Continuous Improvement Lead

NHS Professionals is recruiting for a Continuous Improvement Lead to join the team on a 9 month FTC. 

This role is responsible for identifying, shaping and overseeing the delivery of Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives that support NHSP’s strategy and target operating model. The postholder will drive measurable business impact across end-to-end processes, systems and operational service delivery, ensuring improvements deliver realised and sustainable benefits.

Working in partnership with stakeholders, you will maintain ownership of improvement outcomes, remove delivery barriers and ensure accountability for the results. You will also champion a culture of Continuous Improvement by coaching teams in CI methodologies and embedding a customer- and colleague-focused improvement mindset across the organisation.

Job responsibilities:

Continuous Improvement Framework & Governance

• Develop a CI framework covering identification, prioritisation, impact assessment, governance, implementation oversight and benefits realisation.
• Define clear success measures and benefit profiles, establish baseline metrics, and establish business accountabilities to monitor, track and realise agreed benefits throughout delivery and post-implementation.
• Conduct comprehensive impact and risk assessments to identify dependencies, workforce implications, policy considerations and operational risks and opportunities.
• Undertake root cause analysis and ensure initiatives are appropriately tested and piloted prior to full implementation.

CI Delivery & Process Improvement

• Lead and deliver small to medium-scale CI initiatives, ensuring alignment to the Target Operating Model and wider operating model changes, with clear accountability for measurable and sustainable outcomes.
  Identify wider improvements that impact end to end processes and support operating model changes.
• Use process improvement methodologies (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma) to collaborate with key stakeholders, ensuring robust requirements gathering and the development of innovative, cost-effective solutions.
• Collaborate with the business to define process maps and apply business analysis techniques to identify opportunities that optimise processes and reduce cost to serve
• Analyse performance data, service impacts and policy guidelines to inform evidence-based decision making.

Stakeholder Engagement & Business Partnership

• Provide business partnership and thought leadership to business leads, acting as a trusted advisor on process efficiencies and customer experience improvement
• Generate support for improvements and change management through continuous engagement with stakeholders.
• Utilise communication channels to achieve a good understanding of the Voice of the Customer

• Support the prioritisation of initiatives aligned to NHSP strategic objectives, including client retention, new client acquisition and cost-to-serve optimisation.
• Champion Lean thinking and continuous improvement across NHSP, building organisational capability and fostering a high-performance, improvement-led culture

• Resolving process deficiencies and implementing sustainable improvements to ensure NHSP remains the most effective and efficient workforce solutions provider
• Identifying improvement ideas, evaluating and prioritising improvement opportunities against agreed strategic and financial criteria.
• Establishing and maintaining an appropriate forum and governance model to oversee CI approvals, prioritisation and decision-making with key stakeholders.
• Maintaining robust documentation and audit trails to support improvement decisions and governance requirement
• Accountable to deliver CI initiatives in line with agreed scope and delivery and governance framework
• Estimating project benefits, monitoring and supporting the sustainability of benefits realisation
• Timely and accurate performance reporting of owned CI initiatives
• Acting as a subject matter expert in CI, providing guidance and expertise across the organisation
• Continually seeking external and internal customer feedback, communicating project outcomes and successes to stakeholders
• Champion and adhere to project governance processes and procedures, focusing on continuous improvement and best practice principles