People & Capability Group

People and Capability is here to support the organisation by enabling its people to be the best that they can be. We are continuously reviewing and enhancing the services we provide across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to ensure the delivery of high-quality services for our customers.

As a department, we are going through a period of significant transformation and our people services are at the forefront of enabling that change. MoJ People and Capability is a team of 1,400 committed and capable professionals delivering people services across the Justice family. At the heart of delivering these services, are our people.

Information about the MoJ and its priorities can be found at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about

About the Role

Synergy is a cross-government programme transforming the way we deliver HR, Finance and Commercial services to over 250,000 civil servants in MoJ, Defra, DWP and the Home Office and is underpinned by the Shared Services Strategy for Government. It will simplify the way we do things, join up functions, and free up more of our time for the delivery of some of the UK's most crucial public services.

We are looking for individuals who will need to be flexible, driven, highly organised, be able to see the bigger picture, have a high level of energy and attention to detail with a strong understanding of Business Change interventions. Whilst you will be working in a fast-paced project environment, strong leadership, engagement and interpersonal skills are just as important as project and change management knowledge/experience in what is a challenging but exciting programme.

The role can be based anywhere in the UK and travel when appropriate will be required to support the delivery of the programme.

You will be embedded in the MoJ Synergy Business Change team with a key focus on ensuring the right change management activities and interventions are delivered to support the roll out of Synergy services. You will primarily be responsible for providing a change management interface into a specific area of MoJ, ensuring that Synergy programme change management frameworks, approaches and plans are adopted as appropriate.

We have a number of roles available including:

• A business change and readiness lead to provide dedicated change management support for change related to the introduction of a new Business Process Services provider and the Synergy Shared Services Hub;

• A business change and readiness lead to provide flexible support across a range of change management activities.

A priority for all of these roles is to establish, build and maintain professional relationships with delivery partners, leadership and stakeholders of all levels, both internally and externally. You will bring your substantial experience of working on complex transformation programmes into the role, acting as an advocate for the programme and representing the Synergy Business Change team in key stakeholder forums, SLTs and steering groups, creating and leveraging change networks in order to ensure people adopt the required changes.

You will be expected to recognise and respond to changing or conflicting priorities during significant delivery challenges and use your knowledge and professional judgement to provide recommendations for senior leadership to ensure sound strategic decisions are made, which directly impact business services across the programme. This is an exciting role where you will play a part in making transformational change through a smarter, simpler and more efficient technology platforms.

Travel - The successful candidate will be expected to undertake occasional travel to meetings, workshops and away days as required.

Main Activities / Responsibilities

The job holder will be required to undertake the following duties and responsibilities:

You will have a strong understanding and significant experience of implementing change management strategies and frameworks in the context of large-scale transformation processes. You will be responsible for:

• Ensuring an end to end change management process is implemented within MoJ following the Programme change methodology and is aligned with change activity across the wider MoJ business units;

• Leading change impacting utilising programme frameworks and approaches, analysing the outputs from change impacting and feeding these outputs into the overarching MoJ change analysis;

• Leading the development of the change plan for your relevant focus area, ensuring this docks into the overarching MoJ change plan, working with key stakeholders to develop a RACI for change management activity;

• Identification and development of specific user profiles to be utilised in change impacting and comms and engagement work;

• Developing the Synergy change engagement plan, working closely with the MoJ Synergy Programme Comms and Engagement lead to ensure coherence and agree strategic priorities;

• Building a community of Change Champions to support the delivery of change activity;

• Quickly building trust and credibility through effective relationships with SROs, Sponsors and Leaders confidently challenging approaches and boundaries to drive forward the required changes;

• Lead robust Stakeholder Management to support organisational change - assessing levels of engagement in Leaders and actively managing to achieve high levels of commitment. 

•  Drive user adoption and business readiness, working with relevant teams to develop personas, journeys and adoption strategies that support sustainable change.

• Work with Synergy workstream leads with the implementation of readiness projects.

• Bring insight from the business into the MoJ Synergy Business Change team to help shape approaches and drive effective employee engagement.

The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The Job holder is expected to accept reasonable alterations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary.

Person Specification

Strong evidence of visible and effective leadership, building confident internal and external relationships, including with senior stakeholders, in a complex, fast paced change environment with conflicting priorities. 

Experience of navigating ambiguous requirements, adapt to changing circumstances and adverse situations whilst remaining calm and maintaining performance.  

Proven track record of or demonstrable transferrable skills for leading Transformational Change from a Business Change perspective and support the delivery of Business Case benefits and outcomes. Champion the use of best practice project management standards and processes.

The ability to establish and develop productive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, bringing people together to benefit the project.

Essential Criteria

• Significant experience of operating at senior level within complex organisations, providing visible leadership and influencing senior stakeholders across organisational boundaries.

• A strong track record of leading large‑scale business change and transformation, with accountability for readiness, adoption and benefits realisation.

• Experience of navigating ambiguity, managing competing priorities and adapting to changing circumstances while maintaining delivery focus.

• Proven ability to assess, manage and effectively land business change within a defined function, working in close partnership with programme teams and functional leadership.

Desirable

• Strong stakeholder management skills, including the ability to build productive relationships, align divergent interests and influence without direct authority.

• Experience of assessing the impacts of change across policies, processes, roles, responsibilities and ways of working, and translating this into actionable readiness plans.

• Knowledge and experience of HR policy and practice, including TUPE/COSOP, workforce transition and employee consultation.

• Knowledge or experience of working within HR, Finance or Commercial functions in a large, complex organisation.

• Experience of working within matrix‑managed environments and representing functional interests in programme or portfolio governance.

Please note that whilst we don’t assess or score ‘desirable’ criteria, we may consider evidence provided that demonstrates meeting the desirable elements of the role, only after essential criteria is assessed and where there is a need to differentiate between closely scored candidates. 

Essential Qualification

Significant Practical Experience, or Working Towards or Qualified in one or more of the following: 

• APMG Change Management Practitioner

• PROSCI

• PRINCE 2

• Managing Successful Programmes

• Project Leadership Programme 

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.

Sift

Experience

Please provide an anonymised copy of your CV

Please provide a 500-word statement of suitability, outlining how your experience and skills matches the essential criteria and person specification of the job description.

Behaviours

• Changing and Improving (Lead Behaviour)

• Seeing the Bigger Picture

• Communicating and Influencing

• Delivering at pace

Please refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details, including by grade:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles/success-profiles-civil-service-behaviours#why-we-assess-behaviours

If we receive a large number of applications, we will carry out an initial sift on the statement of suitability.

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely via MS Teams.

During the interview, we will be assessing you on Behaviours (as above).

Experience

You will be asked a question assessing your significant practical experience in change management.

Presentation - Candidates invited to interview will be required to deliver a short presentation. Further details and the presentation topic will be provided in advance of the interview.

You will also be asked Strength based questions which are not shared prior to interview.

For any enquires regarding the role please contact toni.burrage@justice.gov.uk