Who are we?

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.

People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

Role Title: Technology Change Manager - US Retail Technology Program

Location: US, Home based

About the Role

Howden is delivering a portfolio of technology-enabled transformation projects across US Retail. These changes are designed to improve how the business operates, how colleagues work day-to-day, and how technology supports future growth.

As the business adopts this portfolio of IT change, it will need focused support to ensure the changes are understood, embedded and adopted, and that the expected benefits are realized.

We are looking for an experienced and people-focused Change Manager to lead change management activity for the US Retail Technology Programme. This role is ideal for someone who can translate technology delivery into clear business impact, drive stakeholder engagement from the outset, and support successful adoption through each phase of the delivery lifecycle.

As a People First company, supporting our people as the organisation makes these transitions is of paramount importance. The successful candidate will work closely with programme, business, operations, HR, training and communications teams to ensure positive outcomes for colleagues and for the business.

You will play a key role in shaping the change journey across US Retail, ensuring impacted teams are prepared, supported and confident through implementation, go-live and post-go-live adoption. A core focus of the role will be building practical change capability, managing adoption risk, and ensuring resistance is treated as useful feedback that informs the delivery approach.

Key Accountabilities

Operating Model and Business Impact

• Conduct stakeholder analysis to identify impacted groups, assess readiness, and map change impacts by role, process and business area.

• Work with the business and the programme to ensure the impact of technology changes on the operating model and people are well understood.

• Facilitate business thinking on operating model changes required by the technology implementation, ensuring sensitivity to the wider US Retail operating model.

• Alongside HR and business leadership, ensure people changes are understood and the right level of support is provided to those impacted by operating model change.

• Provide input into stakeholder analysis updates and feed findings into communication, training and adoption planning.

Change Strategy and Planning

• Define and maintain the change management strategy, including approach, key messages, audiences, engagement channels and timeline aligned to the delivery plan.

• Create and maintain practical adoption plans, including adoption targets, success measures, readiness criteria and resistance mitigation strategies.

• Work with programme leadership, business owners and operational teams to ensure change activity is integrated into the overall delivery lifecycle, rather than treated as a go-live activity only.

• Identify change risks and adoption blockers early, agree mitigation actions, and track these through to closure.

Communications

• Develop and execute an audience-focused communications plan to communicate change in a clear, honest and upfront way.

• Craft targeted messages for stakeholders at different levels, from sponsors and business leaders through to end users impacted by the change.

• Build and maintain a network of business adoption champions who understand the changes and can help communicate progress, impacts and readiness expectations across their teams.

• Work with internal communications teams to ensure relevant and appropriate communications are developed and delivered in a timely manner.

• Disseminate go-live communications and coordinate with business and operations adoption champions to support day-one readiness.

• Identify and capture success stories so they can be used to support adoption where relevant.

Training and Capability Building

• Work with the programme training team and business teams to ensure training needs are well understood and training is delivered in an appropriate and timely manner.

• Design the training strategy and coordinate delivery, including identifying training needs, supporting training materials, scheduling sessions and coordinating train-the-trainer activity where required.

• Facilitate workshops, training sessions and engagement activity to build understanding, readiness and confidence across impacted teams.

• Support the development of change tools, templates and frameworks that can be reused across the US Retail Technology Programme.

• Promote change awareness and capability across the organisation.

Deployment Readiness and Go-Live Support

• Lead deployment readiness activities from a change perspective, confirming users are trained, communications are issued, adoption champions are engaged, and support structures are clear before go-live.

• Work with programme, business and operations teams to ensure colleagues understand what is changing, when it is changing, what action is required, and where support will be available.

• Support cutover and go-live planning by ensuring business readiness, communications readiness and user readiness are visible and actively managed.

Adoption, Benefits and Resistance Management

• Work with benefit owners to ensure benefit outcomes are clear, measurable and reflective of phased delivery.

• Define and track adoption metrics, including adoption targets, user feedback, engagement levels, readiness indicators and post-go-live adoption measures.

• Measure adoption, not just training completion, and ensure insights are used to adjust communications, training and business support activity.

• Champion user adoption post go-live by gathering user feedback, surfacing resistance patterns, and escalating adoption blockers where required.

• Manage change resistance by identifying root causes, working with leadership to address concerns, and tracking adoption actions through to closure.

• Work with internal communications teams to ensure benefit and adoption stories are appropriately communicated.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build strong relationships with programme teams, business leaders, operations teams, HR, communications, training teams and impacted colleagues.

• Engage stakeholders from the start of the change journey, not only at go-live.

• Communicate the change vision, benefits, impacts, readiness expectations and progress clearly and consistently.

• Use stakeholder feedback and resistance themes as data to improve the change approach and support successful adoption.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Experience supporting change management in a large financial services organisation.

• Proven experience delivering change management within complex technology-enabled transformation environments.

• Experience supporting technology implementations across business, operations and IT teams.

• Prosci Change Management Certification is preferred; demonstrable experience applying Prosci methodology is required.

• Demonstrable experience applying the ADKAR model to support adoption, readiness and resistance management.

• Strong leadership skills with experience managing or coordinating change activity across cross-functional teams.

• Excellent communication, coaching and stakeholder engagement abilities.

• Experience conducting stakeholder analysis, impact assessment, readiness assessment and adoption planning.

• Experience designing and executing communication plans, training strategies and adoption measurement approaches.

• Experience working with teams and individuals impacted by organizational, process and technology change.

• Ability to make clear-headed decisions under pressure.

• Excellent relationship management skills and the ability to work with senior managers within a complex, fast-paced organisation.

• Proven ability to work in a highly confidential environment.

• Ability to ruthlessly manage priorities and focus effort where it will have the greatest adoption impact.

• Experience working with US-based stakeholders or distributed business teams would be advantageous.

What do we offer in return?

A career that you define.

What you might not expect is a job where everyone has a voice, where volunteering in the community is part of the day job, and where everyone is encouraged to play a part towards our sustainability goals. We want people who want to make a difference - not just in the workplace, but in the industry and in the wider community.

Our culture: People First

Our core values dictate how we live and work. We are a group with independence and people at its heart, and we are a home for talent with a unique culture: the biggest small company in the world.

The focus on being a People First business has always been at the very heart of the Group. Our vision was to create an independent business with a unique culture and one that would survive and thrive as a business controlled by the people working for it. Finding the most talented and entrepreneurial people to join the Group has been and will continue to be key.

Diversity & Inclusion

At Howden Group Holdings we consider our people our chief competitive advantage and as such we treat colleagues, candidates, clients, and business partners with equality, fairness and respect, regardless of their age, disability, race, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, marital status or family circumstances.

What do we offer in return?

A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:

• Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new

• We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges

• We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond

Reasonable adjustments

We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs.  Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.

If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.

*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.