• Innovative programme of work
• 24 month fixed term/secondment opportunity
• Wellington based

MSD - services for the future, is about the Ministry of Social Development's (MSD's) future role and how we can make a bigger and better difference for New Zealanders.

The Programme will deliver services that are easier, more accessible and integrated across employment, housing, and income support, with greater use of partnering.

MSD is establishing a Business Readiness and Change Implementation function within the programme. When implementing change there are number of diverse stakeholders whose experience we need to understand and will require ongoing engagement.

This is part of a significant transformation programme for MSD, that will deliver a new service model enabled by new capabilities, systems, and processes to support clients into employment.

The role would be expected to:

• Design and run targeted engagement activities (e.g. workshops, forums, structured feedback loops) specifically to test readiness, surface operational impacts, and inform implementation planning for new services, processes, and digital capabilities.
• Translate programme milestones and solution designs into practical engagement approaches that help frontline staff, leaders, partners and other stakeholders understand what is changing, when, and what it means for them in practice.
• Work closely with Business Readiness and Change, Practice, Learning and Communications teams to ensure engagement insights are fed directly into change plans, training approaches, sequencing decisions, and go-live readiness assessments.
• Support the identification of change impacts, risks and dependencies by using engagement to gather real-world insight from service delivery, partners and communities.
• Advise senior leaders and delivery teams on who needs to be engaged, why, when, and to what depth to support implementation outcomes (rather than broad-based awareness or promotional activity).
• Shape engagement approaches that support phased rollout, piloting, and iteration of the Digital Employment Service and wider employment capability changes.
• Build and strengthen engagement capability across the programme so that delivery teams are using engagement deliberately and consistently as part of business readiness and change implementation.
• Ensure engagement approaches are inclusive, accessible, and aligned with Maori engagement protocols, while remaining tightly linked to delivery decisions and programme outcomes.
• Work closely with the central engagement function to ensure engagement activity is aligned, appropriately sequenced, and reported, including navigating required governance or programme forums (e.g. PDSG, Programme Committee) before wider engagement where needed.

What you bring | Ou pumanawatanga:

The knowledge, skills and experience required to undertake this role successfully include:

• A tertiary qualification in a relevant discipline or equivalent operational experience
• Significant experience designing and delivering successful engagement and communication strategies
• Experience working with a wide range of stakeholders and developing strong stakeholder relationships across the work programme and ensure the right level of engagement
• Strong leaderships skills and be able to navigate large and complex organisation and work programmes
• Experience supporting others to develop their engagement capability
• Experience with senior leadership, with strong judgement and intellectual flexibility
• Excellent knowledge and experience in the public sector environment and the role, duties, and expectations of public servants
• Project management experience, particularly in the management of multifaceted, complex and multi-stakeholder projects within the public sector
• Understanding and ability to implement accessibility requirements for engagement, including NZSL translation services
• Understanding of, and ability to implement Maori protocol for engagement
• An understanding of the importance of effective partnering for outcomes and effective commissioning, this includes strategic planning and investment, service design, procurement, contracting, monitoring and reporting, and evaluation

Position Description | He Whakaahuatanga Tunga: