Change Lead / Change & Adoption Lead

Change Lead / Change & Adoption Lead

• Rate: £650 per day
• Location: Remote Working
• Contract length: To confirm
• IR35 status: Inside IR35
• Clearance requirement: SC Clearance

Your new company

You'll be joining SAS Strategy as part of a transformation within the Engineering Transformation Office. The requirement is to establish and embed a Change & Adoption capability that enables transformation activity to be successfully adopted, transitioned and sustained across the organisation.

Your new role

As Change Lead, you'll be accountable for building, governing and continuously improving the Change & Adoption capability across the Engineering Transformation Office.

This is specifically a transformation and organisational change role, not ITIL/application change management. You'll be building and introducing new change functions rather than operating an established application change process.
You'll own the Change Operating Model and establish the frameworks, governance, standards and ways of working needed to create a consistent approach across transformation initiatives.

This is a demanding transformational environment with changing priorities and goalposts. You'll therefore need to be persistent, adaptable and comfortable maintaining momentum through ambiguity, challenge and changing requirements.

Key responsibilities

• Establish and maintain the Change Operating Model, including the change lifecycle, methodology, governance, standards, RACI, reporting, templates and toolkit.
• Lead stakeholder identification, impact assessment, engagement strategies and communications.
• Conduct readiness assessments, identify adoption barriers and establish adoption plans and measures.
• Embed Change & Adoption into transformation, discovery and mobilisation.
• Coordinate engagement with Service Delivery Managers and operational stakeholders.
• Support service transition, including transition readiness, risks, dependencies and service landing.
• Provide governance, RAID management, executive dashboards and evidence-based reporting.
• Provide leadership insight into organisational impacts, readiness and adoption.
• Link adoption activities and measures to benefits realisation.
• Maintain a visible backlog, manage commitments and delivery dates, and escalate slippage early.
• Identify and track dependencies, owners and associated risks.
• Proactively escalate risks, recommend mitigations and track actions through to resolution.
• Maintain auditability and transparency across change activity.
• Maintain accurate forecasts, apply standard RAG definitions and align reporting with governance standards.

The role is ultimately accountable for ensuring the Change & Adoption capability becomes operational, measurable and consistently adopted across interventions.

Essential skills and experience

• Previous experience delivering organisational change within transformation programmes.
• Demonstrable experience of driving complex change and transformation rather than ITIL/application change management.
• Experience establishing, building or embedding a Change & Adoption function, capability, operating model or framework.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communications capability.
• Experience of change impact assessment, organisational readiness and adoption.
• Strong governance, RAID, risk and dependency management skills.
• Experience managing deliverables, commitments, dependencies and deadlines across complex transformation activity.
• Ability to produce clear, evidence-based reporting and provide senior stakeholders with accurate delivery insight.
• Ability to identify problems early, recommend mitigations and escalate appropriately.
• A persistent and adaptable approach, with the ability to maintain delivery momentum when priorities or requirements change.
• Ability to work effectively in a demanding transformational environment.

Important: A background primarily in ITIL/application change management without broader organisational transformation experience will not meet this requirement.

What you'll get in return

This is an opportunity to take ownership of establishing and embedding a Change & Adoption capability across a transformation portfolio.

• Rate: £650 per day
• Contract length: To confirm
• Working arrangement: Remote
• IR35 status: INSIDE

How to applyIf you're interested in this opportunity, apply with your latest CV, availability and preferred location. If this role isn't quite right for you, please get in touch for a confidential discussion about similar opportunities.

Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at hays.co.uk