Description
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is seeking a Change and Benefits Manager to join the Change Directorate. The successful candidate will play a key role in delivering organisational change and ensuring benefits are realised across Defra and its Arm's Length bodies.
The Change Directorate is focused on bringing about critical organisational change to deliver Defra's priority Outcomes Framework and shape the future of the organisation. The successful candidate will work on a high-profile, fast-paced area of work across areas of Defra, including its Arm's Length Bodies.
The Geospatial Enabling Programme is a key priority for Defra Group, and the Change and Benefits Manager will support this programme. The programme aims to unlock the power of geospatial capability by creating a clear single access point for authoritative, up-to-date foundational land data across England.
As a Change and Benefits Manager, you will:
- Lead business change and benefits management activity across Defra and its Arm's Length bodies
- Work with programme delivery leads and project managers to ensure business cases include robust change and benefits management approaches
- Assess and understand the impact of change on stakeholders and users to improve adoption and implementation success
- Develop and maintain business change plans, readiness assessments, and benefits realisation plans
- Support the definition, baselining, quantification, and tracking of benefits
- Facilitate workshops to identify benefits, map impacts, challenge assumptions, and gain stakeholder agreement
- Work closely with communications teams to deliver clear and engaging messaging relating to business change activities
- Identify and manage business readiness criteria ahead of implementation and provide recommendations regarding go-live readiness
- Support governance, assurance, change control, risk management, and reporting requirements across the portfolio
- Champion consistent business change standards, tools, products, and good practice across Defra
The essential criteria for this role include:
- Significant experience leading business change, implementation, transformation, or organisational change activity in a project, programme, or operational environment
- Experience assessing change impacts and translating them into practical readiness, adoption, transition, and stakeholder engagement activity
- Strong understanding of benefits identification, baselining, tracking, and realisation methodologies
- Experience of business case development, governance, planning, scheduling, risk management, and change control
- Strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to influence, challenge, and build effective relationships at senior levels
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to tailor communications to different audiences
- Experience facilitating workshops and leading collaborative engagement sessions
- Experience using Microsoft Office applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
The technical skills required for this role include knowledge and experience of Project Management methodology supported by professional qualifications such as APMG Change Management Practitioner, APMG Managing Benefits Practitioner, Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Practitioner, Agile Project Management Practitioner, PRINCE2 Practitioner, APM Project Management Qualification, APM Chartered Project Professional, or PMI Project Management Professional.
The salary for this role is £58,207 - £71,178 per year.
Alongside your salary, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £16,862 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.