Band 8b Strategic People Change Partner - Bath


Company:	NHS Jobs
Salary:	£66,582 - £77,368
Hours:	Full-time
Location:	Bath, BA1 3QE
Job type:	Contract
Posting date:	25 Aug 2026
Closing date:	8 Sept 2026

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Summary

Overall Job Purpose The Strategic People Change Partner (SPCP) will serve as a key strategic partner to senior leadership within several transformation programmes, working closely with SROs and Clinical Directors, as well as People Business Partners, Organisational Development colleagues and senior operational and clinical leaders across the Trust. The postholder will align transformation objectives together with the organisations wider strategic goals including the AWP Great Place to Work strategic priority. and the Clinical Groups goals and objectives. This strategic partnership role will provide leadership, advice and expertise on all workforce related matters relating to transformation. This includes shaping workforce plans, enabling and driving engaging change processes, developing comprehensive workforce plans and ultimately ensuring that that transformation changes are delivered and sustained through an inclusive, engaging and compassionate approach. The ability to encapsulate the concept of matrix working across the People Services, Transformation, and Divisional teams will be crucial to the delivery of the role. Transformation Programme Delivery The SPCP partners with the SRO role will ensure that transformation programme benefits are realised, including tens of millions of pounds of savings over several years, potentially a reduction of the workforce of at least 10%. They will be the professional lead on the workforce components of programme delivery, including strategic workforce planning, OD informed change, and engagement strategies aligned to programme milestones. Partnering with SROs, the SPCP will define, baseline and track workforce-related benefits, including financial savings, productivity improvements and workforce efficiencies. Leading the development of workforce inputs to business cases and programme plans, ensuring alignment to clinical, operational and financial outcomes, establishing and maintaining workforce benefits realisation frameworks, including KPIs, reporting and tracking mechanisms. The role will support transformation governance, working with the transformation programme teams on identifying and mitigating workforce risks, interdependencies, benefits registers, etc.,ensuring workforce issues are appropriately considered at project and programme meetings and act as the subject matter expert on workforce at programme boards and governance forums. The SPCPs will be the named workforce expert leads on specific programmes, covering the whole trust-wide portfolio between them. They will be expected to work closely together to ensure that there is cross cover for programmes during absences, that programmes adopt consistent approaches to workforce transformation plans, and that cross-programme workforce interdependencies, opportunities and economies are identified. It is vital that the SPCP takes into account business as usual divisional and trust-wide workforce matters (changes, pressures, problems, etc.) in understanding and responding to the context in which transformation is being designed and delivered, integrating operational workforce intelligence (e.g. vacancies, turnover, industrial relations issues) into transformation design and delivery. They will work collaboratively with People Business Partners, OD and divisional teams to ensure alignment between transformation and operational workforce priorities. Workforce Planning The SPCP will be responsible for ensuring that each programme has a comprehensive strategic workforce plan, that dovetails with any divisional workforce plans, and includes a workforce development plan, ensuring plans clearly articulate future workforce models, transition pathways and measurable outcomes. They will provide expertise to facilitate clinical leads in effective organisation design, that enables the delivery of the future clinical model / strategy. Working closely with the Clinical Lead for Mental Health Workforce, they will use a broad range of workforce data and performance metrics to inform this process, apply evidence-based workforce planning methodologies, analyse and interpret complex workforce datasets (e.g. ESR, productivity, agency usage) to inform decision-making and utilise recognised frameworks (CIPD, NHSE, HEE) to ensure best practice and benchmarking. The strategic workforce plans will consider alternative skills mixes, new and advanced roles, flexible and multidisciplinary workforce models, partnerships with voluntary and community organisations and digital opportunities. This will include a clear workforce development plan that details how skills and capabilities will be developed to meet future needs and is developed with input and support from Learning and Development colleagues and professional leads. Workforce Change, Engagement and communication A critical part of the SPCPs role will be to ensure that transformation changes are approached in an inclusive, engaging and compassionate way, reinforcing the Great Place to Work strategic priority and principles. Using an Organisational Development informed approach, tools and expertise, the changes will maximise engagement from the workforce and embrace co-design principles, taking into account workplace culture, history and norms, and using data to identify risks and hotspots. The SPCP will lead on a workforce engagement and communications plan that ensures the transformation changes are designed, adopted and sustained effectively and in a timely way. This will include coaching leaders and line managers in progressive engagement and communication approaches, and designing engagement events and communications, undertaking stakeholder analyses, etc. They will work closely with the Great Place to Work programme leads, the Associate Director for Retention and Organisational Development, and the Communications teams on this. The SCPC will work with divisional leads to ensure that there is a commitment to deliver equality and inclusiveness in all aspects of service line activity including service provision and the approach to the process of change, ensuring completion of equality impact assessments and addressing disparities. The SPCP will also be responsible for ensuring that transformation plans are realistic and legally compliant in terms of workforce structural changes, redundancy and consultation processes, working closely with HRBP teams and engaging their expertise and support on this, and working proactively with Trades Unions under positive partnership working principles, thereby reducing the risk of adverse employee relations cases and tribunal processes. Because of the seniority of this post the postholder may be required to participate in on-call arrangements, after suitable training

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