Network Engagement Officer

This is an exciting opportunity at the Greater London Authority to lead engagement with businesses from London’s key sectors to ensure skills training addresses their current and future workforce need, and to ensure they can access talent.
The Skills and Employment unit is looking for a new Principal Business Engagement Officer to deliver a programme of business engagement in support of a number of skills and employment programmes, namely the Mayor’s Skills Academies, Skills Bootcamps for Londoners and the new London Union Learn programmes delivering support to business with skills and recruitment needs.
The post holder will be required to deliver business and strategic partner engagement activities to support the delivery of existing programme objectives, and using industry insight help to inform the strategic direction of the Mayor’s skills programmes.
We are seeking a highly motivated individual to lead on identifying opportunities to engage with business to support the development and performance of our programmes, to maximise the number of Londoners supported by the Mayor’s investment to enter or progress in employment.
We’re looking for a confident communicator who can build relationships with employers, ensure the opportunity of support from our programmes for business is clear and develop advice and guidance for commissioned training providers on their own business engagement efforts.
The Skills and Employment Unit is responsible for working with external partners to develop skills and employment strategies for London and managing the Adult Skills Budget, UK Shared Prosperity Fund and programmes such as the Mayor’s Skills Academies, Skills Bootcamps for Londoners and Skills Capital investment programmes.
To establish and maintain effective working relationships across a wide range of local and regional employer and key stakeholder networks to promote engagement and drive job outcomes across the relevant delivery team’s programmes
To actively manage the end to end customer journey of a portfolio of employers to understand skills requirements and facilitate partnerships with training providers to support the development of industry led training courses
To strengthen local partnerships and linkages between employers, providers, boroughs, industry representative bodies and other key stakeholders and ensure connectivity with other initiatives to facilitate cross referrals
To work closely with employers and industry representative bodies and build up data and intelligence to better understand the skills requirements across key sectors in London
To expand the GLA’s business relationships, in particular in priority sectors of London’s economy through active engagement and collaborative projects.
To communicate relevant and up to date industry insights to inform the current and future strategic and operational delivery of the skills and employment unit’s programmes
To analyse relevant industry data and intelligence and provide recommendations to inform the development, delivery and sustainability of the Employer-focussed programmes
To liaise with the GLA’s Press team to demonstrate the impact of the employer focussed programmes on local businesses, Londoners and the economy through pan-London and local PR coverage.
To realise the benefits of London’s diversity by promoting and enabling equality of opportunity, and promote the diverse needs and aspirations of London’s communities among businesses and stakeholders.
Experience of working with, or alongside, the private and public sectors and a good understanding of the differences in their perspectives and values.
influential and effective relationships with a diverse range of senior stakeholders to deliver successful outcomes.
A strong understanding of UK skills and business policy
A good understanding of industry intelligence and evidence of using strategic insights to drive delivery of high profile, public facing or corporate projects.
Experience of delivering communications and events activities for diverse range of audiences, including businesses
Building and Managing Relationships
… Level 3 indicators of effective performance:
Adapts style to work effectively with partners, building consensus, trust and respect
Level 3 indicators of effective performance
Focuses own and team’s efforts on delivering a quality and committed service
is thinking ahead, managing time, priorities and risk, and developing structured and efficient approaches to deliver work on time and to a high standard.
Level 3 indicators of effective performance:
Ensures evaluation processes are in place to measure project benefits
Gains buy-in and commitment to project delivery from diverse stakeholders
Implements quality measures to ensure directorate output is of a high standard
Level 3 indicators of effective performance:
Helps others understand the GLA and the complex environment in which it operates
Helps others understand how the media and external perceptions of the GLA influence work
Level 3 indicators of effective performance:
This role is based at London Fire Brigade’s Head Office (Union Street SE1 0LL)
GLA staff are hybrid working up to 3 days a week in our offices and remotely depending on their role. As part of this, you will need to split your time between home working and coming into the office.
Please note all applications for this vacancy must be submitted via our online recruitment system. London's diversity is its biggest asset and we strive to ensure our workforce reflects London's diversity at all levels. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith or disability.
We are committed to being an inclusive employer and we are happy to consider flexible working arrangements. We would welcome applications from candidates who are seeking part time work as this role is open to job share.
We also offer an attractive range of benefits including 30 days’ annual leave, interest free season ticket loan, interest free bicycle loan and a career average pension scheme.
Reasonable adjustment will be made to working arrangements to accommodate a person with a disability who otherwise would be prevented from undertaking the work.
Should a candidate deliberately give false information, including the use of AI software, they understand that this would disqualify them from consideration.
If you are a GLA employee applying for an internal fixed term position, as an internal secondment opportunity, you must ensure you satisfy the following secondment policy criteria listed below before applying
On a permanent contract or a fixed term contract where the time left on the contract at the point at which you apply for secondment is longer than the secondment period;
successfully completed your probation period and are performing to the required standard for your current role; For further information, please seeSecondment Policy and Procedure .
If you are a current GLA employee on fixed term contract, which is due to end BEFORE the end date of this vacancy, you DO NOT NEED to complete theApproval for secondment application form as it is not a secondment.
The GLA is proud to be a Level 2: Disability Confident employer. We are committed to becoming a more inclusive and accessible organisation, and creating a truly inclusive and accessible workplace and culture for our disabled staff. We have named Disability Equality as a key corporate priority within our EDI Strategy. It will also help usif you tell us which assistive technology you use.