Head of Change Guild

AXA UK; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading insurance company in London is seeking a Head of Change Guild to lead capacity and capability planning. You'll drive the vision, ensuring alignment with the company's delivery strategy while managing change portfolios effectively. Your role will involve influencing senior stakeholders, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, and enhancing change management standards. The ideal candidate has extensive experience in project delivery, Agile environments, and workforce planning, alongside effective communication skills. An excellent compensation package and flexible working arrangements are offered.

Benefits

Competitive annual salary

Annual company and performance-based bonus

Contributory pension scheme

Life Assurance

Private medical cover

28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays

Wellbeing services

AXA employee discounts

Qualifications

• Extensive experience across programme, project, and product delivery environments.
• Broad understanding of change delivery, PMO, and business analysis.
• Proven experience working in Agile environments and iterative delivery cycles.
• Comfortable managing budgets and influencing resource decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead capacity and capability planning for AXA UKI.
• Define and drive the vision of the Change Guild.
• Manage resource allocation and capacity across change portfolios.
• Drive professional standards and practice excellence across the guild.

Skills

Programme delivery

Agile methodologies

Workforce planning

Change management

Effective communication

Job description

Description

The Change Guild defines and governs capacity, capability, and delivery standards for the organisation’s change portfolio. The Guild focuses on building high-performing change communities, aligning to AXA’s long‑term delivery strategy, and enabling product‑aligned delivery across programmes, projects, and products in a hybrid delivery model.

As Head of Change Guild, you’ll lead capacity and capability planning for AXA UKI, ensuring we have the right people, practices, and partnerships to deliver at scale. You’ll orchestrate workforce planning, capability development, governance, and budget, while fostering a culture of excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement across change disciplines.

At AXA we work smart, empowering our people to balance their time between home and the office in a way that works best for them, their team and our customers. You’ll work at least two days a week (40%) away from home, moving to three days a week (60%) in the future. Away from home means either attendance at one of our office locations, visiting clients or attending industry events. We’re also happy to consider flexible working arrangements, which you can discuss with Talent Acquisition.

What you’ll be doing:

• Define and drive the vision, purpose, and objectives of the Change Guild, ensuring alignment with AXA’s long‑term delivery strategy across products and projects.
• Utilise deep expertise across project and programme delivery methodologies (including waterfall and agile), PMO, business change and business analysis to provide technical and people leadership and talent development across the Change Guild.
• Engage with Portfolio Management and Tribe Leadership to translate and coordinate delivery requirements across critical change programmes for multiple Tribes/Products (e.g., regulatory changes impacting cross‑functional initiatives).
• Lead each change discipline to effectively manage resource allocation and capacity across AXA’s product and project change portfolio, ensuring optimal utilisation of skills and capacity to meet demand.
• Lead the workforce planning strategy to ensure the Change Guild has the capabilities required to meet upcoming demand; develop robust partnerships to source capacity and capability, working with Partner Management and Strategic Capacity teams as needed.
• Drive professional standards and practice excellence across the Change Guild, establishing common frameworks, tools, templates, and KPIs for consistent, high‑quality change delivery.
• Own the Change Guild’s investment strategy, including budgeting for upskilling, tools, change enablement initiatives, and capability uplift, advocating for resources that support transformation.

Due to the number of applications we expect to receive for this role, we reserve the right to close this advert earlier than the listed closing date to ensure we’re able to effectively manage interest. Therefore, if you’re interested in joining us at AXA, please don’t hesitate to apply.

We know that some candidates may be discouraged from applying if they don’t meet every requirement. If you’re excited by this job and the prospect of working at AXA but you’re not sure you tick every box, we’d still encourage you to apply.

What you’ll bring:

• Extensive experience across programme, project, and product delivery environments within large, complex organisations.
• Broad understanding of change delivery across PMO, business change, and business analysis capabilities.
• Proven experience working in Agile environments (including Kanban and Lean) with a strong understanding of iterative delivery cycles.
• Proficient in workforce planning, able to manage current and anticipate future demand for change professionals in the UKI portfolio.
• Effective communicator and influencer, able to manage senior stakeholders, resolve competing priorities, and drive alignment.
• Experience designing development frameworks, learning pathways, and coaching programmes.
• Comfortable managing budgets, influencing resource decisions, and advocating for investment in people and capability.
• Passionate about community building, knowledge sharing, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

As a precondition of employment for this role, you must be eligible and authorised to work in the United Kingdom.

What we offer:

At AXA UK, we’re appreciative of the people who work for us and our rewards package is reviewed regularly to reflect that. You can expect to receive:

• Competitive annual salary dependent on experience
• Annual company & performance‑based bonus
• Contributory pension scheme (up to 12% employer contributions)
• Life Assurance (up to 10 x annual salary)
• Private medical cover
• 28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
• Opportunity to buy up to 5 extra days leave or sell up to 5 days leave
• Wellbeing services & resources
• AXA employee discounts

To apply, click on the ‘apply for this job’ button, you’ll then need to log in or create a profile to submit your CV. We’re proud to be an Equal Opportunities Employer and don’t discriminate against employees or potential employees based on protected characteristics. If you have a long‑term condition or disability and require adjustments during the application or interview process, we’re proud to offer access to the AXA Accessibility Concierge. For our support, please send an email to [e-mail].

Who we are:

AXA UK Support Functions power AXA’s three customer‑facing business units, providing the infrastructure, support and expertise to ensure our customers can always count on us. Whether you’ve got heaps of experience and qualifications behind you, or you’re just starting out, we’ll give you the support and opportunities to help you grow and develop with confidence.