Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.
Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide.
We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.
Key clients include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.
Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.
Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 1,800 global colleagues.
Purpose of the role:
At Collinson International Ltd (CIL), the largest operating company within the Collinson Group, we have a powerful vision: To be a strategic partner to the leading payment networks, issuers and travel companies. Driving customer engagement and incremental value through the world's most valued travel ecosystem.
Whilst we have had a lot of success over the past 10 years, and have grown exponentially, we need to make changes to the way we work if we’re going to achieve this vision. With that in mind, we are embarking on our biggest ever period of transformation - investing time and money to connect consumers, our clients and our partners to each other, and to the elevated experiences they want and expect from us.
As part of this, we are establishing a new Transformation team and require a Head of Change to support in the delivery of key initiatives.
The primary purpose of the Head of Change is to ensure that change management is sufficiently embedded into various transformation efforts across CIL.
This involves:
1.Ensuring project/programme/product teams accurately estimate and resource change management efforts as initiatives pass through early stage-gates
2.Monitoring the change impact and associated change management activity across the portfolio, escalating risks and issues as required
3.Communicating the scale, nature and timing of change that the organisation will face over the next 3-5 years and working with Internal Communications and individual Change, Project and Programme Managers to raise visibility of relevant initiatives at relevant times
4.Maintaining and continuously improving standard ways of working and tools / templates relating to change management
5.Forming and facilitating a Change Manager community of practice to share ideas, experiences and lessons learnt, providing advice, guidance and training to Change Managers, Project Managers, Programme Managers and Sponsors as needed.
In addition, the Head of Change will also support the Head of TMO with the change management activities associated with embedding the new ways of working and standards, with a focus on driving adoption and reducing resistance across the CIL organisation.
Main Accountabilities:
1.Resourcing – work with the sponsors of the different initiatives and the Head of TMO to understand Change Management resource requirements and match this demand to supply (prioritising competing demand where needed). In the event of there being insufficient in-house resources, work with external third parties and procurement to secure additional resources on a short-medium term basis whilst shaping future recruitment decisions
2.Governance – ensure that individual projects, programme and product teams have adequately assessed the change impact of their initiatives and scoped/planned relevant activities to minimise disruption to the organisation
3.Change journey / roadmap – ensure that the centralised view of the transformation delivery roadmap (e.g. The key milestones from individual initiatives mapped alongside other key calendar items that impact CIL) is expressed in such a way that employees understand what change is happening, when and what it means for them
4.Risk and issue management – review the risks and issues experienced by the different initiatives relating to Change Management to identify and escalate common themes that require an enterprise-wide approach to resolution. Manage and track these items to completion (owning mitigations as appropriate)
5.Change adoption - work with change sponsors and project/programme/product teams to define and track adoption of change initiatives and support teams to create embedding plans to drive adoption into BAU
6.Tools and templates – maintain the suite of tools and templates that can be deployed by Change Managers in the delivery of the different initiatives, updating and refining as needed (working in conjunction with the TMO Lead)
7.Training and community – work with the T&D team and Head of TMO to maintain career paths for Change Managers throughout the organisation. Recommend external courses where appropriate and prepare and deliver internal training events. Run relevant communities of practice. Support the T&D team to create training programmes for line managers and leadership on change management.
8.Communication – work with the Head of TMO and Internal Comms team to promote the newly established transformation team and share details of the change roadmap and wider transformation journey. Align change communications to the CIL strategy to ensure clarity behind the ‘why’ of transformation.
9.Stakeholder management – establish strong working relationships with different stakeholder groups (including Programme Managers, Project Managers, Change Leads, initiative sponsors and the Collinson International Ltd leadership team and Board) to promote the new transformation way of working and drive up adoption.
Experience, requirements & skills:
University degree with a minimum 8-10 years of experience in senior change management roles, preferably with a management consultancy background.
Proven track record of leading transformational change initiatives across large and complex organization
Extensive experience working with C-suite and senior leadership teams
Professional certification in Change Management (e.g., Prosci, APMG Change Management) is essential.
Additional qualifications in Project Management (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2) or Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum Master) are beneficial.
Advanced certifications in leadership development or executive coaching would be an asset.
•Change Management
•Cultural awareness and sensitivity
•Communication and stakeholder management / influencing
•Project, programme and portfolio management
•Agile product delivery
•Cross-functional working
•Training and development
•Problem solving and analysis
•Ability to deal with ambiguity
•Commitment to continuous learning
Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.
We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Act smarter, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.
In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).
If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com