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Staff Networks Project Support Manager

The closing date is 02 October 2025

This position is funded by a grant from My University Hospitals Sussex, the dedicated charity of the Trust. You'll serve as a valued link between the Charity and project, and will be an ambassador for the Charity in promoting its missions and values at events, conferences and when engaging with both internal and external audiences.

Do you bring strong coordination and delivery skills and want to help deliver change that improves NHS staff experience and patient care?

We are recruiting a proactive and compassionate Project Support Manager to join a time-limited programme (approx. 18 months) funded by My University Hospitals Sussex Charity. This ambitious and high-impact programme supports a series of targeted engagement and wellbeing initiatives for key staff groups, aligned with our NHS Trust's People Plan and national goals to improve population health and tackle inequalities in care and outcomes.

You'll work in partnership with a range of stakeholders to deliver events, communications, and collaborative improvement activities. These are designed to support staff engagement, increase retention, and strengthen our organisation's capacity to listen to and act on lived experience. You'll take the lead in planning and coordination, enabling delivery across the programme and supporting robust evaluation.

Main duties of the job

We're seeking someone who is:

A confident communicator with excellent planning and organisation skills

Able to navigate complexity and ambiguity while keeping people motivated

Experienced in delivering multi-stakeholder projects or improvement work

Passionate about improving the NHS as a place to work and receive care

You'll be supported by the wider My UHSussex Charity and Leadership, OD and Engagement teams and work closely with internal and external partners including national speakers and system leaders to deliver an exciting programme of events and campaigns.You'll help ensure high visibility and wide engagement across the Trust, working across teams and services.

In return, we offer:

Flexible working (including hybrid)

Support to access management and leadership development programmes and activities

Opportunities to shape wider engagement and development work with My UHSussex Charity

A supportive team committed to improving staff and patient experience

Ifyou're committed to helping our workplaces become more engaging, inclusive and healthy places to work, we'd love to hear from you.

About us

At UHSussex, diversity is our strength, and we want you to feel included to help us always put the Patient First. Your uniqueness and experiences will be part of our creative and innovative community where everyone is encouraged to succeed. We have a range of Staff Networks to help break down barriers, and can offer a buddy to help new members settle in. We're proud to be a Disability Confident Employer (Level 2) and a Veteran Aware Trust.

We treat our patients and staff with the same compassion and empathy we expect for ourselves. We're here for them when they need us, and we go above and beyond to meet their needs. This can be seen in ourWellbeing Programme for staff which is extensive and designed to support you when you need it, including where possible, flexible working to support work life balance - because we know that to look after others we must first look after ourselves.

As a university trust and a leader in healthcare research, we value learning, teaching and training so that we can be the best that we can be. From the moment you start with us and throughout your career we will help you to grow and develop. We hope that in choosing UHSussex you are choosing a long and happy career where you will be able to see the difference you make and feel valued for all that you do.

We look forward to receiving your application and the start of your journey with UHSussex.

Job responsibilities

This position is funded by a grant from My University Hospitals Sussex, the dedicated charity of the Trust. It serves as a vital connection between the hospital charity and the Staff Networks. The post holder will act as an ambassador for the Charity understanding its missions and values when representing the Staff Networks at events, conferences, and when engaging with both internal and external audiences.

This charity funded fixed-term role will support the UHSussex Staff Network development project. The postholder will work closely with the Trusts Staff Networks to deliver a variety of charity funded activities and events including staff conferences, seminars, targeted initiatives and market stalls to promote and develop staff networks. The Staff Networks Project Support Manager will also need to be able to demonstrate the ability to work autonomously to deliver three core elements:

Providing project support to the Trust Staff Networks, currently BAME Network, LGBTQI+ Network, Disabled Staff Network, Religion & Belief Forum, Armed Forces Community, Womens Network, Carers Network, Trans & Non-Binary Group. To provide programme-wide oversight of Staff Networks / My Charity programmes, delivering a multi-strand project structure spanning Staff Networks, My Charity programme, People & Culture Committee (via Workforce Inclusion Steering Group) and Trust Communications Team. This support will focus on raising the profile of the Staff Networks to ensure greater visibility, increased membership and enhanced engagement. The post holder will also support network leads with engagement event days: planning, promoting and facilitating these events to encourage sign-ups to the Staff Networks and broaden participation across all networks. This will also include monitoring and reporting of progress against the Staff Networks agreed action plans (e.g. post-event evaluations for feedback from attendees, tracking network membership levels, monitoring attendance at network meetings and events).

Providing support to Trust Staff Network Leads at engagement events. This will include working with all 8 Staff Network Leads, organising and managing events such as conferences, webinars and engagement events at UHSussex sites, ensuring collaboration with Intergrated Educational team to distil learning into educational content for all Trust staff to be accessed via our internal StaffHub or the IRIS learning platform. Additionally, this role will involve hands-on support for setting up stands, supporting network leads on promoting networks, and following up with attendees to encourage sign-ups to Staff Networks.

Encourage collaborative working across all Trust Staff Networks. This will include identifying opportunities for joint working on Staff Network initiatives to support the overall aim of promoting enhanced staff wellbeing and reducing health inequalities in minoritised staff groups. This could include joint initiatives for e.g. co-hosted events, shared initiatives (e.g. educational webinars/sessions), and the development of educational material (e.g. bitesize e-learning modules for uploading to the IRIS learning platform). It will also mean coordinating the sharing of resources, scheduling across networks, and ensuring consistency in messaging and outreach across all Staff Network activities.

Person Specification

1-5 (1 Poor, 2 Weak, 3 Satisfactory , 4 Good, 5 - Excellent/exceeds)

• Educated to degree level (eg. Project Management degree), equivalent qualification (eg. CIPD Level 5 Diploma) plus significant experience, or a demonstrably equivalent level of knowledge and experience (which may have been gained through paid or voluntary/community work).
• The postholder will need to be experienced in providing project management support underpinned by theoretical knowledge or practical experience in equalities and inclusion issues. The postholder will need to demonstrate understanding of the theoretical knowledge and evidence underpinning project management and business administration, as well as operational experience of delivery.
• Evidence of having taken steps to educate self around inclusion issues (eg. experiences of people from difference backgrounds), and of having advocated for diversity & inclusion (eg. in previous work roles).
• Evidence of developed skills of persuasion, motivation, negotiation, reassurance; to be able to convey sensitive, complex and potentially contentious information appropriately for the audience (especially where there are barriers to acceptance and understanding).
• Experience of training colleagues

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

• Evidence of having undertaken own development to improve understanding of equalities issue.
• Evidence of having championed diversity in previous roles (as appropriate to role)

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (279)

Address

Royal Sussex County Hospital (or 21 Farncombe Road, Worthing)

£27,485 to £30,162 a yearper annum, (pro-rata if part-time)

Contract

Fixed term

Duration

12 months

Working pattern

Full-time,Part-time,Flexible working,Compressed hours

Reference number

279-7429290-SEP25

Job locations

Royal Sussex County Hospital (or 21 Farncombe Road, Worthing)