Change Management Lead

Change Management Lead (French Speaking)

Location: UK (Remote)
Contract: Freelance/Contract
Duration: 6 month contract | Mid-July 2026 - End of January 2027)
Rate: £500-550 per day | Outside IR35

Our client is seeking an experienced Change Management Lead to support a major business transformation programme. This is an exciting opportunity for a seasoned Organisational Change Management (OCM) professional to lead the people side of change, ensuring stakeholders are engaged, prepared and equipped to successfully adopt new processes, systems and ways of working.

This is a remote position supporting a France-based organisation. As you will be working closely with French-speaking stakeholders on a daily basis, professional business-level fluency in both French and English is essential.

Reporting into the Programme Manager and Transformation Leadership Team, you will act as the primary interface between the project team and the wider business, driving stakeholder engagement, communication, training, business readiness and adoption throughout the programme life cycle.

Key Responsibilities

Change Strategy & Planning

• Develop and tailor the Change Management Strategy to align with programme objectives.
• Create and maintain the Change Management Plan and roadmap.
• Define the change vision, objectives, scope and success criteria.
• Identify organisational impacts resulting from the transformation.
• Establish change governance and reporting mechanisms.
• Integrate change management activities into the overall programme plan.
• Maintain the change risk and mitigation register.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Identify all impacted stakeholder groups across business functions and locations.
• Conduct stakeholder impact and influence assessments.
• Develop and execute stakeholder engagement plans.
• Support executive sponsors and business leaders in driving change adoption.
• Build and manage a network of Change Champions and Key Users.
• Monitor stakeholder sentiment and proactively manage resistance.

Communication Management

• Develop and maintain the communication strategy and communication calendar.
• Produce targeted communications for different stakeholder groups.
• Draft project updates, announcements, newsletters and leadership communications.
• Ensure consistent messaging throughout the transformation.
• Coordinate communications relating to training, testing, cutover and go-live.
• Monitor communication effectiveness and adapt where required.

Workshop Facilitation & Business Engagement

• Plan and facilitate Business Lead workshops and stakeholder sessions.
• Gather business feedback regarding upcoming changes.
• Facilitate discussions around impacts, risks, concerns and organisational readiness.
• Document actions, decisions and stakeholder commitments.
• Support alignment between project teams and business stakeholders.

Training Needs Analysis

• Assess training requirements across all impacted user groups.
• Define role-based learning requirements.
• Identify knowledge gaps and competency needs.
• Collaborate with business leads and subject matter experts to define training scope.
• Develop the overall training approach and schedule.

Training Governance

• Review training materials developed by functional teams.
• Validate training content against future business processes.
• Coordinate stakeholder reviews and feedback.
• Ensure consistency and quality across all training documentation.
• Obtain formal business approval prior to delivery.

Business Readiness

• Define readiness criteria and assessment methodology.
• Conduct readiness reviews with business stakeholders.
• Monitor preparedness across communications, training, operational readiness and support.
• Identify readiness risks and mitigation actions.
• Provide recommendations for go-live readiness and decision making.

Cutover & Go-Live

• Develop communication plans supporting cutover activities.
• Ensure business users understand key dates and operational impacts.
• Communicate system downtime, business freezes and transition activities.
• Coordinate go-live announcements and executive communications.
• Ensure appropriate support information is available to all users.

Adoption & Continuous Improvement

• Monitor user adoption and business acceptance following deployment.
• Collect user feedback and adoption metrics.
• Identify recurring issues and resistance to change.
• Implement corrective actions to improve adoption.
• Support Hypercare and post-go-live stabilisation.
• Facilitate lessons learned sessions and contribute to benefits realisation.

Required Skills & Experience

• Minimum of 5 years' experience in Change Management within large-scale transformation programmes.
• Proven experience supporting ERP, CRM, Digital Transformation or Business Transformation initiatives.
• Demonstrated success managing organisational change across multi-country environments.
• Experience working closely with executive stakeholders and senior business leaders.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
• Excellent communication planning and delivery experience.
• Workshop facilitation expertise.
• Experience in business readiness assessments and adoption management.
• Strong understanding of organisational change management methodologies.
• Ability to manage change risks and implement effective mitigation strategies.

Preferred Certifications

• Prosci Change Management Certification
• CCMP (Certified Change Management Professional)
• PMP or PRINCE2 (desirable)

Essential Requirements

• Professional business-level fluency in French and English is essential.
• Must be comfortable facilitating workshops, leading stakeholder meetings and producing communications in French.
• Available to commit to 6months between mid-July 2026 and the end of January 2027.