Spotlight on … Looking Ahead – Preparing for Change in SCRA

We know change is on the horizon with a number of external drivers.

A key focus for 2024/2025 has been getting change ready.

One of the aims in our Business Plan is ‘greater change capability and capacity across the organisation’. To take this forward, a Change Team has been created to support good, planned and managed, well communicated and supported change.  Their role is to ensure smooth transitions as we adopt new ways of working.

The Change Team work with each of our Localities to understand their current state, their readiness, how ‘close’ they are to the areas of project work and test – and thus what it would take to implement – and what supports they would need to move from current to future state.

A Change Strategy has been approved which is supported by a Communication Strategy. A Business Change Manager is in place and is working closely with Project Managers and SCRA’s Organisational Development Team ahead of implementation of any changes.

We know that an engaged staff group is essential to successful delivery of change.  The Change Team are sharing updates and seeking feedback over multiple channels, and experimenting with new options such a podcasts to reach all of our people.

The Programme Team and Change Team have undertaken extensive learning and development to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to deliver change which is evaluated and can evidence benefits and to build confidence in our ability as an organisation to adapt, respond and create change, improving the way that we work and deliver our service.

Ensuring that our people are skilled and confident is critical to successful change – both in identifying, developing and implementing the change, and in working to it.

As we move forward with change and improvement to our service delivery, a key part of our Change Strategy is staff learning and development to support new ways of working which the Operational Development Team have a key role in supporting.

We recognise that change management is a key leadership skill and are supporting our managers to have the skills and knowledge to lead change confidently.