WHAT DOES A CHANGE MANAGER DO?

Published: May 21, 2025 - The Change Manager develops and implements effective change management practices, including readiness approaches, impact assessments, and post-implementation reviews. This position prepares organizational readiness deliverables, manages stakeholder engagement and communication plans, and ensures alignment with program governance. This role collaborates with project teams and designers to create program visual identities while identifying success stories and conducting CEC scope assessments.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Change Manager

1. Change Manager Duties

  • Change Management: Apply a structured methodology and lead change management planning and activities for HR Technology initiatives.
  • Change Adoption: Drive adoption and expansion of Change Management throughout the HR Technology organization.
  • Process Application: Apply a change management process and tools to promote the adoption of users on HR Technology initiatives.
  • Template Development: Develop templates for Change Management plans, communication, and training templates and tools to be leveraged across different HRT initiatives.
  • Impact Assessment: Assess the change impact by conducting impact analysis, assessing the organization's change readiness, and identifying key stakeholders.
  • Methodology Guidance: Provide Change Management methodology guidance in execution for HR Technology projects and Training, and Communications subject matter expertise.
  • Training Leadership: Lead HR Technology training by designing the strategy and materials and supporting the delivery of training programs on the changes implemented by HR Technology teams.
  • Communication Management: Lead HR Technology communication efforts and support the design and management of communications. Promote consistent branding and compliance with communication procedures.
  • Strategy Implementation: Develop and implement a communication strategy and tools for HR Technology organization to promote collaboration and engagement of HR COEs.
  • Knowledge Transfer: Collaboratively design, produce, and deliver knowledge transfer sessions to facilitate these key responsibilities.

2. Change Manager Details

  • Stakeholder Management: Assist HR Technology PMs with stakeholder management to ensure stakeholders are informed of project status.
  • Risk Mitigation: Identify, analyze and prepare risk mitigation strategy to drive adoption and overcome anticipated resistance to change.
  • Team Coaching: Consult and coach HR Technology project teams.
  • Deliverable Creation: Collaboratively create deliverables for all change management levers including communications plan, training plan, sponsor support and engagement plan, and resistance management plan.
  • Role Definition: Support and provide input on the organization design and definition of roles and responsibilities within HR Technology.
  • Leadership Engagement: Support and engage senior leadership of the HRT stakeholders to align the change management approach to the needs.
  • Design Implementation: Implementation of human-centred design and agile principles and practices, where applicable e.g. development of personas to understand change impacts.
  • Capability Uplift: Support the uplift of change capability across Australian Unity.
  • Employee Coaching: Coach less experienced employees in delivering best practice change management interventions.
  • Community Practice: Contribute to a change community of practice to drive change management across Australian Unity.
  • Risk Management: Identifies, manages and mitigates change management risks and issues.

3. Change Manager Responsibilities

  • Change Leadership: Lead the People change agenda to maximise employee engagement, faster adoption of cultural and behavioural reform and ensure adherence to governance.
  • Project Management: Manage progress from initiation to delivery in line with project methodologies using a range of tools and techniques for planning, monitoring and reporting against milestones to a wide audience at all levels of the Trust.
  • Internal Consulting: Act as an internal consultant, working closely with the business to translate needs, strategy and policy into viable work packages and estimating time and cost of resources for delivery.
  • Readiness Management: Manage business readiness actions for all impacted stakeholders, delivering exceptional communications on a variety of mediums and expert guidance.
  • Insight Collection: Initiate and manage the collection of insight using a variety of networks to identify opportunities to contribute to the Trust.
  • Issue Resolution: Responsible for anticipating issues and problems, and, where necessary, intervening to find solutions to prevent slippage or failure to meet key milestones.
  • Team Leadership: Lead and develop matrix-managed teams including project resources and other People functional experts, to ensure projects are delivered on time.
  • Stakeholder Consultation: Consult directly with Trade Union representatives and other stakeholders to inform the design and delivery of the project.
  • Role Execution: Ensures that stakeholders execute on roles in the change plan.
  • Support Management: Ensures that post-go-live support is provided.

