Change Management Lead

Job Description – Change Management Lead
6 Months contract

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Change Management Lead to drive the people, process and organisational change agenda across complex business and technology transformation programmes within the telecommunications sector.

The role will be responsible for developing and executing an integrated change strategy that enables impacted teams to understand, adopt and sustain new ways of working. The successful candidate will work closely with programme leadership, business stakeholders, technology teams, operational functions, communications, learning and development, and external delivery partners.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and own the end-to-end change management strategy and delivery plan aligned with programme objectives, milestones and business outcomes.
• Conduct change impact assessments across people, processes, technology, organisation structures, roles, capabilities and ways of working.
• Identify impacted stakeholder groups and develop targeted stakeholder engagement and communication plans.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with senior business leaders, programme sponsors, operational teams, technology functions and delivery partners.
• Establish and manage a network of business change champions across impacted functions and locations.
• Assess organisational readiness and identify adoption risks, resistance points, capability gaps and dependencies.
• Define clear change interventions to address identified impacts and support successful business adoption.
• Develop compelling change narratives that explain the purpose, benefits, impact and expected outcomes of the transformation.
• Work with communications teams to create clear, audience-specific communications across appropriate channels.
• Partner with learning and development teams and subject-matter experts to define training needs, learning journeys and knowledge-transfer plans.
• Ensure business teams are adequately prepared for solution releases, process changes, operating-model changes and transition to business-as-usual operations.
• Integrate change activities with programme plans, release schedules, deployment roadmaps and operational-readiness plans.
• Support leaders and line managers in communicating change, managing resistance and reinforcing desired behaviours.
• Define adoption measures and track change effectiveness through readiness assessments, stakeholder sentiment, training completion, usage, compliance and benefit-realisation indicators.
• Provide regular change status reporting, insights, risks and recommendations to programme governance and senior leadership.
• Ensure change activities are sustainable and embedded beyond implementation through reinforcement, coaching and post-deployment support.
• Promote consistent change management standards, governance, templates and best practices across the programme.

Required Experience

• Significant experience leading change management for large, complex business and technology transformation programmes.
• Strong experience within telecommunications, technology, digital services or another large-scale, highly regulated environment.
• Demonstrable experience managing change across multiple business units, functions, locations and stakeholder groups.
• Experience supporting transformations involving areas such as customer operations, digital channels, network operations, service management, OSS/BSS, cloud, data, automation or operating-model change.
• Proven ability to engage and influence senior executives, programme sponsors and operational leaders.
• Experience working within complex programme structures involving internal teams, strategic suppliers and multiple delivery partners.
• Strong understanding of change impact assessment, stakeholder management, communications, training, business readiness, adoption and benefits realisation.
• Experience using recognised change methodologies such as Prosci/ADKAR, Kotter, Lewin or an equivalent enterprise change framework.
• Ability to translate complex technology and programme information into clear business messages for different audiences.
• Experience managing resistance and supporting teams through uncertainty and significant organisational change.

Skills and Competencies

• Strategic change leadership
• Stakeholder engagement and executive influencing
• Change impact and readiness assessment
• Organisational design and operating-model awareness
• Communication and engagement planning
• Training and capability-development planning
• Business adoption and benefits realisation
• Change governance, reporting and risk management
• Strong facilitation, presentation and workshop-management skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Analytical thinking and structured problem-solving
• Ability to manage ambiguity, competing priorities and complex dependencies
• Collaborative leadership across multidisciplinary and geographically distributed teams

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, management, organisational development, human resources, communications, technology or a related discipline.
• Change management certification such as Prosci, APMG Change Management, CCMP or an equivalent qualification is preferred.
• Programme or project management certification such as PRINCE2, MSP, PMP, Agile or SAFe would be advantageous.

Desirable Experience

• Experience delivering change within a global telecommunications organisation.
• Understanding of the telecommunications value chain, including customer experience, order management, service fulfilment, service assurance, billing and network operations.
• Experience supporting Agile, product-led or scaled delivery environments.
• Experience with workforce transformation, organisational restructuring, process simplification or capability uplift.
• Familiarity with digital adoption, change analytics and employee-engagement tools.
• Experience supporting major platform migrations, service transitions or enterprise-wide transformation initiatives.

Measures of Success

• Business readiness achieved in line with programme and release milestones.
• High levels of stakeholder engagement and leadership alignment.
• Effective completion of communications, training and readiness activities.
• Measurable adoption of new systems, processes and ways of working.
• Reduction in resistance, operational disruption and post-deployment issues.
• Successful transition of change into business-as-usual operations.
• Achievement and sustained realisation of intended programme benefits.