Government Affairs and Communications Head

As Communications and Government Affairs Head, you will be responsible for employee engagement around strategic priorities and culture under pinned by Company Culture. You will develop external engagement agenda and integrate external engagement approach to products; build and maintain continuity of relationships with key stakeholders and support policy advocacy/stakeholder engagement for commercial/market access initiatives.

This role will provide YOU the opportunity to lead key activities to progress YOUR career.

These responsibilities include some of the following:

• Lead the development and delivery of the local CGA plan in Malaysia including key policy, political and media related topics and the systems to ensure effective listening across all stakeholders to drive insights and anticipate changes impacting the business.
• Responsible for building reputation in Malaysia, including championing a culture of values based, reputationally aware business decision making.
• Identifying reputational risks to the business both internally and externally and the development of mitigation strategies.
• Identifying key opportunities to maintain and build trust (and reputational capital) to preserve our license to operate in the external environment.
• Supports key LOC initiatives (e.g. new product launches) and provides input into launch plans and contributes to launch activities implementation.
• Developing and implementing government and external affairs, community relations and PR strategies to enhance and protect the image and reputation of the Company in Malaysia.
• Accountable for effective two-way internal communications to support high levels of employee engagement, motivate employees and increase their understanding of and alignment with our strategy.
• Ensure efficient communications management of reputational risk and issues.
• Represent Company enterprise in relevant industry bodies as required.
• Leads cross functional collaboration / project teams with local, regional and global teams.
• Role-models cross-functional collaboration within LOC (e.g. with medical, market access, government affairs) and contribution as a team member with your fellow leadership.

Problem Solving and Innovation

• This role requires a high level of business acuity and learning agility along with significant emotional intelligence. The problems this role will be required to solve will invariably be complex and often require reaching outside of the organisation to develop solutions. The role will be required to use very careful judgment when determining approaches, balancing a range of brand and corporate priorities with those of external stakeholders.
• Given the high levels of scrutiny from the government, media and other stakeholders, decisions will be made in the context not only of our values and what is the right thing to do, but also of how any such decision could be perceived by external audiences both now and in the future.
• Analytical skills and critical thinking to distil insight into meaningful advice and strategies for the business.
• The fast-paced nature of the media will require quick-thinking and an ability to make effective, well-considered decisions under time pressure and in some cases without detailed knowledge of the subject matter. Similarly, this role will be required to assimilate new information in high volumes at speed.
• The range of stakeholders both internal and external that this role will engage with requires finely-tuned stakeholder management and excellent listening skills, particularly when agendas may conflict or where groups/individuals are resistant to, or uncomfortable with, change.
• Personal resilience, an appreciation of other perspectives and a strong ability to problem-solve collaboratively where appropriate is critical as most decisions will affect or impact numerous internal and external groups.

Required skills to achieve goals:

• Solid communication and government affairs experience, pharmaceutical industry experience an advantage.
• Proven performance as individual contributor.
• Strong business partnership skills.
• High level of credibility and influence with the most senior of internal stakeholders.
• In-depth expertise of the nuances and challenges of working in a large and complex company.
• Ability to lead in a matrix organization in a cohesive/effective way is important, especially given the need to align sub-functions behind a single purpose.
• Bachelors degree.