Head of Business Change

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Job Introduction

The Head of Business Change is responsible for bridging the gap between strategic ambition and operational reality by coordinating, governing and facilitating effective business change. The role holder will ensure business change initiatives are assessed and translated from strategy into tangible business outcomes by enabling change, optimising ways of working and ensuring readiness and capacity for delivery across the Bank. This role is the conduit between IT Change teams and business stakeholders in Products, Digital Delivery, Operations, and the Branch Network, ensuring change is well-governed, strategically aligned, and business-ready.

Main Responsibilities

Strategic Delivery & Change Leadership

• Support the execution of strategic initiatives, ensuring they are implemented effectively across the business.
• Partner with the Head of IT Change to support the Bank's IT modernisation plan, ensuring the initiatives enable scalability, enhance customer experience and reduce IT risk.
• Establish and lead an effective business change framework covering demand management, prioritisation, delivery, and benefits realisation.
• Define, measure, and report business outcomes of transformation initiatives, maintaining an aggregated view of in-flight change and their contribution to performance.
• Drive a culture of benefits realisation, tracking the value delivered and reporting outcomes against strategic goals.
• Own and drive the implementation roadmap for business change in alignment with the Bank's priorities.

Governance & Process Optimisation

• Establish and operate an effective change framework for process change, ensuring full transparency of process changes, clear communication and documentation of the changes to end users, and robust business value follow-up.
• Align business change frameworks with Business Architecture to ensure consistency in process mapping, accountability, and governance.
• Identify and implement business enablers to drive efficiencies and create capacity across teams.
• Actively promote and ensure adherence to the Bank's Risk Management framework (including sub-frameworks) and relevant risk and compliance policies and procedures, ensuring timely and appropriate escalation of concerns to relevant senior stakeholders.
• Gather and report business change MI to relevant forums and committees.
• Manage a business change funnel (e.g. gather, understand, and qualify demand from the business before it enters the change process).

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

• Build strong, trusted relationships across senior leadership, strategy teams, business demanders, and delivery partners.
• Act as a conduit between strategy formulation and operational delivery.
• Prepare the business for change through effective communication, readiness assessments, and stakeholder alignment.
• Visualise and communicate complex transformation journeys clearly and persuasively to diverse audiences.

Team Leadership & Collaboration

• Lead and develop a team to deliver business change with impact, efficiency, and credibility.
• Facilitate collaboration and resource sharing across teams to maximise delivery capacity.
• Partner with business and tech leads to embed new ways of working, including agile and collaborative approaches, technology adoption to drive scalability and sustainable change.
• Support operational teams in adopting process improvements, technology, and capability uplift.
• Collaborate with IT and operational change functions to support the delivery of integrated solutions, fit for the Bank's technical environment and processes.

Ideal Candidate

Research (by Harvard University) shows that women are particularly likely to second guess themselves and not apply - so if you are worried you don't meet all the criteria, get in touch anyhow and let us do the worrying...

• Proven experience in business transformation, change delivery, or strategy implementation within financial services.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the credibility to challenge and persuade at all levels.

• Demonstrated experience in managing and developing senior leaders and teams, with strong mentoring and coaching skills.

• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to distil complex ideas into clear, compelling messages.
• Strong ability to translate strategic intent into clear, measurable delivery outcomes.
• Expertise in change management frameworks, business analysis, and benefits realisation.
• Experience working closely with IT and business change delivery teams in a collaborative, agile environment.
• Comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with changing priorities and projects, with the ability to work autonomously and exercise sound judgment
• Excellent problem-solving and strong presentation skills.

Company Information

Handelsbanken is a relationship bank with a decentralised way of working, a strong local presence thanks to a nationwide network of branches, and a long-term approach to customer relations. Each Handelsbanken branch operates as a local business enabling it to make decisions at a local level and provide a bespoke service. The focus is always on the need of the individual customer and not on the sale of specific products.

The Bank is deeply committed to embedding good equality and diversity practice into all of our activities. This is so that we are an inclusive, welcoming and inspiring place to work that encourages everyone to apply, regardless of socio-economic background, age, disability, pregnancy and/or parental status, race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin), veteran status, marital and civil partnership status, religion or belief, sex, gender reassignment or sexual orientation.

Check our Handelsbanken website for further information

At Handelsbanken, we deeply value our unique culture and values including trust in and respect for each individual. We take pride in nurturing a work environment where people flourish, and where they are empowered to take decisions in their areas of expertise. We take a long term perspective in everything we do and want each employee who joins us to build a long terms successful career with the Bank.

What is in it for you?

• We have a wide range of learning and development available, empowering and enabling our colleagues to take ownership of their own development.
• Competitive Salary and an extensive range of benefits is provided, including private medical insurance, income protection and life assurance
• A market-leading pension contribution of 15% paid by the bank, which can be invested in a wide range of funds (including ESG and Shariah funds)

Application next steps

Your journey with us begins once you have submitted your application. One of our Handelsbanken recruiters will be reviewing your details and will later organise a phone conversation if you match the role requirements. If there is a mutual fit, we will extend an invitation for you to participate in an interview.

How can we support you to be your best self? Our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to provide support e.g. if you need additional time to prepare for an interview or you have any requirements for any part of the interview/hiring process - just let us know by email uk_talent@careers.handelsbanken.co.uk .

This advert will be live for a minimum of two weeks. However, please note that after the two weeks, the closing date could change at any time depending on the number of responses received.

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