Change Lead

Description

Summary

To develop and implement change management strategies and plans that maximise employee adoption and usage of required changes so that the business benefits are fully realised.

By assessing change impact and organisational readiness, anticipating and minimising resistant behaviours and encouraging understanding and adoption of changes, the Change Lead will drive faster adoption, higher utilisation and greater capability and proficiency in relation to the changes by impacted employees.

The Change Lead will be involved in AQA strategic and / or significant initiatives and programmes, especially those with major business process and technology impact. They may also support major HR-led organisational change initiatives, such as restructures, office moves and closures, mergers and acquisitions.Landscape:

AQA has embarked upon an revolutionary period of step change driven by our bold new strategy, ranging from piloting game-changing assessment technology, to rapidly acquiring new businesses. As an organisation we must look up, out and ahead in order to deliver against our core business goals while changing at the same time. A complex and interconnected portfolio of programmes and projects is underway to meet our ambitious strategic objectives over the coming five years, which requires high quality co-ordinated delivery by programme and project management with effective PMO and change management support to the business to enable the anticipated return on investment, and for our people to thrive while so doing. 

Activities:
Customer (external or internal): Being trusted and reliable in assessment design and delivery
Apply a structured change methodology process and tools to create and deliver a strategy to support adoption of the changes required by a project or initiative.
Lead, quality assure and/or actively delivering change workstreams in line with change strategy across one or multiple projects and programmes in the portfolio
Enable the design, development, delivery and management of key communications and stakeholder management activities
Assess the change impact, including understanding the gap between as-is and to-be processes and workflows, and assessing change maturity and readiness. This will involve analysing complex role, process, data, system and infrastructure-related changes to identify their corresponding impacts on the existing people, process and technology operating model.
For technology programmes, understand defects, change requests and workarounds arising from the technology implementation (‘commercial off the shelf’ or bespoke) and factor these into the overall change impact view and mitigation plan.
Conduct training needs analysis, and design and deliver training programmes, partnering with the Learning & Development team as required.
Design and manage go-live and post go-live support including super user networks and general embedding approaches to maximise adoption.
Facilitate the design of appropriate business continuity and failback approaches.
Lead the planning and implementation of activities to transition from programme delivery into business as usual ways of working across all key programme elements.
For organisational change programmes or programmes with a relatively impactful organisational element, partner with the HR Business Partners to ensure all change management activities are delivered in line with requirements and preferred approaches.
As required, lead programme activities relating to functional design and requirements, product build and readiness including defect and change request management, user acceptance testing, go-live criteria management, and transition/cutover.
Demonstrate commercial flexibility by undertaking other responsibilities which are of a commensurate level as business needs change.

Cash (finances): Ensuring sound financial management and a robust asset base
Track change project spend and report into programme budgetary processes.

Product and internal processes: Delivering quality products and outcomes – as recognised by the customer
Possess (or have the ability to develop) deep understanding of AQA’s business processes and associated systems across the full organisational value chain.
To work within programme and project governance structures, managing change project plans and reports, change RAID logs and other required processes and collateral as required to enable delivery of the change workstreams to time, cost and quality.
As required, manage or support business user resourcing and forecasting for relevant programme delivery activities
Contribute to the development of AQA’s Business change hubs.
Consult with accountable leaders to ensure solutions meet required legislative requirements.
Ensure AQA is safe and legally compliant by applying AQA’s policies and other legislative requirements including but not limited to HSE, Equal Opportunities and ISMS.

People and culture: Ensuring we have great people achieving their potential
Understand psychological responses to change and apply these to achieve people, process and technology delivery goals, especially complex organisational changes, and other programmes that highly impact people.
Work effectively in a fast-paced constantly changing matrix environment, engaging effectively in all directions and role-modelling resilience.
To ensure users have achieved sufficient levels of emotional, functional and system readiness for go-live, resistance is surfaced and managed, and that go-live support systems are in place to enable the smoothest possible adoption period.
Coach, train, educate and otherwise engage team members across AQA in change management approaches and skills in order to increase AQA’s change capability.
To ensure that business outcomes are achieved for change programmes and projects by strategising, planning and delivering change interventions that maximise speed of adoption, ultimate utilisation and proficiency for AQA internal users, external customers, and third parties.
Produce high levels of performance from matrix teams by modelling leadership behaviours with confidence and providing clarity, challenge, feedback, coaching and development in line with business objectives.

