Senior Transformation Officer

This is a Full Time Fixed Term Position for 12 months to cover for secondment. Are you passionate about improving our public services? Are you an experienced change professional looking for your next challenge? Here at Hull City Council, we have an exciting portfolio of change, driving improvements across our services and we are seeking a change professional to fulfil the role of Senior Transformation Officer managing programmes and projects, improvement initiatives and organisational readiness.

We are looking for an individual who thrives on process improvements and preparing and embedding change initiatives across people, processes and technology. You will have strong stakeholder skills, change management skills aligned with an understanding of opportunities available through digital innovation. You will be joining a well established Corporate Transformation Team that operates in a hybrid model providing flexibility across various office locations and remote working. Whilst this is a 12 month fixed term role, there may be an opportunity for this to lead to a permanent position.

ROLE AND PURPOSE

• To provide knowledge and expertise to lead and support programme/projects to deliver identified change and improvement.
• To identify synergies, potential duplication or conflicts and ensuring activities are underpinned with recognised programme management methodologies.
• Ensure sufficient resources are available to undertake efficient project delivery and that the necessary resources are identified, planned and allocated to projects ensuring outputs are delivered on time and to the required level of quality.
• To support and lead project resources from the Corporate Transformation Team and relevant service areas.
• Support the upskilling of service staff to build capacity and capability in the organisation and support the delivery of change.
• Lead on stakeholder communication and engagement regarding programme outcomes.
• Identify, define and track progress, benefits and outcomes in addition to risks and issues for projects/programmes.
• Work with and guide senior managers to shape and deliver change and transformation.
• Ensure projects comply with monitoring and reporting requirements and that an effective escalation process is in place, to highlight delivery risks and issues to ensure planned contingencies and that mitigating action is agreed.
• Ensure change is embedded and is delivering the improvements expected from the implementation of the programme project.
• To support the provision of quality assurance for programmes/projects.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES

• To provide project and programme expertise to change programmes and projects.
• To provide project management skills to support service department staff to deliver change programmes and associated benefits.
• To provide advice in service business planning, processes and performance.
• To identify further improvements to service efficiency making optimum use of technological developments.
• To identify the need for and develop appropriate project documentation.
• Assist in relating change programmes and plans to the needs of service users and the objectives, priorities and targets of agreed local strategies and corporate plans.
• Assist in the development and embedding of appropriate change and improvement methodologies, approaches and techniques across the Council; contributing to the wider development, training and up‑skilling of staff.
• Champion change management and project management disciplines and contribute to the development and implementation of processes, structures and tools for individual project managers and programme managers within the council to use.
• Provide programme and project management skills to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of assigned change programmes across the Council.
• Decides most appropriate project management methodology and techniques to use based on nature and needs of assigned projects.
• Maintains a vision of future needs of change delivery.
• Works holistically sharing expertise that will embed new working practices, ensure changes continue going forward and that a culture of best practice, high performance and innovation is developed.

Customer Focus

• To be customer focused and ensure programmes/projects are utilising customer insight to plan and deliver change.
• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with key stakeholders.
• Ensure communication is effective at all levels ensuring buy in from staff and enabling change to be delivered.
• To work collaboratively with staff at all levels within the Council and partner organisations to ensure a clear understanding of the importance of designing for the customer, when delivering change.
• Take the lead on transition management, ensuring that business as usual is maintained during the transition and the timing of the changes are optimised to effectively integrate into the business.

Performance Management

• To ensure that the co‑ordination of activity is undertaken.
• Capture and report on progress against the programme/project and raise and escalate issues and risks.
• Deliver to tight deadlines and influence others to deliver within such parameters.
• Establish and implement the mechanisms by which benefits can be measured.
• Proactively monitor benefits realisation for the whole programme.
• Facilitate the development of a continuous improvement culture by identifying improvements, making recommendations and providing support to and negotiating with managers to deliver change and improvement as a result of findings, dealing with any potential opposition to the proposed change.
• Analyses and reviews the benefits of individual projects in order to support prioritisation.
• Communicates with all stakeholders, deals with risks and barriers to ensure objectives are delivered on time and within resources allocated.
• Monitors and reviews project documentation to enable reporting to governance bodies such as senior officer working groups.
• Completes post implementation reviews to ensure that the required business benefits have been achieved and will be sustained, produces management reports on the findings.
• To be an effective leader modelling exemplary behaviour to staff and promoting a positive culture which seeks excellence in the quality of service delivery and values equality and diversity.
• To actively promote a culture of organisational learning and development, including the identification of coaching and mentoring of staff.
• The post holder will matrix manage a team from the Corporate Transformation Team together with staff from services on assigned projects.
• As a team leader, the post holder will also capture where future opportunities for further efficiencies may be derived.
• Works with service managers to turn improvement ideas/proposals into workable solutions and formulates these into detailed viable plans, if feasible, ensuring advantage is taken of opportunities available.
• Working with key stakeholders, to drive change in a timely and effective manner to ensure that new models of working are embedded successfully.
• Champion change and improvement methodologies and techniques.
• Embeds learning into the organisation from reputable and proven external business change research and best practice.
• Transferring knowledge and skills to colleagues in the organisation.

Statutory Obligations

• Must take account of relevant statutory obligations within business process redesign and identification of efficiencies.

Benefits of Working of Hull City Council

• An excellent pension through the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).
• Initially 23 days annual leave depending on length of service. You will also get eight public holidays per year, and three additional days off, one in May/August and one during the Christmas/New year period.
• Career development and learning experiences from a range of training courses and learning methods.
• Supportive and forward‑thinking culture.
• We are committed to increasing the diversity, equality, and inclusion within our workforce to represent the people we serve and build an environment in which everyone can feel like they belong. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.
• We adopt a ‘name blind’ approach to shortlisting. Recruiting managers will not have access to personal information, including your name and contact details, until a shortlisting decision has been made.
• Equality monitoring information is not accessible by recruiting managers at any stage.
• We reserve the right to amend the dates associated with this advert, which may include closing the advert early where required.
• The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.
• Online searches, including social media, may be carried out as part of the recruitment process.