4. Change Manager Job Summary

  • Board Management: Managing and running the operational Change Advisory Board.
  • Process Promotion: Promoting the CAB and change management processes throughout the organization.
  • Change Communication: Communications associated with any changes using various tools and methods.
  • Schedule Provision: Provision of a release and patch schedule working with internal stakeholders and third parties.
  • Project Delivery: Delivering on time, to quality and to budget technical projects.
  • Change Support: Supporting the Head of Change and IT in role to deliver a cross business change process.
  • Collaboration Practice: Contributing to the wider IT & Change function through collaboration with colleagues to ensure the sharing and implementation of best practice and maximizing efficiencies.
  • Report Delivery: Delivering accurate and insightful MI and reporting.
  • Practice Application: Working with IT teams to apply change best practice.
  • Spend Control: Maintaining close control over internal project spend driving efficiencies and savings.

5. Change Manager Functions

  • Readiness Assessment: Conducting sessions and assessing results to understand employee readiness.
  • Impact Assessment: Producing Heatmaps and Impact assessments for business areas impacted by projects.
  • Engagement Driving: Driving employee engagement, buy-in, and participation.
  • Stakeholder Communication: Communicating effectively with stakeholders at all levels.
  • Feedback Collection: Collating employee feedback and sharing input for lessons learnt.
  • Participation Monitoring: Monitoring participation, tests and effectiveness.
  • Report Creation: Creating usage and utilisation reports.
  • Behavior Observation: Observing behavioural change for the purpose of risk management.
  • KPI Projection: Projecting KPI measurements against process improvement.
  • Benefit Calculation: Calculating benefit realisation and ROI.

6. Change Manager Job Description

  • Change Partnership: Partner with leaders in areas undergoing complex change to understand localised vision and purpose, building and delivering plans to transition to new ways of working utilising change methodology.
  • Cultural Evolution: Support the evolution of new ways of working and cultural change across the organisation, including building a more agile approach to solving problems, driving a relentless focus on customer and enabling collaborative ways of working between cross-functional teams.
  • Function Partnership: Build relationships and partner with other enabling functions to successfully deliver plans, including Internal Communications, Learning & Development and HR Business Partnering.
  • Deliverable Oversight: Produce and oversee the production of key deliverables, including Change Plan and Approach, Change Impact Assessment, Communication and Engagement Plan, RACI matrix, Process Maps, Adoption Tracking and Business Transition Plan.
  • Risk Management: Establish and manage the people risks, dependencies, issues and capability requirements for the areas that are supporting for example, functional ‘overloading’, skills/capability gaps or barriers to adoption.
  • Capability Development: Contribute to the development of change capability, both within the Change team and within the wider organisation, through sharing knowledge and contributing to best practice Change approach.
  • Timeline Adherence: Adhering to project timelines.
  • Readiness Assurance: Ensuring business readiness is at agreed percentages, ready for go-live in line with systems deliverables.
  • Risk Communication: Ensuring that key risks are understood by the CAB and contributing to the Change & IT risk logs.
  • Service Management: Managing of all changes impacting the “Live Service” and ensuring that such changes do not adversely impact the service.
  • Business Knowledge: Obtaining a good working knowledge of the enforcement business.
  • Governance Leadership: Attending and leading governance meetings.

