Change Manager (18 Month Fixed-Term Contract)

SmartRecruiters, Inc.; Reading; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

None

Job summary

Primark is seeking a Change Manager to lead end-to-end change across a digital transformation portfolio. You will design and embed change interventions, aligning with governance and business priorities.

Work with business, technology and cross-functional teams to enable adoption of new processes, systems and ways of working. Previous experience in change management and delivering go-live readiness is essential.

The role requires strong stakeholder engagement and a collaborative, proactive mindset.

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent experience required.
• 5+ years in Change Management or Transformation roles.
• Experience delivering change across multiple projects.
• Hands-on Change Impact Assessments, stakeholder analysis, communications, and training planning.
• Strong understanding of change management frameworks and delivery environments (Agile, Waterfall).
• Experience supporting go-live preparation, hypercare, and BAU transition.
• Experience delivering change within customer-facing or digitally enabled environments.
• Exposure to retail transformation change (nice to have).
• Change Management certification preferred (nice to have).

Responsibilities

• Develop and manage integrated change plans for a programme or multiple projects, aligning activity to delivery milestones, dependencies, business readiness needs and portfolio priorities.
• Conduct change impact assessments to identify and manage impacts across processes, technology, roles, capabilities, ways of working and operating models.
• Translate programme and project outcomes into practical business change activity, ensuring impacted teams understand what is changing and why it matters.
• Assess the impact of digital change on customer, colleague and operational experiences to ensure sustainable adoption.
• Identify, manage and mitigate change-related risks, issues, dependencies and resistance throughout the lifecycle.
• Contribute to business readiness activity for releases, deployments and phased rollouts.
• Support go-live, transition planning and hypercare, enabling a smooth move to BAU.
• Define and track change readiness, adoption and engagement measures using data and stakeholder insight.

Skills

Planning

Facilitation

Communication

Analytical thinking

Stakeholder management

BAU transition

Change management certification

Education

Degree or equivalent experience

Job description

• Full-time

Company Description

Because your new ideas are our way new ways of working.
Evolve, your way.

Our digital teams are right at the heart of what we do. Surrounded by some of the best digital specialists in the industry, you’ll bring your own ideas to the business to shape the experience of our customers as part of a forward-thinking team.

The Change Manager is responsible for planning and delivering end‑to‑end change for a programme or multiple projects within the Digital Transformation portfolio. The role supports successful adoption of new processes, systems, capabilities and behaviours that enable digitally enabled business outcomes, while aligning change activity to portfolio priorities, dependencies and governance requirements as appropriate. Working closely with business, technology and cross-functional stakeholders, the Change Manager designs, executes and embeds effective change interventions at programme and project level.

Job Description

• Develop and manage integrated change plans for a programme or multiple projects, aligning activity to delivery milestones, dependencies, business readiness needs and relevant portfolio priorities.
• Conduct change impact assessments to identify and manage impacts across processes, technology, roles, capabilities, ways of working and operating models.
• Translate programme and project outcomes into practical business change activity, ensuring impacted teams understand what is changing, why it matters and how new ways of working will be adopted.
• Assess the impact of digital change on customer, colleague and operational experiences, ensuring change interventions support simple, consistent and sustainable adoption.
• Identify, manage and mitigate change‑related risks, issues, dependencies and resistance throughout the programme or project lifecycle.

Business Readiness, Deployment & Adoption

• Contribute to business readiness activity for releases, deployments and phased rollouts, ensuring impacted teams have the knowledge, support, processes and capacity required to adopt the change.
• Support implementation, go‑live, transition planning and hypercare, enabling a smooth move to business-as‑usual operations.
• Define and track change readiness, adoption and engagement measures, using data and stakeholder insight to identify gaps, refine interventions and support benefits realisation.
• Establish and support change networks to accelerate adoption, gather feedback and embed sustainable ways of working.
• Capture lessons learned, adoption insights and continuous improvement opportunities from programme and project delivery, sharing relevant insight to support broader portfolio learning.

Stakeholder Engagement & Change Communications

• Map, manage and engage complex stakeholder groups across business, technology and operational teams, ensuring change impacts, risks and readiness requirements are understood and acted upon.
• Partner with business leaders, Portfolio team, Product, Technology, SMEs, Communications, Learning and People & Culture teams to deliver an integrated change experience.
• Design and deliver stakeholder engagement, communications and learning interventions tailored to the needs of impacted audiences and aligned to Portfolio communications approach.
• Drive stakeholder commitment and readiness by building awareness, understanding and engagement across impacted teams.
• Provide clear change status reporting into programme governance and relevant portfolio forums, highlighting readiness, adoption, stakeholder engagement, risks, dependencies and decisions required.
• Contribute to programme governance forums, escalating risks, dependencies and decisions and ensuring appropriate alignment with portfolio governance where required.
• Ensure programme and project level change activity aligns with enterprise change methodologies, governance standards and broader Digital Transformation objectives

Qualifications

Experience & Knowledge

• Degree or equivalent experience required
• 5+ years in Change Management or Transformation roles
• Experience delivering change across multiple projects or a medium-sized programme
• Hands‑on experience performing Change Impact Assessments, stakeholder analysis, communications, and training planning
• Strong understanding of change management frameworks and structured delivery environments (e.g., Agile, Waterfall)
• Experience supporting go‑live preparation, hypercare, and BAU transition
• Experience delivering change within customer-facing, operational or digitally enabled business environments.
• Experience assessing and managing change impacts across end-to-end business processes and cross-functional teams.

Nice to have:

• Exposure to retail transformation change
• Experience working within a federated transformation model or matrix organisation
• Change Management certification preferred but not essential

Skills

• Strong planning and organisation skills, able to manage multiple priorities
• Strong facilitator, able to run workshops, briefings, and targeted engagement sessions
• Excellent communication skills - written, verbal, and visual
• Ability to analyse and simplify complexity and translate into actionable plans
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work across diverse stakeholder groups
• Ability to track readiness, adoption, benefits, and insights

Nice to have:

• Data interpretation, storyboarding, and insight generation.
• Ability to coach teams through change and build local change capability

Personal Attributes

• Positive, adaptable, and resilient
• Collaborative and team‑oriented
• Clear communicator who can influence and support at all levels

Additional Information

About Primark

Excited? Good. Because it’s energising to put your skills to work, in a growing global business committed to encouraging people to express themselves – and feel a sense of belonging.

At Primark, people matter. They’re the beating heart of our business and the reason we’ve grown from our first store in Dublin in 1969 to a £9bn+ turnover business and over 80,000 colleagues and over 440 stores in 17 countries today. Our values run through everything we do. In essence, we're Caring and always strive to put people first. We're also Dynamic, bravely pushing the boundaries to stay ahead. And finally, we succeed Together.

If you need any reasonable adjustments or have an accessibility request, during your recruitment journey, such as extended time or breaks between online assessments, a sign language interpreter, mobility access, or assistive technology please contact your talent acquisition specialist.

All offers of employment are subject to background checks, including right to work, reference education and for some roles criminal, and financial checks. If you have any concerns, please reach out to our talent acquisition team to discuss.