Job Description
Cognita Schools are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff, volunteers and other third parties to share this commitment. Safer recruitment practice and pre-employment background checks will be undertaken before any appointment is confirmed.
Position Objective
- The Director of Community Engagement (DiCE) is accountable for:
- The Strategic Outlook on Parent & Community Engagement
- Driving and coordinating programs and processes that will (i) champion continuous improvement of the end-to-end school and community experience, and (ii) foster enhanced customer advocacy within the school community
- The development and execution of both academic and non-academic communications delivered to the school’s internal parent community and to ensure that the school delivers an outstanding customer communications experience
- DiCE reports directly to the HOS – ISHCMC, and works closely with ISHCMC leadership & strategic teams (ie. Learning & Teaching, Parent Education, Wellbeing, Marketing & Admissions, etc.) to set direction on Parent Engagement. DiCE works collaboratively across functions and teams within the wider school community (eg. Finance, HR, IT, and facilities), to pull together functional expertise and tap on collective synergies and perspective to enhance community engagement and parent experience
- DiCE leads and mentors the Community Engagement (CE) Team to fulfill its mission
- DiCE acts as a ‘brand guardian’ of the school, ensuring that all communications and events are strategically aligned with the school’s overarching message(s), objectives, and priorities, are relevant to each target audience, are consistent in approach, tone and style and are professionally executed
- DiCE will work closely with the School’s academic and operational leadership teams and the teacher community to support staff members in delivering one-to-one academic communications that are aligned with the school’s wider communications framework. DiCE and CE Team will also work closely with the IT department to ensure that the teacher community can make best use of the various communication technology platforms to deliver personalized parent communications. They will maintain a central source of information to enable support and ensure expected service levels. They will also ensure that effective liaison takes place for the coordination of work processes and projects with various community stakeholders and departments
- DiCE seeks to ‘delight’ our school community through exceptional customer engagement and experience through efficient processes and diverse opportunities to continue to promote advocacy for the school. This includes all parent touchpoints from onboarding, life in school, and offboarding
- DiCE will assist with the development and execution of engagement opportunities with key external stakeholders on behalf of the School leadership teams, and for maintaining relationships with ISHCMC Alumnus and parents.
Responsibilities:
Leadership and Team Management
- Lead and manage the Community Engagement team in the capacity of work distribution, knowledge transfer, and project management
- CE Team consists of (i) Communications, (ii) Administration – includes reception & secretarial staff, (iii) Events, (iv) Transitions (on-boarding, off-boarding), and (v) Alumni
- Role model to demonstrate an impeccable work ethic, diligent time management, and represent an enthusiastic stakeholder ‘go to’ resource for the school at large
- Develop a culture and environment that attracts, retains and motivates high quality staff with a drive for performance and excellence.
- Inspire, lead, mentor and develop by ensuring new team members undergo induction and orientation, staff development plans and performance goals are completed. Ensure each team member is supported so their full potential can be reached, with provision for succession
- Manage appropriate resource levels and budget to deliver exceptional community engagement, communications, and customer experience
- Define training and development needs and secure resources within the annual budget
- Update job knowledge by participating in educational opportunities, reading professional publications, maintaining personal networks and participating in professional networks
Customer & Community Engagement/Experience
- Lead the Customer Engagement function to provide an exceptional community and customer experience to ultimately drive retention of students and increased advocacy of the school
- Collaborate and support the execution of the internal communications strategy and provide leadership, structure, mentorship, and senior escalation where necessary and appropriate
- Improve connectedness with the parent community, through a variety of members of the community to build rapport, glean support and understanding, and collate feedback to shape the internal communications strategy
- Lead Customer Engagement to be attuned to the pulse of the community at all times to mitigate issues
- Work with the Senior Leadership and Strategic teams to ensure timely and effective communication of important messages to the community via the school’s communication channels
- Oversee a consistent and clear communication of the School’s corporate identity and communication processes to staff and ensure all internal communications support the brand
Communications
- Working closely with the Head of School, SLT, and Director of Marketing & Admissions to contribute to the annual focus for messaging and executional timing relating to the School calendar – this shall reflect the overarching framework for parent communications across each academic year, covering academic and non-academic communications
- Provide direction to and oversight of Communications Team’s efforts in developing high-quality communications and maintaining editorial control for school to home and school to staff communications, ; Regularly reviews Communications Team’s approach to the School’s parent communications across all channels (academic and non-academic); Work with Communications Team to identify improvement opportunities and corresponding actions
- Develop annual parent education communications plan with SLT
- Key Focus Areas: Eg. Health, Learning & development, Safeguarding, Community Service, etc (as aligned with school’s strategic priorities)
- Platforms: Eg. In-person Parent-Ed events (in/ out-of-school, events with 3rd parties), Parent-Ed through email, social media, etc.