7. Change Manager Overview

  • Champion the value of Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategies and activities.
  • Partner with Program/Project Managers to provide Change Enablement and Communications (CEC) to ensure people who may be impacted are brought along the change curve
  • Develop project strategies and plans, including stakeholder assessment, communications, leadership alignment, organization transition, change readiness, capability transfer, and end-user training
  • Implement changes following the change management process, including assisting stakeholders to execute specific client-facing tasks
  • Develop expertise in modern capitalization management systems and become an internal resource and thought leader on implementation of such systems within large law firms
  • Maintain, update and enhance project plan and change resources, including collection and curation of training and resource materials, coordination with relevant departments of the firm on process and operational changes
  • Develop system for the coordination and tracking of capitalization management systems in the firm
  • Coordinate and facilitate meetings and develop internal communications relevant to change initiatives
  • Provide reports and other updates that provide data on operational processes and organize the data into meaningful reports/visuals
  • Escalate any identified operational issues or quality assurance concerns to the appropriate leadership team

8. Change Manager Tasks

  • Develop and implement change Management practices to determine optimal readiness approach and plans.
  • Change Impact Assessments and Post Implementation Review
  • Communication and Engagement Plans
  • Prepares and submits organisational readiness document deliverables in support of proposed approaches and plans
  • Extensive experience working with senior business stakeholders
  • Consults with project teams and key stakeholders for input and approval of deliverables
  • Appropriately manages risks and issues in accordance with operating model program governance
  • Develops, maintains and executes stakeholder engagement plans
  • Source success stories from OT&BI programs for Going for Gold series Conduct CEC scope assessments at program/project inception
  • Develop stakeholder engagement plan, communications plan, and training plan Work with project team and graphic designer to create visual identity (graphics, Discovery site, Yammer community, etc.,) for program/project

9. Change Manager Roles

  • Provide technical support to manage and track Change Requests. 
  • Monitor tickets daily through Remedy related to change management. 
  • Ensure Change Management processes are documented, maintained, and reported for the portfolio of programs throughout the operational lifecycle. 
  • Support the management of the Change Management site (uploading, editing, creating folders, posting material, and approving accounts). 
  • Collaborate with users, technical staff, and management to define business and technical requirements. 
  • Provide advice and recommendations specific to customer requirements. 
  • Work with Subject Matter Experts and technical support teams in the pursuit of technically excellent solutions. 
  • Coordinate project activities with contractors, government management, and other agencies. 
  • Managing the CM team, priority, status, and deliverables.

10. Change Manager Additional Details

  • Provide communication materials for program/project (e.g., email, PPTs, Yammer, Discovery, one-pagers, etc.)
  • Write Going for Gold success stories highlighting sites, people, use cases, etc., from OT&BI programs/projects
  • Working with stakeholders to conduct assessments such as gap analysis and impact assessments
  • Leveraging change impact analysis to develop and maintain a pragmatic change management plan and all other supporting change documentation
  • Executing change interventions required including assisting in developing and delivering training, creating and executing change communications for the business, managing and ensuring the timely and high-quality production of artefacts such as user guides, training materials, videos, etc.
  • Leading processes connected to change management
  • Preparation of forecasts and evaluation of the actual impact of changes
  • Cooperation with the respective project teams and further managers involved in the organizational change
  • Identification of potential risks for resistance as well as the development of plans to intervene
  • Evaluation and ensuring the readiness for change
  • Support and management of the necessary communication activities related to the changes

11. Change Manager Essential Functions

  • Identify and understand key stakeholders and create an engagement strategy/stakeholder management plan.
  • Creation of a change plan covering including comms, change, training and operational readiness.
  • Ensure successful business adoption.
  • Ensure benefit realisation plans are created and impact assessed.
  • Creation and execution of an end-to-end business change plan.
  • Create and monitor change tools and impact logs.
  • Work with the central project team to create the overall implementation strategy.
  • Creation and maintenance of project branding and periodic updates to the community using such branding.
  • Work with each module workstream team to create rollout plans covering comms and training.
  • Creation of plans and materials to support change at an operational level eg ,train the trainer, coaching and support for managers and HR team.

