Continuous Improvement Specialist

Reporting directly to the Head of the Portfolio Management Office (PfMO), this role focuses on continuous improvement and embedding lessons learned into the project profession, supporting the Head of PfMO implement the communications strategy for the project profession across the organisation, and helping the Transformation Lead (who sits in the Executive Office) embed good practice around change management.

The change management discipline is a central part of the Change and Transformation Specialist role and is intended to thread through all the areas outline in the accountabilities section of this job description.

Accountabilities:

Lessons Learned: Roll out, create awareness of and conduct quarterly trend analysis to inform continuous improvement of the Lessons Learned Platform for project professionals. Embed positive changes identified through the learning from experiences feedback. In particular, help the organisation shift to a 'learning culture' over time.

Strategy and approach: Develop strategies to address resistance to establishing a continuous improvement mindset and culture, that works identify trends and embed the learnings highlighted through them quarterly, to maximise stakeholder adoption and engagement, and ensure sustainability of approach so that it becomes the 'norm' and we become a learning organisation. Evaluate the impact of continuous improvements embedded over time

Analysis and trends: Analyse lessons learned information from projects to identify trends and to drive continuous improvement, ensuring the information is communicated effectively to inform decision making and strategic alignment.

Communications: Support the Head of PfMO in implementing the communication strategy and plan for the PfMO Centre of Excellence, ensuring clear and coherent messaging. The strategy focuses on project professionals across the organisation and is aimed at helping create a sense of 'one project community' over time.

P3M Community: Manage the P3M Hub on behalf of the Head of PfMO; an online designed to unite the project community, to share good practices amongst project professionals, and to house standard templates and documents for project professionals.

P3M Transformation Support: Work closely day-to-day with peers in the PfMO Centre of Excellence team to ensure integrated and collaborative working. In particular, advise members of the team on how best to embed the changes they are seeking to make as functional leads, so that they are rolled out in a way that embeds them fully within the organisation (i.e. in a way that will help the changes stick and become the normal way of doing things over time).

Change Management: Act as an internal specialist to the project profession on change management and transformation, supporting projects, programmes, senior management, and the Corporate Change Board.

Internal Relationships (change management): Provide specialist insight to the Transformation Lead (in the Executive Office), who manages Change Champions network, helping ensure best practices are communicated and embedded. Work in harmony with peers from other departments, including the Transformation and Optimisation Lead in the People & Culture team, the Change Communications and Engagement Manager in the Internal Communications team and key individuals in the Learning and Development team to ensure we work collectively and collaboratively in our approach as an organisation for change management.

People management: Effective and timely management of staff, including, but not limited to: setting resource allocation and recruitment requirements, knowledge transfer, supporting welfare and EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion), setting expectations (including behavioural), onboarding and probation, setting SMART objectives, performance management, absence management, addressing concerns (e.g. disciplinaries, grievances, etc.), workforce planning, building capability in line with business strategy, supporting learning, skills and professional development, and coaching, and offboarding.

· Promote values, championing a culture of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

· Ensure that your behaviour promotes the safety, health and welfare of yourself and your colleagues.

· Work in accordance with and contribute to improving best practices and quality standards within the team, division and across the organisation.

· Work in accordance with policies and undertake any other reasonable tasks or duties requested by Management commensurate with grade.

· This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, there may be additional reasonable tasks that may need to be undertaken that are not specified. It should be noted that the job may evolve over time to meet business needs.

Budget Responsibility: What is the responsibility for budget for this role

· Indirect impact on multimillion pound portfolios, programmes and projects.

Other Duties

· Deputise for the Head of PfMO in the areas of continuous improvement, change management and transformation at meetings as needed and approvals as appropriate and when needed.

· Secretariat for the Corporate Change Board, which oversees the company wide change agenda.

· Engage with the Association for Project Management (APM) in a way that helps project professionals maximise benefits of our corporate partnership in relation to change management.

· Keep up with current change management and transformation related practitioner and academic research and ensure that this is communicated and shared back to the wider community.

· Ensure that tools, methodologies and policies recognise the variety of projects and programmes by being proportionate, effective, agile and (where appropriate) tailorable. Avoiding a one size fits all approach to change management.

· Participate in programme & project governance groups as needed.

Specific Qualifications/Experience:

· Project Programme or Portfolio qualification (e.g. APM PMQ, Prince2, MSP, MoP), or equivalent experience.

· Proven experience of delivering projects or programmes circa £1M

· Awareness of Change Management within project and programme Management

· Experience in delivering communication strategies.

· Excellent interpersonal, negotiating and communication skills, with an ability to establish, maintain and develop relationships. Including experience influencing, negotiating with, and providing challenge to senior level stakeholders. Ability to communicate in both technical and non-technical terms to different audiences.

· Adaptability, problem-solving skills and creative thinking - ability to think 'outside the box', work autonomously, and use appropriate initiative.

· Ability to quickly build rapport and maintain productive relationships.

· Stakeholder engagement and management - Ability to influence, negotiate, and challenge appropriately at all levels of the organisation including SLT and senior stakeholders.

Advantageous:

· APMG Change Management Foundation qualification

· Detailed knowledge of change management (transformation) methodologies, approaches and good practice, such as Lewin, McKinsey 7 S model, ADKAR, Kotter, etc.

· Experience of providing deep technical change management expertise.

· Experience working in a similar capacity within the third sector or private sector.

· Microsoft Office365, SharePoint, Power BI experience.