- Develop annual parent engagement focus & plan with SLT; Regular reporting back to SLT on Communications Team’s implementation and findings (eg. Feedback, concerns, praise through surveys; focus groups etc.), and key improvement plans for parent engagement through communications
- Work with IT team and Communications Team to review and map out desired parent/ community communications experience, and a corresponding roadmap for both team to deliver; monitor and report back to SLT
- Custodian of Communications’ annual focus/ priorities; direct & review Communications Team’s allocation of the internal communications budget to ensure alignment to priorities, and appropriate and effective spending
Internal Events Management
- Develop (including annual review & curation) and implement an annual program of parent and community events which reflects the engagement needs of the school and its community; This includes events that educate and inform, events that promote the school’s strengths and achievements, events that celebrate milestones and other relevant days
- Drive and engage stakeholders (eg. SLT, Strategic Teams, Operations) in events planning & execution, and post-event performance reviews
- Engage with and manage the ISHCMC PTO to drive and promote synergy of activities and events to ensure alignment across all community communications and experiences
- Oversee the execution of the events program by the ISHCMC Events Team and Communications Manager ensuring quality is maintained and that they are aligned with the school’s vision, mission and values
Alumni Relations
- Develop annual Alumni engagement priorities and plan with SLT
- Ensure Alumni Relations are in regular discourse with Marketing & Admissions Team to promote Alumni stories, connection opportunities, etc
- Oversee Alumni Relations Team’s performance and report back to SLT
Stakeholder and Community Relations/Engagement and Development
- Work closely with the Head of School/Principal and Managing Director to create, maintain and develop key relationships with stakeholders within the school community, including PTO, CCA and Summer/ Winter Camp providers
- Work with SLT (and other stakeholders as needed) to plan for and run School AGM, produce School Annual Report, and conduct parent workshops to contribute to school priorities & strategy
- Promote school initiatives to the internal and external community
Other duties and projects as assigned by the Head of School and Managing Director - Operations, or such persons as the School may designate.
The job holder’s responsibility for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young persons for whom s/he is responsible, or with who, s/he comes into contact will be to adhere to and ensure compliance with the relevant Cognita Safeguarding; Child Protection Policy and Procedures at all time. If in the course of carrying out the duties of the role, the job holder identifies any instance that a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm either at school or at home, s/he must report any concerns to the School’s Child Protection Officer/Designated Safeguarding Lead or to the Head or indeed to the Regional CEO so that a referral can be made accordingly to the relevant third-party services.
Position Requirements:
- Demonstrate a broad range of management, communication, marketing, and community/customer engagement and experience skills and competencies in addition to managing and motivating a diverse team
- This role requires an individual with demonstrated strong competence and relevant experience in corporate level communications, customer engagement, stakeholder management, and events management development
- Digitally savvy, able to harness the digital environment to effectively engage with diverse stakeholder groups
- Empathetic with the school community, able to engage with the needs of parents to share communications and generate activities and events that are relevant and impactful to generate advocacy of the School
- Patient and thoughtful mentor with a collaborative style, inspiring best practice
- Excellent written communication skills with the ability to write high quality marketing copy, to edit and refine the work of others to sharpen the message and apply tonal consistency
- Excellent face-to-face and verbal communicator with the ability to engage others and to make own message understood by stakeholders
- Excellent listening skills, able to understand the subtleties of communications and detect the underlying message
- Sound knowledge of on-line / digital marketing including website management
- Able to manage a heavy work program, work to set priorities and achieve against targets.
- A committed and loyal individual, prepared to work the necessary hours to meet deadlines
- Experience of working in an international school is advantageous