Technology: Delivering demonstrably secure, reliable, agile and cost-effective systems
Lead the strategy, planning and delivery of change for technology-enabled programmes and projects, including working at different levels and in different roles across the technology portfolio to ensure consistency of change delivery and effective dependency management.
To operate as part of a change community of practice in supporting the overall delivery of the programme or project by implementing common internal change interventions.
Liaise with all other technology programme leads to understand the plans, status and challenges of the various workstreams (including product readiness, test, data migration, failback and technical cutover):Plan change/people-related interventions to enable other workstreams to meet their goals.
Identify impacts and forecast risks to the implementation plan and existing business impact environment arising from other workstreams, and implement mitigations.
As needed, fulfil key business-focussed technology workstream roles within the programme including functional design, UAT, failback, cutover, and early life support/services.

Government and external: Providing timely, valued insight and evidence that inform policy
Represent project or programme interests and requirements as needed in AQA’s internal ongoing policy and planning groups (and for the short-medium term, Covid-BCP policy and planning groups), negotiating appropriate technology solutions that meet the needs of internal and external customers.
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Key relationships and performance

Key internal relationships:
Change team
Business change hubs
Head of People and HR business partners in relation to people change impact of complex programmes, and in provision of change support for HR-led organisational changes
People Group Learning & Development team for the provision of change management training as a core capability, and where appropriate to draw on and/or commission learning to support significant change activity
Communications & Marketing department leads and Business Partners
Technology delivery teams
AQA department leadership teams and line management communities.

Key external relationships:
Suppliers to AQA's delivery portfolio, including technology suppliers, process consultants, and Organisational Development/people consultants.

Key performance indicators:
Adoption of change in line with implementation plan, including readiness assessments, user feedback, training statistics and support data.
Achievement of predicted benefits case.
Adherence to programme delivery timelines (driven by people/change-related factors)
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Need to know (to be successful in this role, you will need to know):
Knowledge
Essential: understanding of relevant change management methodologies and their practical application - A/I/P
Essential: understanding of how change management methods apply to large-scale complex people, process and technology programmes and the challenges - I/P
Essential: understanding of psychological responses to change - A/I/P
Desirable: understanding of AQA’s enterprise architecture (business and system processes) - A/I/P
Desirable: understanding of the typical IT-enabled transformation programme environment - I/P
Desirable: understanding of IT service management frameworks (ITIL) - A/I/P

Qualification
Essential: Prosci or equivalent change management certification - A
Desirable: ITIL certification - A
Desirable: degree or equivalent professional qualification - A
Desirable: PRINCE2 or equivalent project management certification - A

Skills
Essential: ability to work across multiple projects at the same time, including taking opportunity of synergies, and managing dependencies - I/P
Essential: ability to collaborate as part of a wider team of change practitioners on the same programme - I/P
Essential: ability to assess complex technical information to identify business impacts and suitable mitigations - A/I/P
Essential: ability to think and act both strategically and within the detail, with the ability to forecast and surface risks, issues, dependencies and challenges at all levels - I/P
Essential: ability to persuade and influence both internally and in external networks - I/P
Essential: project management skills including planning, risk management and dependency management - A/I/P

Behaviours
Essential: inspire and motivate team members and other colleagues - I/P
Essential: demonstrate enthusiasm for change management that encourages colleagues to embrace change - I/P
Essential: demonstrate ability to cope with adversity and fast-paced constantly changing environments, and to support others to do the same - I/P
Essential: ability to lead and engage upwards, sideways and downwards, including the line and matrix management of small teams - I/P

Experience
Essential: experience of leading change delivery for complex people, process and/or technology change - A/I/P
Essential: experience in working within a matrix-managed delivery model - A/I/P
Desirable: experience of HR and/or OD strategies and activities - A/I/P
Desirable: experience of IT delivery lifecycles including SDLC and ITIL - A/I/P
Desirable: experience of ‘commercial off the shelf’ and bespoke system implementations - A/I/P

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