Office for National Statistics
Change Manager
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The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham).
This role is aligned to ONS hybrid working principles, which are based on attending the office with purpose. The postholder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Job Summary
Do you enjoy shaping change that delivers meaningful, long-term benefits? Are you motivated by supporting people to navigate change with clarity, confidence, and purpose? If so, this role offers an excellent opportunity to make a real impact.
Business Surveys is going through a significant period of change as we continue to improve the way we design, deliver and support business survey operations. This role sits within Business Surveys Change team and will help ensure that change is well planned, clearly communicated and successfully embedded across teams, services and stakeholders.
The Change Manager plays a key role in preparing the organisation for the successful adoption of change, ensuring that new ways of working are understood, embedded, and deliver measurable benefits. Acting as the bridge between delivery teams and business users, you will support the planning and implementation of change to enable a smooth transition into business-as-usual.
Job Description
As an SEO Change Manager, you will play a key role in preparing the business for new ways of working, helping colleagues understand what is changing, why it matters and what support is needed to make the change successful. You will work closely with project teams, operational colleagues, subject matter experts and senior stakeholders to assess change impacts, support business readiness, develop engagement activity and contribute to benefits realisation.
You will help translate complex programme and project activity into practical plans that support adoption across Business Surveys. This will include developing and maintaining change plans, supporting communications, identifying risks and readiness issues, and making sure that people affected by change are engaged early and appropriately. The work will be varied and may involve supporting multiple change initiatives at different stages of the lifecycle, from planning through to implementation and embedding.
The successful candidate will be confident working in a busy and sometimes ambiguous environment, able to build trusted relationships and comfortable using evidence, insight and feedback to shape delivery. You will need to be organised, proactive and able to communicate clearly with different audiences, balancing structure and pace with the practical needs of teams delivering critical statistical outputs.
This is an opportunity to contribute to meaningful change in a high-profile area of ONS, supporting improvements that help Business Surveys continue to deliver trusted, high-quality data for decision makers, businesses and the public.
Key Responsibilities
- Leadership & Delivery - Leads business change activities and collaborates with the project team to achieve the benefits and outcomes outlined in the business case. Champions best practices and provides expert advice to team members and the project community. Assesses and understands the impact on stakeholders to enhance their adoption of the change.
- Business Case - Assists the Project Manager in preparing and updating the change management elements of the business case.
- Change Products - Supports the Project Manager in creating the required business change products. Leads engagement with key contacts and ensures products are fit for purpose.
- Change Planning - Establishes and maintains the change plan for a specific area of responsibility.
- Business Readiness - Identifies, qualifies, and updates business readiness criteria across areas of responsibility before implementation. Supports tracking to determine ‘approve/refuse’ for go-live decisions.
- Benefits Management - Supports the Benefits Manager, Project Manager, and stakeholders in identifying and leveraging benefits. Incorporates benefits management into all change activities.
- Change Communication - Works with the Stakeholder Manager and Project Manager to create and maintain a communications plan related to change messaging. Provides content for communications across areas of responsibility.
- Stakeholder Management - Identifies and classifies stakeholders, ensuring their inclusion in the stakeholder engagement plan. Serves as the point of contact for a larger pool of more senior stakeholders.
- Guidance & Support - Provides direction and guidance to the team. Leads change activities across areas of responsibility.
- Digital & Data - Collects and shares data in line with data standards. Uses digital tools to manage change initiatives effectively, ensuring that data analytics support the identification and tracking of change impacts and the adoption of new ways of working.
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Person specification
Essential Criteria:
- Experience of leading or supporting business change or transformation activity, with an ability to understand business perspectives and align change activity to wider strategy.
- Practical experience of applying business change approaches, frameworks, methodologies or models to support successful implementation and adoption.
- Ability to assess the impact of change on people, processes, stakeholders and operational areas, using evidence and insight to support readiness, implementation and embedding.
- Experience of delivering work to agreed timelines managing competing priorities in a busy or changing environment.
- Ability to develop clear, creative and effective communications for different audiences, creating a strong narrative that supports understanding, engagement and adoption of change.
- Well-developed stakeholder management skills and experience of successfully building relationships and networks with a diverse range of people to achieve collaboration, develop common goals, and deliver significant business change outcomes.
- Ability to provide constructive challenge, guidance and support to colleagues and promote good change management practice.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Delivering at Pace
- Communicating and Influencing
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Business Change and Implementation- Practitioner : Project Delivery Capability Framework
- Stakeholder Engagement- Working : Project Delivery Capability Framework
Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
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As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security Clearance
For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records.
Visa Sponsorship
ONS are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants are expected to hold a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are applying on a time-limited visa, this will need to be valid for at least 18 months.
To work at the ONS, candidates must meet both UK right to work and security clearance requirements.
Application Process
Number of Stages: 3 stage process
- Stage 1: Civil Service Judgement Test
- Stage 2: Application
- Stage 3: Interview
Stage 1 - Civil Service Online Tests
Upon submission of Part 1 your application form you will be sent an invitation to complete the Civil Service Judgement online tests.
There will be full instructions on how to complete each test including an opportunity to practice before undertaking the actual test. These tests are not time limited.
If you pass a test, you will then receive a further invite to complete each subsequent test if there is more than one for this vacancy. If you fail a test your application will not proceed to the next stage.
If you pass all tests for this vacancy, you will be invited to complete the final stage of your application,
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