Specialist, Communications

**Position Details**:
**Current Rate of Pay**: Min = $45.09/hr, Max = $52.28/hr

**Employment type**: Full-Time Permanent

**Hours of work**: 35 hrs/week

**Work location**: Head Office

**Division**: Corporate Services

**Business unit**: Communications, Marketing & Events

**Travel**: 5%

**Remote Work**: Hybrid

**About TRCA**:
With more than 60 years of experience, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) is one of 36 Conservation Authorities in Ontario, created to safeguard and enhance the health and well-being of watershed communities through the protection and restoration of the natural environment and the ecological services the environment provides.

TRCA is considered the provincial leader in conserving, restoring, and managing natural resources to advance safe and sustainable development.

**How you will contribute as part of the TRCA team**:
The Specialist, Communications & Media Relations champions high-quality, on-brand, timely, and effective internal and external organizational communications. The position plays a key role in building awareness, understanding and advocacy for TRCA and its programs; engaging key stakeholders; and acquiring and retaining TRCA customers and clients by encouraging media exposure of TRCA.

**Major Responsibilities**:

- Creates engaging, strategic, informative and audience-centric communications that adapt to a variety of audiences, forums, style and formats, while effectively conveying organization messaging and brand
- Ensures effective distribution of media materials through a variety of channels including automated and manual direct distribution to media, web posting, and dissemination via social media
- Responds to and creates/reviews all written media materials and key corporate communications materials prepared by other TRCA business units to maintain high quality standards
- Builds and maintains targeted media lists for corporate and key business unit engagement
- Monitors, evaluates and reports media coverage including writing quarterly board reports
- Prepares and helps implement key media relations policies and protocols including corporate crisis communications plans
- Manages communication tools, templates and processes required to deliver standardized, efficient and effective branded communications
- Monitors and measures the impact of internal and external communications by identifying appropriate success metrics and analyzing trends and patterns in analytics reports, while looking to continually improve communication effectiveness
- Supports key change management initiatives in the organization, finding strategic communication approaches and creative tactics to engage TRCA staff and stakeholders
- Collaborates with internal and external partners to devise and implement communications programs
- Initiates and builds direct communication with media representatives to encourage coverage and build the TRCA brand with a range of publics and target audiences
- Collaborates with municipal partners and other external collaborators to ensure protocols are appropriately observed in public announcements
- Provides strategic media relations counsel, support and preparation to CEO, SLT members and designated TRCA spokespeople managing all interactions in the media relations cycle
- Identifies appropriate spokespeople for media interviews, crafts key messaging and responses and make sure spokespeople across the organization are effectively prepared for interviews, including administering media relations training as required
- Analyzes the key broader public sector environments, stakeholders and government affairs and factor this into appropriate communications
- Incumbents may also be assigned other duties

**What will you need to succeed**:

- Post-secondary diploma or degree in Communications, English, Journalism, Public Relations or related field
- Valid Ontario Class G2 driver's license
- 4+ years of experience in corporate communications including hands-on experience executing corporate communications strategies and local media campaigns
- Experience in change management communications and community engagement
- Experience utilizing various communication forums including web technology, blogs and podcasts, content sharing sites, interactive forums, primary social media platforms
- Ability to communicate technical information to a non-technical audience
- Exceptional content development and editorial skills, with a demonstrated high attention to detail and ability to create high impact custom messages and content for a range of audiences and platforms.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills to communicate project status for various audiences
- Demonstrated expert at interacting diplomatically with others in public forums
- Able to self-manage workload and prioritize tasks as an ongoing challenge in a frequently fluctuating workload and multiple deadlines
- Proficiency in MS Office suite including online software such as MS teams, WebEx,