Organisation Design and Development Practitioner - Census

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UKs largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

The Organisation Design and Development (OD&D) team sits within the People and Places Directorate. OD&D provide specialist consultancy to help the organisation adapt to changing priorities, strengthen its operating models, and improve ways of working. The team works in a flexible consultancy model, partnering with leaders across all directorates to design and embed organisational changes, support people centred transformation, and strengthen organisational effectiveness.

We are able to offer two roles, the first focused on supporting the delivery of Census 2031. Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet a once-in-a decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. The second role plays an important part in maintaining and growing OD&D capability across the core ONS directorates.

The complexity of the roles arise from balancing multiple OD&D assignments, working with teams and leaders with different needs, and supporting to make evidence based design and development decisions. The postholder will often work in ambiguous or evolving situations, requiring them to analyse issues, identify risks or dependencies, and influence decision making without formal authority. While the role does not directly manage budgets or large-scale delivery functions, it plays a significant part in shaping how work, teams and ways of working are designed and implemented across ONS and the Census.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end organisation design and delivery activity across designated areas of the Census programme or across ONS.
• Review operating models and develop organisational structures, accountabilities and role profiles to ensure clarity, efficiency and confidence in delivery.
• Apply systems thinking and industry best practice so designs reflect interdependencies between people, processes, technology and governance.
• Support organisation development interventions that strengthen leadership capability, effective ways of working and collaborative behaviours across Census teams.
• Turn complex data from a variety of sources into meaningful insights and audience focused reports, that enable informed decisions and implementation plans.
• Design and facilitate workshops and senior leader discussions to diagnose issues, explore options and cocreate organisational solutions.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to design and implement project management approaches, ensuring effective planning, and delivery across multiple workstreams.
• Ability to analyse, challenge and translate complex workforce data into strategic insight, leading workforce planning activity and influencing workforce decisions through evidence-based analysis and recommendations. Provide expert OD&D advice, challenge and recommendations to senior leaders, supporting them to embed organisational changes and sustain them through delivery phases.
• Drive continuous improvement by capturing learning, sharing good practice, strengthening OD tools and approaches, and building strong stakeholder relationships across the Census programme and ONS.
• Become an active member in the cross government OD&D community of practice.

Essential Criteria

• Proven experience of leading organisation design and/or organisation development activity, including the design of organisational structures and the development of organisational culture.
• Proven ability to analyse a range of information inform options/recommendations and decisions.
• Excellent planning and prioritisation skills with the ability to apply project management principles when approaching pieces of work, and when responding to changing priorities.
• Strong experience of workshop design, facilitation techniques and tools.
• A good understanding of workforce planning, with the ability to analyse and interpret data, to assess demand and inform planning decisions.

Qualifications

• CIPD Level 5 Organisation Design and Development qualification (or willingness to work towards), or equivalent including work experience.