Manager, Policy and Communications

Your chance to join a **best-in-class Market Access and Policy team**
- Work in a **business-critical role** that drives impact across the organisation
- Engage with key **stakeholders and commercial leaders** to help shape the **best business outcome**.

**Overview**:
In our company, External Affairs, Policy & Communications (EAPC) is responsible for gaining and maintaining timely access to our medicines, building the company's reputation, advocacy, and gaining insight into the needs of top customers. Our team has members with extensive experience in their respective functions. They focus on building strong relationships and having fun in open work culture.

**The function delivers industry-leading performance in the**:

- Working with relevant government stakeholders
- maintaining a high and favourable profile in the media, with stakeholders, and with employees
- building trust and respect with top customers.

It works closely with the commercial, medical, regulatory, and research functions in developing and executing strategies to complete this work. The Manager, Policy, and Communications reports to the Director, External Affairs, Policy, and Communications.

**What will you do**:
**Delivery of company's Policy-Communications Objectives**

Build reputation through developing and implementing the company's public relations and external communications strategy, activities, and campaigns including:

- Corporate communications on company-wide business developments and issues
- Product communications, particularly for new products under review & launches
- Communication on broad policy issues & crisis management communications
- Therapeutic area-related to digital campaigns and patient disease awareness communications.
- Being the principal point of contact for external media enquiries and interview requests

**Strengthen the relationships & capabilities to maintain a positive external profile, covering**:

- Regular, proactive outreach to top-tier journalists in industry, medical & mainstream media
- Preparing and supporting company executives engaged at key events, stakeholder meetings, and media
- Managing multiple agencies, social media experts & content providers to complement internal capabilities
- Building broad internal skills in good writing, verbal presentation, and social media
- Ensuring that all media activities adhere to our internal standards & SAPI code

**Develop and deliver an internal communications program covering**:

- Communications from the Managing Director on significant announcements and strategic updates.
- Employee engagement in company culture, development, diversity, standards & well-being, communications on our employee value proposition to engage current and potential future staff.
- Content development and programming of regular, company-wide town hall meetings
- Lead Corporate Social Responsibility program for the Singapore, Malaysia cluster and worked closely with other comms leads in Singapore.

**Leadership and strategic counsel**:

- Initiate and maintain professional relationships with key policy groups, government officials, industry representatives, patient advocacy groups, non-government organisations, and medical organisations.
- Work with third parties, including academics, research organisations, think tanks, and consultants, to deepen our target audience's understanding of policy issues and enhance the quality of our policy positions
- Assist in developing and advancing the company's position on key policy issues in partnership with internal and external stakeholders

**What should you have**:

- You should be an undergraduate either in communications or in the life sciences with a minimum of 5 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical or related industry. Postgraduate degree would be an advantage
- Evidence of work outside of the boundaries of traditional corporate communications work, for instance, leadership positions in industry, cross country/subsidiary experience, policy-related communications
- Industry-leading communications skills, evidenced by highly impactful written documents and strong verbal presentation
- Strong strategic insight, particularly in understanding how corporate imperatives and narratives should be integrated into communications content
- Solid crisis-management skills in developing content rapidly and aligning communication across the company and stakeholders
- Well-developed networking skills and ability to build strong relationships with journalists and stakeholders
- Interpersonal effectiveness, particularly in working productively under pressure with peers and customers
- Project management, attention to detail, and time management

**Who we are**

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company co