**INTERNAL APPLICANTS ONLY** Programme Manager

JOB DESCRIPTION

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: PO8 £57,663 - £60,819

Contract Type: Full-time, Permanent

Working hours per week: 36

Application Deadline: 18/02/2025

Proposed Interview Date(s): 19/02/2025

Reference:1626
**INTERNAL APPLICANTS ONLY**

About Us:

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London's Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

The Council's preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.

Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.

About the role:

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is looking for a Digital Program Manager to help deliver the Council's ambitious digital customer experience, transformation and change agenda.

We provide vital services for the people and businesses of our borough. We work in partnership with local communities and organisations to improve the quality of life of our residents, focusing on the most vulnerable and those who need our help most. We are here to support local needs and when those needs change, we must change too.

The last few years have been hugely challenging for our residents. We face the combined pressures of COVID, financial uncertainty and the growing cost of living. We also know that needs are rising across the Borough and demand for services has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic.

As we prepare for local elections and a new administration, we are also reflecting on how we organise ourselves to make sure that our services, skills and resources can continue to meet the changing needs of our borough.

This post will be integral in driving forward all of this change, both internally and externally. It will play a critical role in embedding modern ways of working leveraging technology and acting as a digital business partner across the Council, engaging with and influencing senior stakeholders as part of the wider Change Team within the Digital Portfolio. It will also develop and lead various change initiatives with individual service areas, cross-directorate programmes, and work with partner organisations.

The Digital Innovations programme comprises of six projects, to begin with this role will lead on two of these projects that have both received funding and are ready to go. The first is Corporate Automation which will look at the process of creating software and systems to replace repeatable processes and reduce manual intervention. It accelerates the delivery of IT infrastructure and applications by automating manual processes. The second is Single View of Place where we wish to launch a council wide geographic information system (GIS) to create, manage, analyse and plot data. GIS connects this data to a map and integrates location data (where things are) with descriptive information (what things are like there).

>> Click here to download the Role Profile <<

About you

To succeed in this role, you will need to have strong leadership skills, be passionate about change, and be able to work collaboratively across organisational boundaries.

You will have experience of managing digital projects and programmes, have an understanding of people change and enablement initiatives, be able to demonstrate successful implementation, and have in-depth knowledge and experience of all stages of the project and programme lifecycle, especially people change and enablement requirements to deliver strategic objectives within projects and programmes.

You will have outstanding interpersonal and stakeholder management and influencing skills, with an ability to convey complex information to a diverse range of audiences and deliver difficult messages whist maintaining ownership, governance and buy-in.

You will be a keen problem solver with high levels of accuracy and attention to detail. You will be able to operate and thrive in an environment with high levels of ambiguity and possess resilience to bounce back from difficult situations.

Qualifications and Requirements:

• Experience of managing programmes and projects, with a track record of successful delivery to time budget and quality using agile methodologies.
• Experience of building excellent relationships with Senior managers and Members, with a view to ensuring that programme visions are delivered and that an excellent customer service is experiences by those stakeholders.
• Experience of planning and managing a mixed and varied workload of conflicting priorities responding effectively to the needs of all customers.
• Experience of report writing and communicating complex issues to a broad range of audiences.
• Experience of working in a risk management environment with effective tracking and mitigation of risks.
• Possess in depth understanding of Agile, its values and principles, including backlog grooming, release and sprint planning, burn-up/down charts, and more.
• Competent budget manager with experience in deploying, reallocating and reassessing resources in a dynamic, multi-project environment.
• An ability to respond to unpredictable volume of work, with a positive attitude and a willingness to learn new ways to accomplish work activities and objectives.
• An exceptional communicator able to operate and empathise with stakeholders and business groups, influencing and gaining commitment to objectives.
• Strong leadership, influencing, people engagement, and people management skills.
• Excellent planning and organisational skills coupled with a strong focus on the delivery of the objective.
• Creative and innovative in finding solutions to complex problems.
• Ability to lead on multiple and wide-ranging programmes and manage competing demands.
• Possess strengths in organisational, attention-to-detail, reasoning, critical thinking, and problem- solving skills.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the 'Apply' button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.

Contact Information:

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Lee Osborne, Head of Digital & Customer Experience at lee.osborne@walthamforest.gov.uk.

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.