About the job

Job summary

Guide and influence a complex and critical transformation programme

The Home Office’s mission is to deliver a safe, fair and prosperous UK.  Working alongside the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we are part of the Synergy Programme Cluster. Through this programme we will be building a common operating model, a single SaaS technology platform, a single new business process service contract and the design and set-up of a single, new shared service organisation. A significant transformation, it will help us to continue keeping our citizens safe and our country secure.

In this senior leadership role you will act as Synergy Programme Director for business transformation within the Home Office, and represent the Home Office as Programme Director within the Cluster. It will also involve managing the relationship with our current Business Process Outsourcing supplier: overseeing performance and working collaboratively to drive improvements.

You will lead the Home Office through the design, build and implementation of a new Shared Service Centre that includes cloud-enabling technology.  At the same time, you will provide strategic direction to the Home Office programme team and our supply chain of delivery partners and third-party service providers. 

Your success will depend on your ability to plan and deliver business change. You will need to build strategic partnerships between the internal functions of the Home Office (Finance, HR, Commercial and DDAT) and the Synergy Programme, providing expert input on best practice to assure transformation is achieved. Excellent stakeholder engagement skills will be essential to gain ownership and sponsorship for the transformation.

You are likely to have substantial experience of leading complex transformation programmes including an understanding of the role organisational culture plays in realising benefits.  With well-honed communication skills, you will demonstrate the impact and gravitas to challenge assumptions and influence direction in a complex environment.  Strong people leadership skills are important, including the ability to work with ambiguity, resolve conflicts and build consensus.

Along with extensive training and development, we offer structured career progression.  Other benefits include access to a valuable civil service pension and flexible working arrangements.

Job description

For further details and more information check the Candidate Pack attached to the post.

Person specification

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria: 

Essential Criteria

• Experience of leading Transformation Programmes, developing clear vision and standards.
• Evidence of understanding the role culture plays in major transformation programmes and the importance for benefit realisation.
• Experience of successfully working with a broad range of senior stakeholders and external partners, demonstrating the communications skills, impact and gravitas to effectively challenge assumptions and influence direction in a complex environment. Able to build consensus across a large and diverse group of stakeholders.
• Strong people leadership skills, with a track record of developing, leading and motivating large teams and driving a diverse and inclusive working culture.
• The ability to work with ambiguity, to manage conflict resolution and be personally resilient.

Desirable Criteria

• In-depth experience of segmentation and management of multiple stakeholder groups appropriately in complex environments.
• Experience of implementing change within functional areas (eg Finance or HR) with an impact on technology or implementing ERP technologies.
• Understanding of product centric way of working.
• Managing programme budgets, ensuring that accurate plans and financial models for future phases are developed and agreed and forecast actual costs against them.
• Commercially minded, with sound business acumen and a strong focus on performance, value for money and financial management of major project budgets
• Ability to drive performance improvement in a contractual environment.

Desirable qualifications

• Major Projects Leadership Academy (MPLA) (willing to work towards)
• Managing Successful Programmes Practitioner
• Managing Successful Programmes Advanced Practitioner
• APM Registered Project Professional
• PRINCE2 Practitioner

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Home Office contributes £20,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online, no later than 23:55hrs on Friday 29th December 2023.

Provide some basic personal information;

• A CV - setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years;
• A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience, provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.
• Diversity Monitoring - as part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say'. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for more information.

It is essential that in your written application you give evidence, using examples, of proven experience. These responses will be developed and discussed with candidates invited for interview. Failure to submit both a CV and Supporting Statement will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.