At Essex County Council (ECC), what we do impacts the lives of over 1.4 million people. From the safety of children to the independent lives of older residents, and from boosting quality of life through public health to the lasting regeneration of proud towns and cities - everything we do takes a pioneering and agile approach. Our Organisation, Development & People and Service Transformation (ODP&ST) teams are working to ensure that innovation and learning take centre stage. Join them and you'll enable new ways of working and thinking to achieve our vision - for Essex to be a county where innovation brings prosperity.

The role

This role leads the team responsible for designing, delivering and evaluating OD and change interventions to support the achievement of the Council's corporate objectives and enable it to put its values into practice. This role will provide highly specialist OD consultancy expertise and support to senior stakeholders shaping an organisational culture that increases employee engagement, strengthens their sense of belonging and raises organisational performance.

The Organisational Development and Change Lead will lead, develop, and strengthen a team of Organisational Development & Change practitioners, ensuring they consistently apply high level consultancy skills when working with the teams and functions across the organisation. This role will both manage and be part of this consultancy team, contributing to the delivery of key strategic change initiatives as well as working with the other practice leads within the team to allocate and manage workload in a way that meet organisational, functional and individual needs.

This role works collaboratively across Organisational Development & People and Service Transformation function, maximising the contribution, value, and credibility this practice makes throughout the organisation, both through own efforts and by supporting the activities of other teams.

You'll do great here if you

• Have strong knowledge of leading-edge organisational development and change management methodologies and approaches, with demonstrable experience of practical application of these within a complex environment.
• Possess excellent communication and influencing skills with the ability to engage with a range of partners and stakeholders, managing expectations and clearly articulating messages to a range of audiences with differing levels of understanding.
• Have strong diagnostic, problem solving, and analytical skills
• Possess strong leadership skills, with significant experience managing, motivating and mentoring teams and individuals.
• Have proven experience of organisational consulting, preferably as an internal consultant, including resource allocation and workload management and planning.
• Possess strong experience in managing business transformation and change programmes, enabling the organisation to understand the impact and alignment of the portfolio of change initiatives.
• Have strong working knowledge of current business technology.
• Are educated to degree level or equivalent by experience with evidence of continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area.

This position will initially, in line with current government guidance be based from home, with an expectation of being home based for the foreseeable future. However, if / when government guidelines change the role may then revert to being office based and flexible working options.