Change and Transition Lead, One Payroll Programme

The Change and Transition Lead is responsible for organizational readiness and adoption of the One Payroll solution across its implementation phases. This role manages the transition from decentralized payroll processing to centralized processing at Headquarters, ensuring affected functions and offices are prepared for the change and providing strategic advice to programme leadership.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and deliver the change management strategy and plan for the programme, aligned to programme phases, milestones, and dependencies.
• Translate the programme's objectives into structured, time bound change and engagement interventions, sequenced against the technical delivery roadmap.
• Maintain a clear view of cumulative change on affected populations, and advise programme leadership where sequencing requires adjustment.
• Maintain stakeholder mapping across Headquarters divisions, Regional Offices, and Country Offices.
• Conduct organizational impact assessments identifying changes to roles, shifts in accountability from the field to Headquarters, operational risk, and points of resistance.
• Define and direct mitigation for the populations most affected by the centralization of payroll processing.
• Represent the programme in engagement with staff representative bodies and with affected employee populations.
• Translate the future state operating model into clear role definitions, accountability frameworks, and practical guidance for Headquarters and Country Offices.
• Ensure that Country Offices understand what they retain, what moves to Headquarters, and what changes in the way their work is performed.
• Support the business process work that underpins configuration, ensuring that current and future state processes are validated with the functions that own them.
• Define readiness criteria for each phase, covering testing, parallel run, go-live, and stabilization, and assess the organization against them.
• Provide the Programme Manager, the Advisory Panel, and the Steering Committee with an independent assessment of organizational readiness at each go-live decision point, including where readiness does not support a proposed date.
• Identify adoption risk early and escalate it with mitigation proposals.
• Establish and monitor adoption measures following each go-live.
• Advise the Programme Manager and the divisional leads on the organizational dimension of the programme, and bring forward the interventions, work streams, and structures the programme requires as needs emerge.
• Design the programme's governance rhythm, including the agendas, decision flows, and supporting material for the Steering Committee and Advisory Panel, so that governance is equipped to take the decisions the programme depends on.
• Identify where the organizational readiness of the affected functions requires more than communication and training, and design the work needed to prepare them for the new operating model, including the associated capability and data quality work.
• Establish the supporting structures the programme needs to engage the organization effectively, including cross functional working arrangements between Headquarters and the field.
• Direct the communications strategy for the programme, ensuring consistent messaging across the divisions involved and a clear articulation of the rationale, the change, and its implications.
• Develop and deliver material for senior leadership, including Executive Management and divisional directors.
• Ensure structured and timely information flow to affected populations across Headquarters and the field, in the relevant working languages.
• Direct the training and enablement approach, ensuring alignment between the new processes, the system changes, and the revised roles.
• Establish sustainable capability within the functions that will operate the new solution, including the data quality capability on which payroll outcomes depend.
• Maintain change governance aligned to programme governance, and act as the coordination point across the technical, human resources, and finance workstreams.
• Prepare and present material for Steering Committee and Advisory Panel decision points, including options analysis and recommendations.
• Maintain visibility of cross workstream dependencies and risk, and advise leadership where interdependencies are not adequately governed.
• Provide direction to consultants, contracted resources, and functional focal points engaged in change and engagement activity.
• Direct the transition from programme delivery to operations, ensuring clear ownership of processes and a sustainable support model.
• Establish structured feedback from Country Offices during stabilization and act on what they report.
• Capture lessons learned across the phases so that experience is retained by the organization at programme close.

Requirements

• Advanced university degree in Business Administration, Human Resources, Economics, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Finance, or a related field, or a first level university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience.
• At least eight years of progressively responsible professional experience in change management, organizational transformation, or programme delivery.
• Demonstrated experience leading the change and adoption dimension of enterprise system implementations and corporate transformation projects.
• Experience in international, decentralized organizations, including engagement with field operations.
• Experience engaging and advising senior leadership at director level and above.
• Established command of change management methodologies and their practical application in complex organizations.
• Working knowledge of corporate information systems, including SAP human capital and payroll modules and Workday.
• Ability to translate complex technical change into operational impact for non technical audiences.
• Strong analytical capability, including the structuring of impact, readiness, and stakeholder analysis.
• Excellent written and oral communication, including executive level briefing.
• Sound judgement and the standing to hold an independent position on organizational readiness.
• Fluency in oral and written English is required.
• Intermediate knowledge of another official United Nations language, being Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, or Spanish, is an asset

Skills

• Change Management
• Organizational Transformation
• Programme Delivery
• Enterprise System Implementation
• Corporate Transformation
• Change Management Frameworks
• SAP Human Capital Module
• SAP Payroll Module
• Workday
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Impact Analysis
• Readiness Analysis
• Executive briefings
• Senior Management Engagement
• Organizational Readiness Assessment
• Technical Change Translation
• Analytical Capability Development

Languages

English