• encouraging colleagues in the directorate to forward plan and thus maximise the opportunities for service promotion and social marketing offered by Citylife magazine and the website front page.
• identifying and agreeing which services in their directorate should access the corporate resources of the communication advisers and marketing teams. For example, identifying priorities for support in producing public information materials, developing communications plans and the major campaigns to run over the next year, in line with the corporate plan and the local area agreement.

As such, directorates are encouraged to recognise the strategic importance of the role of communication champion, and perhaps view it as a development opportunity for managers.