Benefits Lead

Programme Benefits Lead

Contract duration: 4 months

Competitive Day Rate

Location: Any HMRC Regional Centre

Job Summary

This role sits within the Programme Management Office (PMO) for the HMRC Unity Programme, a major cross-government transformation delivering shared services across HR, Finance, Procurement, Talent and Learning, and Recruitment.

The PMO plays a central role in providing governance, assurance and performance insight across the programme, ensuring delivery is controlled, benefits are realised, and decision making is supported by high quality, reliable data.

As a Programme Benefits Lead you will lead the development and delivery of the programme’s benefits management approach. You will provide oversight, assurance and strategic direction across benefits activity, ensuring outputs are robust, evidence based and aligned to the HMRC Benefits Management Framework.

Operating at the heart of the portfolio, you will lead a team and work closely with senior stakeholders, benefit owners, programme teams and finance colleagues to ensure benefits are clearly defined, accurately forecast and effectively realised.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation and continuous improvement of the programme’s benefits management approach.

• Provide strategic oversight of benefits identification, definition, calculation, tracking and realisation.

• Maintain oversight of benefits calculations, methodologies and data quality, ensuring outputs produced across the team are robust, consistent and auditable.

• Ensure benefits are clearly defined, evidenced and integrated within programme and project business cases.

• Provide effective challenge and scrutiny of benefits data, assumptions and methodologies.

• Ensure all benefits activity and documentation complies with the HMRC Benefits Management Framework.

• Align benefits tracking, reporting and forecasting with PMO governance processes, providing a single version of the truth.

• Provide senior stakeholders with clear, high quality insight to support effective and timely decision making.

• Assess impacts of programme change on benefits and ensure risks and opportunities are actively managed.

• Build and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders across HMRC, partner organisations and central government.

• Lead and develop a team, setting direction, building capability and ensuring high standards of delivery.

• Drive continuous improvement in benefits management tools, processes and ways of working.

• Represent the PMO in senior forums as the benefits management lead.

Essential Criteria

• Experience leading or overseeing benefits management within a complex programme or portfolio environment

• Ability to provide clear insight, challenge and evidence based recommendations to senior stakeholders

• Experience applying benefits frameworks, governance processes and reporting standards

• Strong stakeholder engagement across organisational and departmental boundaries

• Experience leading, managing or developing teams

• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications (Word, PowerPoint and Excel), with Excel at an intermediate level (e.g. formulas, pivot tables, and data analysis).

Desirable Criteria

• Professional qualification, or working towards one, in a relevant discipline such as Finance / Accountancy (e.g. CIMA, ACA or equivalent)

• Project Delivery / Programme Management (e.g. APM, MSP, PRINCE2)

• Economics or analytical disciplines

• Evidence of continuing professional development in areas such as, Data analysis, Benefits management or Programme governance