Organisation Development Practice Lead

Temporary, Full Time

£500.00 per day umbrella

Location: Chelmsford

Closing Date: 2nd March 2026

Interim Organisation Development Practice Lead

Location: Chelmsford Working Style: Anywhere worker (Attendance in Chelmsford typically 1–2 days per week, subject to business need)

The Role

Are you ready to lead a committed OD team through a significant period of change, development and strategic opportunity?

In this interim role, you will provide leadership to a team of Organisational Development Consultants and Employee Experience Consultants, enabling them to deliver highimpact, evidencebased interventions that support the new Workforce Strategy (2026–2028).

Working at pace, you will ensure OD activity is aligned, futurefocused, and grounded in strong professional practice—embedding the culture, behaviours and organisational conditions needed for our people and services to thrive now and as we head into a period of significant change with Local Government Reorganisation on the horizon.

Working in close partnership with colleagues across People & Organisation Development, and collaborating with the Organisation Design and Change Practices, you will ensure we take a holistic, systemsfocused approach to organisational change. Drawing on internal insight and external best practice, you will help shape forwardthinking OD strategies, frameworks, tools and solutions that strengthen leadership capability, influence culture, and deliver measurable outcomes.

Embodying our organisational behaviours—Inspires, Innovates, Enables, Collaborates, Delivers—you will operate with confidence and credibility, influencing decisionmaking, and modelling the ethical, valuesdriven practice we expect from our profession.

This is an exciting opportunity for an OD Lead to join a collaborative, supportive and ambitious team, and play a crucial role in shaping the future of ECC’s workforce and culture.

If you are ready to take on a strategic, rewarding and influential interim leadership role, we would love to hear from you.

Essex County Council (ECC) is one of the largest and most dynamic local authorities in the UK, serving a population of 2 million residents, and has a very successful track record of delivering transformational change. ECC anticipated change was needed in the public sector and has worked to deliver better quality at lower cost. We have an ambitious transformation agenda – one with the scope to reach every part of the council. We are changing the way we think, the way we work, and the ways in which we deliver our services. We are committed to becoming a place where individuals, partners and communities feel proud to play their role and genuinely want to belong. We’re immensely proud of our flexible working options.

The Experience You Will Bring:

Educated to degree level in a relevant professional field such as Human Resources, Organisational Development, psychology or equivalent by experience.
Professional membership of CIPD at Chartered Level or working towards this. Evidence of continuing professional development and positive contributions to professional networks and forums to maintain and grow expert knowledge in the field of organisation development balanced with an ability to pragmatically execute relevant programmes.
Demonstrable experience of managing complex cultural, systems, process and behavioural change through professional application and proactive development of the consultancy model
Extensive experience of using external insight, internal data and professional judgement to create, implement and assess the impact of organisation development strategy, frameworks, tools and solutions aligned to organisational strategy and business plans to deliver tangible outcomes, enable data driven decision making and drive continuous improvement in a large, complex matrix organisation.
Demonstrable knowledge of the critical factors in planning change and practical experience of applying project and programme management approaches with the ability to identify risks and create mitigation plans.
Strong communication and report writing skills with the ability to influence internal and external stakeholders at all levels including the corporate leadership team, political leadership team and partners. Demonstrable evidence of coaching others to influence behaviours and improve performance.
Ability to create engaging and impactful content and proven experience in the facilitation and delivery of workshops, events or organisation development interventions.
Evidence of providing strong, adaptable leadership demonstrating resilience and tenacity in pursuing goals, delivering successful outcomes through others and role modelling ethical behaviours and professional integrity.
Strong working knowledge of business technologies and the benefits/limitations this provides to support the organisation development agenda.

To read more about us please visit:

People and Transformation

Why Essex? Essex County Council has a location to be proud of. Our 1,300 square miles stretch from Constable Country to the Thames Estuary, from the dynamic M11 corridor to the traditional seaside resorts of Clacton and Walton. England’s oldest town, Colchester, and two of its newest – Basildon and Harlow – are right here. Along with the City of Chelmsford, the county town, they form our major population centres. It means real choice and makes Essex the ideal place for your career. Read more about us.

In February 2025, Greater Essex was accepted onto the Government’s devolution priority programme, which will see local authorities in Essex work towards establishing a Mayoral Combined County Authority by May 2026. You can read more about devolution and local government reorganisation (LGR)) on our careers site

Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process.

We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.

What you should do next

If you are interested in finding out more about this role, we would love to hear from you. Please apply via the Working for Essex website.

Please note that Essex County Council has determined that the off-payroll working rules will apply to this assignment and where a worker elects to provide their services through an intermediary (such as a personal services company) then income tax and primary national insurance contributions will be deducted at source from any payments made to the intermediary.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please go to https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.

If you would like to be kept up to date on other relevant opportunities, blogs, news, events and industry related news at Essex County Council, please join The Essex Talent Community.

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