Communications Business Partner at British Airways

The role: Communications Business Partner

This senior role within British Airways' Corporate Affairs team is for a highly experienced communications professional with a proven track record of working with senior executives. You'll be the trusted adviser to some of the most senior leaders and play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering departmental and company-wide communication strategies – helping leaders inspire their teams, tell compelling stories and raise their profile through internal and external channels. 

This isn't a backseat role – you'll be at the heart of decision-making, helping to bring clarity to complexity, guiding leaders through change, and ensuring colleagues feel connected to the company. You'll combine big-picture thinking with hands-on delivery, whether that's developing a creative campaign, handling a sensitive issue or crafting engaging content that cuts through the noise. You'll also have significant experience in communications planning, crisis response, change communications, and a real flair for turning strategy into impact. 

What you’ll do:

• Partner with senior leaders (Director and Management Committee level) and, where appropriate, sit in their leadership team meetings to provide communications advice, agree communications priorities, identify opportunities and needs.
• Act as the key interface between business areas and the Corporate Affairs team to triage requests and initiatives in support of business objectives or issues management.
• Develop a communications strategy for your business partnering portfolio area/s, covering analogue and digital channels to ensure all communications are delivered through the right channel, in the right format and to the right audiences, and to build Director and Management Committee level profile and celebrate their team’s successes, both internally and externally.
• Develop high level communications plans, campaigns and events that support central and departmental business’ strategy, objectives and priorities.
• Work closely with all other Communications Business Partners to ensure alignment across the business and to support the delivery of core colleague communications activity, including but not limited to, creative campaigns, change programmes, industrial relations matters and channels management. 
• Oversee and provide counsel on tactical, technical and business-as-usual communications produced by departmental communications executives and provide professional support to ensure they deliver high quality communications.
• Ensure departmental communications plans align with central communications strategy, are appropriately timed and all issues are escalated.
• Develop and deliver campaigns, content and communications activity to promote central corporate strategic objectives and drive understanding of and engagement with the corporate narrative, and how colleagues contribute to the success of the business.
• Measure all communications activity and act on insights to ensure continuous improvement.
• Play a senior role to support crisis communication response and the out-of-hours on-call roster, ensuring sound knowledge of the crisis communications manual.
• Support other activity as required.

What you’ll bring to British Airways:

• A positive, can-do mindset that inspires confidence in others.
• An eye for detail, paired with the ability to see the bigger picture.
• Fresh ideas and creativity to bring stories and strategies to life.
• A self-starter attitude – you spot opportunities, solve problems and make things happen.
• Calmness under pressure and resilience when things get tough.
• The confidence to influence senior leaders while building trusted relationships across the business.
• Curiosity, flexibility and the drive to thrive in a fast-moving, ever-changing environment.

Your experience:

• Significant and relevant experience as a communications professional.
• Proven experience of crafting and executing communication plans and campaigns and well-written communications aligned with business objectives.
• Well versed in managing relationships with stakeholders.
• Demonstrable experience of using initiative, finding stories, originating ideas and creating engaging content.
• Demonstrable experience of handling communications during challenging or sensitive situations.
• Experience of measuring the effectiveness of communications and acting on results to improve output.