The Continuous Improvement Lead plays a pivotal role in driving operational excellence and embedding a culture of continuous improvement across the constabulary. Positioned at the heart of change and transformation, this role leads the end-to-end improvement lifecycle using Lean DMAIC principles, ensuring initiatives deliver measurable benefits aligned to strategic priorities and inspection requirements. A key focus is on identifying and implementing automation opportunities across all areas of the organisation—both technical and non-technical—optimising workflows, reducing duplication, and improving service delivery.
The post holder will manage a multidisciplinary team, including RPA and M365 developers, and work collaboratively with departments such as HR, Finance, Learning & Development, IT, and Change Management to address organisational and people impacts arising from improvement activities. They will curate and prioritise a portfolio of initiatives, develop robust business cases, and oversee the design, testing, and deployment of solutions. Additionally, the role is accountable for establishing governance frameworks, monitoring sustainability, and providing clear reporting to senior forums on progress and benefit realisation. Through expert stakeholder engagement and capability building, the Continuous Improvement Lead ensures that continuous improvement becomes an embedded way of working, delivering lasting value across the Constabulary.
The role will also be responsible for commissioning work to be undertaken by external expertise and managing both the contract and the supplier relationship, this requires business acumen and understanding of commissioning and contract management.
Key Responsibility Areas1) Strategic Automation & Continuous Improvement Leadership- Identify automation opportunities across technical and non-technical workflows.
- Build and maintain a pipeline of initiatives aligned to strategic priorities.
- Develop business cases for automation and process redesign.
- Champion a culture of continuous improvement across the organisation.
- Direct RPA and M365 developers to design, build, and deploy automations.
- Oversee testing, stakeholder sign-off, and controlled rollout of solutions.
- Implement frameworks for standardised work and streamlined approvals.
- Ensure handover to BAU with SOPs and sustainability measures.
- Establish governance cadence for oversight and decision-making.
- Produce and present dashboards, KPI reports, and benefit realisation updates.
- Monitor sustainability through control charts and feedback loops.
- Report progress to leadership and inspection bodies.
- Work with HR, L&D, Finance, IT, and Change Management to address impacts.
- Coordinate with IT for integration and resilience of technical solutions.
- Engage stakeholders to co-design improvements and manage change readiness.
- Support workforce transition through training and capability building.
- Line-manage CI Officers and automation developers.
- Coach teams in Lean, Six Sigma, and automation best practices.
- Build organisational capability for data-driven decision-making.
- Foster collaboration to scale successful practices across the organisation.
To perform effectively as Continuous Improvement Lead in a constabulary, the post holder needs proven management experience of supervising staff and/or leading a function. As this is a senior role the expectation is that you are likely to have at least 5 years experience of managing complex Continuous Improvement Teams. This includes line‑managing multidisciplinary teams (CI Officers, RPA and M365 Developers), setting objectives, allocating resources, and assuring delivery quality. Experience should cover creating portfolio plans, prioritising a pipeline, and running governance cadences (weekly operational reviews, monthly boards) that surface risks, decisions, and benefits. The manager will have led change across HR, L&D, Finance, IT and operational units, coordinating people impacts, training, and readiness activities. They will have negotiated trade‑offs between control, security, cost and service speed, resolved conflicts, and built sponsorship with senior stakeholders. Demonstrable competence in performance management, coaching and mentoring, and building capability so teams become self‑sufficient is essential. The role requires confidence in benefit realisation, setting KPIs, monitoring sustainability, and presenting clear progress reports to appropriate forums. Knowledge of public‑sector working, constabulary context, and inspection regimes is desirable, along with adherence to information governance and ethical standards. The post holder will model delivery discipline: stage gates, standards stewardship, and escalation routines, while cultivating a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety that empowers colleagues to experiment, learn, and adopt improved ways of working.
