Forestry Commission
Volunteering and Community Engagement Officer
Get notified of more jobs like this · No spam, ever
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Stoke Gifford, South West England, BS16 1EJ : Dunchideock, South West England, EX6 7XR : Coleford, South West England, GL16 8BA
Job Summary
The Volunteering and Community Engagement Officer’s role balances these two pivotal and complementary areas of work.
Community engagement is our work across all forest beats to ensure our woods are welcoming and safe for local communities to use and enjoy, reaching out to community groups to facilitate visits and increase understanding and support for our work.
The volunteering part of the role provides specialist support to those offering volunteering opportunities at both our forest beats and our main recreation sites, adding value and ensuring best practice as we increase the number and quality of volunteering opportunities in line with Growing the Future to 2031.
This post sits within the Recreation and Engagement team which consists of four recreation hub teams, Haldon Forest, Cardinham, Forest of Dean, Wyre & the Marches, and specialist functions such as community engagement, learning, volunteering, marketing and communications.
The role can be based anywhere within the district, with frequent travel around the district a necessary part of its success.
Job Description
Key responsibilities & accountabilities
Volunteering – approximately 75%
- Create and implement the West district Volunteer Plan, identifying areas in need of support at both our main recreation hubs and our wider forest and opportunities to maintain and grow volunteer activity and diversify participation
- Support and promote volunteering opportunities, ensuring best practice is followed and a strong health and safety culture is emphasised.
- Provide support for staff managing volunteers throughout the district, including dealing with challenging situations as they arise. Tasks include reviewing volunteer agreements, ensuring volunteers are registered on the volunteer database, carrying out FISA checks on practical work parties, and providing advice on welfare provision, as well as monitoring and auditing volunteer management
- Carry out regular site visits to review and support volunteer good practice; joining in with volunteer activities to get a sense of the work being done and build solid relationships with staff and volunteers alike
- Coordinate volunteering activity including corporate volunteering and partnership working. Organise and run corporate volunteer days in conjunction with the Recreation Projects Manager in line with the National guidance on corporate groups
- Coordinate the shadow volunteer programme in West
- Keep clear, concise and accurate record keeping using the Volunteer Management CRM system, ensuring all staff who manage volunteers understand the database and input details regularly and accurately
- Recruit and induct new volunteers; book, facilitate and on occasion deliver training sessions
- Keep up to date with volunteering internally by attending Volunteer Network Meetings, Teams catch up calls and linking in on a 1:1 basis with the team. Run two West-district in-person volunteering meetings a year – in winter and summer – to pass on knowledge and troubleshoot.
- Liaise with national colleagues and champion volunteering, telling the story of our volunteers to volunteers, wider staff teams and externally.
- Actively seek feedback from volunteers to help develop our ideas
Community Engagement – approximately 20%
- Lead our community rangers in their work across the district, with regular monthly team catch ups online, and hosting two face-to-face meetings a year in autumn and spring to brainstorm issues and showcase best practice
- Travel around the district to support development of work – this could include walking to remote areas to troubleshoot particular issues with teams, helping design community questionnaires, or representing Forestry England at public events
- Lead on the creation of community plans, including the district schedule and budget for plans, public engagement events, templates where appropriate, and production of the final plans
- Provide advice and guidance on day-to-day issues around forest ops engagement and day-to-day community work issues
- Evolve how we engage around forest plans, ensuring we are reaching out to the right audiences and gathering their views as part of the process
- Lead and proactively support volunteers and members of staff to deliver community engagement programmes and events
- Support the development of key relationships with third-party stakeholders
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
General – 5%
- Manage the community engagement annual budget, reporting to the Operations Manager for Marketing and Communications on a monthly basis
- Demonstrate and proactively support safe working practices, review risk assessments, and share messaging, training, updates and lone working support for the community team
- Encourage rangers to share good news stories nationally and locally, internally and externally
This role’s grade usually contains line management duties. At present there is no line management attached to this role, but this might be added in the future.
Person specification
Skills, Knowledge & Experience
Essential professional and technical experience
- Experience of working collaboratively with organisations, community groups, volunteers and local people, confident in starting new conversations and building relationships
- Experience in creating and developing engagement packages and programmes
- Experience of working with communities facing disengagement with local services or experiencing levels of deprivation and additional barriers to making decisions about their community.
- Experience and confident in running events and public engagement
- Able to build and maintain effective relationships with partner organisations, including networking with other agencies and departments.
- Ability to act as a trouble shooter, arbitrator, problem solver and crisis handler.
- Reliable and self-motivated, ability to work independently and without close supervision
- Able to act in a professional manner and with integrity at all times, understanding and adhering to professional boundaries
- Able to challenge inappropriate behaviour sensitively and diplomatically
- Discretion and confidentiality combined with sensitivity and diplomacy
- Able to work independently as well as part of a team.
Qualifications
Essential
- Functional skills in Math’s and English.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Changing and Improving
- Communicating and Influencing
- Working Together
- Managing a Quality Service
Compensation
Alongside your salary of £33,854, Forestry Commission contributes £9,807 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
Benefits
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours.
The Behaviours being assessed at interview are –
- Changing and Improving
- Communicating and Influencing
- Working Together
- Managing a Quality Service
You may also be assessed on Experience and the Technical Success Profile at the interview. The technical element will include a presentation to be prepared in advance and delivered during the interview.
Successful candidates will undergo a criminal record check and the government baseline personnel security standard check.
If you require any reasonable adjustments, please email fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk.
If you're planning to use AI to support your application, please ensure you've read our guidelines here first.
Read more about our application process and working with us on the Forestry England website.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo an enhanced (or equivalent) criminal record check.
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks.
Nationality requirements
This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements.
Working for the Civil Service
Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.
The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job Contact
Name: fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London