Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust is undergoing an exciting and ambitious transformation programme to improve services for patients and staff. The Planned Care Division is seeking an experienced improvement and transformation lead to convert the strategic objectives into operational plans and models of delivery. The Operational Transformation Implementation Manager will lead the operational implementation of the strategic improvement and transformation projects across the Division, driving the strategic programme for Planned Care to enhance service delivery, improve efficiency and outcomes, and support delivery of strategic objectives.
Reporting through an agreed governance structure, the postholder will work with cross-functional teams and stakeholders both within and across Divisions, to deliver programmes to time, cost, and quality and to demonstrate benefits realisation.
Interview date: 8th July 2026.
Programme Management: Lead the implementation, delivery, and oversight of transformation programmes across the Division, ensuring alignment to agreed goals, timelines, budgets, and accountabilities.
Change Management: Apply best practice change management to support consistent adoption of new ways of working through effective communication, engagement, training, and operational readiness.
Risk and Issue Management: Identify, assess, and manage risks and issues, ensuring mitigation plans are in place, clear ownership, and appropriate escalation through agreed governance.
Governance and Reporting: Establish robust governance structures and provide clear, regular reporting on progress, risks, dependencies, and benefits to senior stakeholders.
Continuous Improvement: Promote a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring lessons learned are captured and applied.
Benefits Realisation: Track and report programme benefits with clear ownership, consistent measures, and validated data.
Delivery: Lead delivery of programmes and projects, driving improvement and supporting organisational objectives.
We are the main provider of NHS community services across East and West Sussex, with 6,000 staff serving 1.3 million people. We deliver essential care to adults and children, helping them manage their health, avoid hospital admissions, and reduce hospital stays.
Our Trust vision is to provide excellent care at the heart of the community. We offer opportunities across medical, clinical, support, and corporate services.
Why work for us?
- Positive 2024 NHS Staff Survey results, highlighting compassionate leadership and wellbeing
- Varied environments: community hospitals, patients’ homes, and bases across Sussex
- Flexible working options: part-time, flexi-time, annualised hours, and flexi-retirement
- Excellent training, development, and research opportunities
- Accredited Living Wage Employer, we ensure fair pay for all our staff
- Cost-effective workplace nurseries in Crawley, Hove, and Brighton
- Active EMBRACE, Disability & Wellbeing, LGBTQIA+, and Religion & Belief networks
- Level 3 Disability Confident Leader and Veteran Aware Trust
Our values — Compassionate Care, Working Together, Achieving Ambitions, Delivering Excellence —guide everything we do.
We embrace diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from ethnically diverse, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. We aim to create an inclusive environment and support reasonable adjustments during recruitment.
This post may close early if sufficient applications are received.
Provide effective leadership in change to staff which promotes high performance standards both individually and as a team, in the achievement of the Trusts objectives and priorities, whilst supporting staff through change. The Programme’s success will be dependent on the post holder playing an active role to make sure the existing areas of good employment practice are universally embedded.
The post holder will be expected to:
- Understand the Division’s key priorities for these programmes and translate these into key operational priorities for the projects within it.
- Ensure clarity and effectiveness in developing and designing roles and responsibilities
- Ensure management of staff is consistent with Trusts HR Policies to the achievement of equality, equity and optimum performance.
- Communicate regularly through meetings with teams and individuals and provide opportunity for two-way feedback.
- Promote an effective team ethos.
- Promote equality, diversity and rights, and treat others with dignity and respect ensuring services are developed, managed and delivered to meet the specific needs of those belonging to protected characteristics.
- Promote equality, diversity and Human Rights in working practices by developing and maintaining positive working relationships, ensuring that colleagues are treated fairly and contributing to developing equality of opportunity and outcomes in working practices.
- Contribute to developing and maintaining equality of opportunity in working practices by complying with legislation and organisational policies. Advise colleagues about equality, diversity and human rights policies and procedures and ensure they are followed.
- Ensure that colleagues are treated fairly. Behave in a non-discriminatory way and challenge the discriminatory behaviour of others. Be supportive of colleagues or service users who wish to raise issues about discriminatory practice or experience.
Human Resources
- Ensure all policies and procedures related to staff are adhered to as appropriate
- Lead delivery of projects through a matrix leadership model, building relationships with key decision makers in each organisation.
Financial & Physical Resources
- Manage programme resources, including people and if necessary budgets, ensuring that all aspects of the programme are delivered within the agreed parameters.
- Responsible for monitoring and analysing delivery of cost improvement agenda as part of financial control measures and maximising the use of resources to ensure project budgets are managed effectively. This will include developing models for delivering and presenting the benefit of improvement programmes e.g. cost benefit analysis, return on investment analysis and return on expectation analysis.
Policy/Service Development
- Support the development and implementation of a comprehensive set of programme/project management procedures/documentation and rolling these out across the team and the organisations via the respective governance routes
- Develops appropriate procedures for service delivery in line with the respective organisational policies, ensuring appropriate subject matter experts are consulted and approval is given at the required organisational/ Programme forums.
Information Resources
- Updates information system/ uses software to develop performance management reports; responsible for performance management or similar system.
Research & Development
- Undertakes surveys/complex surveys related to performance management if required
- Test assumptions and where necessary alternative options to the recommendations of the external Talking Therapies review
Physical effort
- Light physical effort
- Office conditions, combination of sitting, standing, walking and travelling between sites.
- Required to use VDU for most of the day.
Mental Effort
- Frequent concentration e.g. checking documents and analysing statistics, managing conflicting priorities
Emotional Effort
- Projects can often involve making unwelcome changes to staff working practices and this can be in any area within the Trust in both clinical and non-clinical areas.
- The programme will be high profile, garnering interest from multiple stakeholders.
