Organisation Development Practice Lead
Temporary, Full Time
£500.00 per day umbrella
Location: Chelmsford
Interim Organisation Development Practice Lead
Location: Chelmsford
(Attendance in Chelmsford typically 1–2 days per week, subject to business need)
The Role
Are you ready to lead a committed OD team through a significant period of change, development and strategic opportunity?
In this interim role, you will provide leadership to a team of Organisational Development Consultants and Employee Experience Consultants, enabling them to deliver highimpact, evidencebased interventions that support the new Workforce Strategy (2026–2028).
Working at pace, you will ensure OD activity is aligned, futurefocused, and grounded in strong professional practice—embedding the culture, behaviours and organisational conditions needed for our people and services to thrive now and as we head into a period of significant change with Local Government Reorganisation on the horizon.
Working in close partnership with colleagues across People & Organisation Development, and collaborating with the Organisation Design and Change Practices, you will ensure we take a holistic, systemsfocused approach to organisational change. Drawing on internal insight and external best practice, you will help shape forwardthinking OD strategies, frameworks, tools and solutions that strengthen leadership capability, influence culture, and deliver measurable outcomes.
Embodying our organisational behaviours—Inspires, Innovates, Enables, Collaborates, Delivers—you will operate with confidence and credibility, influencing decisionmaking, and modelling the ethical, valuesdriven practice we expect from our profession.
This is an exciting opportunity for an OD Lead to join a collaborative, supportive and ambitious team, and play a crucial role in shaping the future of ECC’s workforce and culture.
If you are ready to take on a strategic, rewarding and influential interim leadership role, we would love to hear from you.
Essex County Council (ECC) is one of the largest and most dynamic local authorities in the UK, serving a population of 2 million residents, and has a very successful track record of delivering transformational change. ECC anticipated change was needed in the public sector and has worked to deliver better quality at lower cost. We have an ambitious transformation agenda – one with the scope to reach every part of the council. We are changing the way we think, the way we work, and the ways in which we deliver our services. We are committed to becoming a place where individuals, partners and communities feel proud to play their role and genuinely want to belong. We’re immensely proud of our flexible working options.
The Experience You Will Bring:
* Educated to degree level in a relevant professional field such as Human Resources, Organisational Development, psychology or equivalent by experience.
* Professional membership of CIPD at Chartered Level or working towards this. Evidence of continuing professional development and positive contributions to professional networks and forums to maintain and grow expert knowledge in the field of organisation development balanced with an ability to pragmatically execute relevant programmes.
* Demonstrable experience of managing complex cultural, systems, process and behavioural change through professional application and proactive development of the consultancy model
* Extensive experience of using external insight, internal data and professional judgement to create, implement and assess the impact of organisation development strategy, frameworks, tools and solutions aligned to organisational strategy and business plans to deliver tangible outcomes, enable data driven decision making and drive continuous improvement in a large, complex matrix organisation.
* Demonstrable knowledge of the critical factors in planning change and practical experience of applying project and programme management approaches with the ability to identify risks and create mitigation plans.
* Strong communication and report writing skills with the ability to influence internal and external stakeholders at all levels including the corporate leadership team, political leadership team and partners. Demonstrable evidence of coaching others to influence behaviours and improve performance.
* Ability to create engaging and impactful content and proven experience in the facilitation and delivery of workshops, events or organisation development interventions.
* Evidence of providing strong, adaptable leadership demonstrating resilience and tenacity in pursuing goals, delivering successful outcomes through others and role modelling ethical behaviours and professional integrity.
* Strong working knowledge of business technologies and the benefits/limitations this provides to support the organisation development agenda