Change Portfolio Manager

The Church of England; London; On-site; GBP 60,000; Full time

Job summary

The Church of England is seeking a Portfolio Manager for a fixed-term contract to lead a new financial planning initiative for clergy. This role involves delivering a range of new products and services, ensuring effective project management and collaboration across teams. The ideal candidate will have a proven background in managing customer-facing projects, delivering transformational change, and the ability to embed a continuous improvement culture.

Benefits

25 days annual leave plus bank holidays

Flexible working arrangements

Enhanced Family Friendly Programme

Health cash plan through Medicash

Employee Assistance Programme

Qualifications

• Track record of delivering customer-facing and transformational projects.
• Proficiency in project management tools.
• Flexibility in approach to drive change.

Responsibilities

• Enable delivery of a portfolio of new products and services for financial planning.
• Support the initiation, definition, planning, and delivery of initiatives.
• Monitor delivery across the portfolio and identify dependencies.

Skills

Project Management

Transformation Delivery

Customer-Facing Initiatives

Job description

The following content displays a map of the jobs location - Church House, Great Smith Street, London

Church House, Great Smith Street, London| The Old Brewhouse, Bishopthorpe, York

Closing Date:

03/07/2025

Vacancy Category:

Pensions, Investments & Asset Management

Business Unit:

National Church Institutions (NCIs)

Organizational Unit:

CofE Central Services

Introduction

This is a fixed term contract for 1 year.

About the department

The Church of England Pensions Board provides retirement services to those who serve or work for the Church. Both a regulated pension fund and registered charity, more than 43,000 people rely on us for their pensions. A global leader in ethical and responsible investment, we carefully steward the £3.3bn of pension savings entrusted to us to not only grow our members’ pensions, but also to drive systemic and lasting change across the industries and sectors in which we invest for a just and sustainable word. The Board also supports 2,500 retired clergy with their housing plans, managing a national portfolio of 1,200 rented homes and Community Living options.

In just 2 years, the Board turns 100. As we approach that milestone, a key focus for us is how we better support customers with planning well and early for their financial future. We have some big innovative ideas in this space, which involves making changes to how we work within the Board. This new role will help us to make some of those ideas a reality, embedding a culture of continuous improvement within our team.

About the role

The purpose of this role is to enable the delivery of a new portfolio of products and services designed to support clergy with financial and retirement planning. A new package of support is being launched in 2026 as part of our ‘Enabling Choice’ package which is designed to help clergy take control of their future plans, from early in ministry and throughout their journey. Working as part of a Portfolio Management Office team, with colleagues across the Pensions Board, senior leaders, and people managers to support delivery from definition to implementation.

We have recently received funding to deliver this programme of work across the next three years, including the ‘standing up’ of a new Support Hub and regional support service, facilitated by a new online portal ‘one stop shop’ to enable delivery. You can read more about Enabling Choice here: Enabling Choice | The Church of England

The role will include supporting the initiation, definition, planning, delivery, and review/closure of initiatives of varying complexity – aligned to our strategy. As our Portfolio Manager, we will be looking to you particularly to help us monitor delivery across this portfolio, working with the team to identify dependencies, cross-cutting risks and opportunities.

We are looking for someone with a track record of delivering customer-facing and transformational projects and initiatives. We need you to know your project management tools inside and out but also understand when to flex the approach to get the best from the change and the team

What you'll be doing

• Enable delivery of a portfolio of new products and services as part of Enabling Choice, ensuring implementation is monitored, managed, and supported effectively, working across teams, senior leaders, and people managers to support delivery from definition to implementation.
• Enable the effective ‘stand up’ and launch of new services from design, development and testing through to a staged ‘go live’ period. Ensuring customer needs are at the heart of everything we do.

Support the stand up of new services, including:

• Tracking milestones, tasks, and dependencies across a complex programme of work.
• Creating actionable, robust project plans for specific deliverables.
• Identify risks/issues and put in place mitigation plans.
• Facilitating workshops/processes to define and map new systems and customer journeys.
• Develop robust and deliverable project plans, monitoring approaches and reporting.
• Support the adoption of processes to ensure that all proposed projects and initiatives are fully defined, resourced, and delivered.
• Implement robust processes to help:
• Monitor pace of delivery, identifying interdependencies, risks, and challenges.
• Help the team to resolve issues, to enable effective delivery.
• Embed a continuous improvement culture and way of delivering change for the long-term.
• Assess and manage the change impact, particularly into existing services.
• Work with Senior Leaders and Team Leaders to embed a ‘Sponsor’ and ‘Deliverer’ approach, ensuring roles and expectations are clearly defined, bringing people with you on the change journey.
• Work with the housing and pensions colleagues to develop effective integrations across team and workflows that deliver a seamless customer experience.
• Establish the right KPIs to track change delivery and provide data to Senior Leaders on performance and forecasting.
• Tracking, monitoring, and reporting to senior colleagues.
• Identification and management of risk.

About You

The Church of England is for everyone and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minoritised Ethnicities (UKME)/Global Majority Heritage (GMH) and other under-represented groups. As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to recruiting disabled people. We offer interviews to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information about the role and person specification.

What we offer

• A salary of £59,248 per annum, plus age-related pension contributions between 8-15% of salary. We will also match any pension contributions you make up to an additional 3% of your salary.
• 25 days annual leave (increasing to 30 days within 5 years) plus eight bank holidays and threeadditionaldays (pro-rated if working part-time).
• We welcome all flexible working arrangement requests. This is looked at in a case-by-case scenario and if this fits within the department’s needs. We try to be as flexible as we can in your work pattern to support you with other commitments, and to give a good work-life balance.
• We offer many services and initiatives under our Family Friendly Programme, some of these include enhanced Maternity Leave initiative, Adoption Leave, Paternity Leave, & Shared Parental Leave. Structured induction programme and access to a range of development opportunities including apprenticeships.

Automatic enrolment and access to Medicash (one of the UK’s leading health cash plan providers), providing you with many services including reimbursements of routine dental treatment, optical, specialist consultations, and therapy treatments. Unlimited access to virtual GP & Private prescription service and health & Stress related helplines.

• Access to Occupational Health, and an Employee Assistance Programme
• Access to the Department of Education Restaurant and Westminster Abbey with a plus-one guest.
• Apply for eligibility for an Eyecare voucher.
• Opportunity to join the Civil Service Sports & Social Club, and get involved in a range of staff networks, groups and societies.

ABOUT NATIONAL CHURCH INSTITUTIONS

The National Church Institutions comprises a wide variety of teams, professions and functions that support the mission and ministries of the Church of England in its vision to be a church, centred on Jesus Christ, for the whole nation - a church that is simpler, humbler, bolder.

We Include. You Belong.

Our Belonging and Inclusion Strategy aims for everyone in the National Church Institutions (NCIs) to feel that they belong, and are valued for who they are and what they contribute. Together, our people contribute in different ways towards our common purpose, whichever NCI they work in and whatever their background.

Living out our values in all that we do, we:

• Strive for Excellence
• Show Compassion
• Respect others
• Act with Integrity

We believe our commitment to belonging and inclusion fuels our progress and drives us forward. The NCIs are a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We welcome applications from people of all faiths and of no faith. We want to encourage applications from a diverse group of people who share our values. Even if you have never thought about working for us before, if you have the skills and experience we’re looking for then we would like to hear from you.

Please note: You must have the right to work in the UK to be considered for the role.