12. Change Manager Role Purpose

  • Build and maintain strong working relationships with key stakeholders including Change, operational and project teams
  • Work across a portfolio with high-pressure regulatory requirementsand  deadlines
  • Contribute to the development of the change engagement strategy by developing detailed stakeholder maps
  • Ensure that the benefits of the program are achieved through the successful delivery of the change strategy
  • Contribute to the development and uplift of the Change plan, flagging issues, mitigating risks and communicating with impacted audiences
  • Provide insights and comment on change impact assessments to understand the size and complexity of change to inform the design and timing of change interventions
  • Define key success measures, and develop content to support business readiness
  • Engage leaders and effectively communicate changes to people
  • Assess business readiness, monitor and reinforce change to optimise adoption and advocacy

13. Change Manager General Responsibilities

  • Plan Development: Develop and implement change management plans that minimize employee resistance, accelerate adoption of change, and deliver the desired employee experience.
  • Stakeholder Influence: Provide stakeholder influence, and craft appropriate messages to support the change associated with large scale enterprise wide projects.
  • Training Guidance: Provide analysis and guidance to the design, development, and delivery of training programs and support materials.
  • Experience Strategy: Create employee experience strategies based on awareness of the details of the change and the audiences impacted.
  • Tool Utilization: Use prescribed change management tools such as change impact analysis, change communication and enablement plans, readiness assessments, and leadership engagement activities.
  • Metric Identification: Identify success metrics and regularly report on progress and gaps.
  • Message Consistency: Ensure message development and execution are consistent in voice, processes, tools and services provided to customers.
  • Champion Network: Establish a network of change champions.
  • Resource Review: Review existing internal change resources (Internal comms, training).
  • Practice Review: Review current best practice for change adoption within Bakkavor and any key learnings from previous implementations.

14. Change Manager Roles and Details

  • CM Support: Provides CM support needed to develop, deliver and execute change deliverables needed for the successful delivery of the project (e.g. impact assessments, readiness assessments, detailed change approach).
  • Program Management: Provides program design & development project management.
  • Work Development: Support develops detailed CM work and deliverables (impact assessments, sustainment plans, detailed change approach).
  • Activity Integration: Assists in the integration of CM activities across sectors/functions.
  • Resource Support: Provides hands-on change management support needed for the execution of deliverables for sectors/functions that are under-resourced.
  • Guidance Insight: Provide guidance and insights based on past experiences with similar projects and can help provide a robust perspective on cultural impacts/process implications.
  • Analytic Support: Provides hands-on support from a change, project management and analytics perspective for the GBS Global Change Management Lead.
  • CM Training: Provides CM training to functional teams and key stakeholders who are unfamiliar with change management principles, framework and tools.
  • Change Implementation: Implement the business change.
  • Methodology Contribution: Contribute to the sustainable implementation of new change methodologies within the area of project management, scrum/agile or other tooling.

15. Change Manager Responsibilities and Key Tasks

  • Plan Design: Design fit for purpose change management plans (program) to contribute to the successful design, implementation and adoption of business initiatives and goals (including the why for change, change impact assessments, change planning and execution, transition plans).
  • Strategy Execution: Work with the Chief People Experience Officer to build and execute a Change strategy and plan that develops the right capabilities, behaviours in people for Flybuys' success.
  • Risk Management: Identify and manage people-related risks throughout the lifecycle of an initiative.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Formulate and execute stakeholder engagement, communication and training plans to achieve a coordinated approach across impacted internal team members and external stakeholders.
  • Release Support: Provide hands-on support to impacted team members during release and hyper-care periods.
  • Goal Alignment: Work closely with both delivery resources and business SME’s to achieve common business goals aligned to the Flybuys strategy.
  • Leader Coaching: Coach, guide and support leaders to drive adoption of business outcomes.
  • Lead Engagement: Experience in engaging and managing initiatives and delivery leads to developing and implementing change management plans.
  • Change Support: Supporting key stakeholders to land and embed change and measure success.
  • Learning Development: Work with the people experience team to identify any learning needs and develop appropriate plans to address the capabilities and skills the business requires to be successful.
Relevant Information
What Does A Change Management Specialist Do?
What Does A Change Project Manager Do?
What Does A Change Analyst Do?
What Does A Change Management Analyst Do?