ProfessionalProfessional experience for this role means time in posts where developed professional skills are expected—whether part‑professional, fully qualified, or senior roles without formal status. The Continuous Improvement Lead should demonstrate applied Lean and service‑design practice, business case development, and benefits modelling that attribute outcomes to specific changes. They will be adept at structured problem‑solving (5 Whys, Pareto, fishbone), evidence‑based decision‑making, and writing board‑ready reports that combine data, risk and recommendations. Experience of teaching or capability building is valuable: designing SOPs and runbooks, delivering training, and coaching managers and teams to embed standard work. Professional judgement is required to balance automation with non‑technical improvements, ensure compliance with policies (e.g., information governance), and assess people impacts through change‑impact assessments and transition plans in partnership with HR and L&D. They should be comfortable engaging Finance on cost, controls and procurement routes, and working with IT on integration, security and resilience. Public‑sector knowledge—especially policing governance, inspection regimes and ethical frameworks—is desirable, supporting transparent, accountable decisions and measurable results presented to senior forums. Additional experience creating stakeholder maps, RACIs and concise decision records, and synthesising insights across forums, will strengthen impact. Experience presenting concise options to senior officers and external inspectors is beneficial and pragmatic.
TechnicalTechnical experience for this role means developed technical skills involving hands‑on dexterity and practical troubleshooting. The Continuous Improvement Lead should be comfortable scoping and overseeing automations and digital workflow solutions (RPA, Power Automate, forms, rules engines), understanding how data flows, exceptions, audit logs and role‑based access work in practice. They will have experience mapping processes to a granular level, validating data integrity, and designing measurement systems and dashboards that track cycle time, demand, error rates and control charts. Practical experience of testing, piloting and controlled rollout is required: setting test plans, defect triage, rollback strategies, and change tickets with IT. The post holder should understand integration patterns, resilience, security guardrails and incident management, collaborating with IT to keep solutions supportable. Familiarity with process‑mining tools, scripting or configuration of automation platforms, and troubleshooting common issues (e.g., credentials, API limits, queue handling) is advantageous. Experience operating with legacy systems and vendor platforms, balancing cloud capabilities with RPA licences and constraints, is beneficial. In policing and public‑sector contexts, they design auditable, reliable, proportionate solutions that protect users, data and service continuity. Confidence interpreting logs and telemetry to diagnose issues and prevent recurrence in production, and sustain service quality under operational pressure and scrutiny.
The proposed interview dates are: 9th, 10th & 13th April
The successful candidate for this role will be vetted at level Staff MV. This means the individual will need at least 5 years worth of residency in the UK.
If you have any queries regarding this role, please email Recruitment@Gloucestershire.Police.uk
Please refer to the Role Profile document when completing the Statement in support of your application section of the form. In this section, you are required to provide evidence with specific examples for each of the Essential criteria included under the Experience and Qualifications section of the Role Profile. For each of the criteria, please write a paragraph detailing how your experience, qualifications, skills and abilities meet the minimum criteria for the role. Applicants who do not provide this required evidence will unfortunately not be invited to interview.
Candidates applying for Gloucestershire Constabulary should be aware that the use of online 'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) systems such as ChatGPT to generate application answers is NOT permitted, any candidate found to have submitted an application form using online 'AI' software to generate answers will be removed from the recruitment process with immediate effect. This may result in future applications with the Constabulary also being rejected, based on integrity.
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At Gloucestershire Constabulary we recognise the benefits of increasing diversity across our force and the value of building a representative workforce. That is why it is important that people from ethnically diverse backgrounds and under-represented groups, including those with a disability, apply and help us deliver excellence in policing throughout Gloucestershire. We are a proud Disability Confident Employer and are committed to providing equal opportunities. You may wish to register with our Talent Bank- the link can be found here: https://gloucestershireconstabulary.tal.net/vx/appcentre-External/brand-3/candidate/so/pm/8/pl/12/opp/457-Register-your-interest-with-Better-Together/en-GB
