Director General Health & Social Care and Chief Executive, NHS Scotland

The Director General Health & Social Care and Chief Executive, NHS Scotland post is the most significant, high profile and influential leadership role in the Scottish public health sector. This is an outstanding opportunity to join the top leadership team of the Scottish Government (SG) and lead a core public service through a reform programme focused on improving outcomes for people and ensuring sustainability of services.

This is a unique and highly visible role, with regular Ministerial contact and a high external profile providing strategic direction, ensuring delivery of key priorities and driving reform, performance, efficiency and value for money. You will be a champion for the culture, values and behaviours of the health and care system.

You will be the SGs principal policy adviser on Health and Social Care supporting the Cabinet Secretary for Health and other Ministers. Your key responsibility will be the delivery of the Cabinet Secretarys priorities across a complex adaptive system. Affecting change in this system requires collaborative working and a commitment to fostering positive relationships. You will work with others to protect, sustain and enhance the health of the population in the context of the Public Services Reform Strategy, the Population Health Strategy, and the Service Renewal Strategy.

You will be the Accountable Officer for the Health & Social Care Portfolio in SG with a budget of approx. 22 billion, charged with ensuring the best use of resources and driving reform that enables capacity to be matched with demand within a sustainable financial envelope.

• Lead DG for prevention and Chair of the Reform Executive, you will have a key role in overseeing the development and implementation of the HSC Reform portfolio and its contribution to Public Service Reform ensuring that priorities and ambitions are delivered.
• Advise and assist Ministers to deliver ambitions against the Public Service Reform Strategy, the Population Health Framework and the Service Renewal Framework for Health and Social Care ensuring improved performance and system sustainability.
• Provide strategic direction to NHS Scotland, driving reform, improved performance, efficiency and value for money in the delivery of sustainable high-quality services.
• Work with system leaders across health and social care to deliver large scale reform which enhances outcomes and the quality of the user experience whilst ensuring sustained performance and productivity.
• Ensure NHS Scotland and the broader health and social care system has appropriate governance structures and arrangements to drive forward reform, quality improvement, performance and accountability.
• Play a leading and collegiate role as part of the Executive Team and Corporate Board to cut through silos and organisational boundaries in developing and aligning resources in support of SG priorities.
• Role model for the ambition and values of the SG and NHS Scotland reinforcing and supporting a diverse and inclusive culture shaped by continuous improvement and the drive for excellence.

It is essential that you can provide evidence in your application of the professional and skills required for this role.

In addition, candidates applying for roles with the government agencies and public bodies in Scotland are assessed in line with the Success Profiles framework that is used across the Civil Service. This means that as well as evidencing the professional experience and skills you will also be expected to evidence behaviours at the level required for this Senior Civil Service role.

Experience:

• Significant senior leadership experience at Executive or Board level within large, complex organisations, ideally in health, social care, or similarly regulated sectors with political accountability.
• Comprehensive experience of driving delivery across whole systems, using collaborative approaches that integrate partners, stakeholders and services to address challenges such as public health effectively.
• Proven expertise in overseeing substantial revenue and capital budgets, supported by strong corporate governance and financial stewardship.
• Demonstrated success in delivering measurable outcomes across multiple functions through effective partnership working and stakeholder engagement.
• Strong track record of achieving strategic objectives while cultivating a high-performance culture that drives continuous improvement and system-wide transformation.

Behaviours:

• Leadership (Level 6)
• Seeing the big picture (Level 6)
• Managing a quality service (Level 6)
• Changing and improving (Level 6)
• Communicating and influencing (Level 6)

You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours, here: Success Profiles - Civil Service Behaviours