The Role Change Finalisation Workshop is a collaborative, facilitator-led session that helps your team step back from day-to-day role change activity and align on a clear, repeatable approach for managing role changes across your organisation.
Together, we will:
Understand how role changes work today (in practice, not just on paper)
Identify what’s working well and where friction, inconsistency, or risk exists
Agree on what “good” looks like for your organisation when people change roles
Design a future role change journey that is scalable, transparent, and supports operational confidence
Confirm the practical next steps required to move forward (forms, configuration, ownership)
Who should attend
To get the best outcomes, we recommend inviting a cross-functional group, such as:
HR / People team representatives (process owners)
People leaders / managers (primary initiators and approvers)
A project sponsor or decision-maker (to confirm priorities and approve the future process)
Optional: Payroll, Operations, and/or IT stakeholders (where role change inputs/outputs connect to these teams — e.g., pay impacts, cost centres, access changes, rostering impacts)
Recommended group size (6–8 participants)
To keep the session focused and productive, we recommend a maximum of 6–8 attendees. If you’re inviting participants outside of HR/People (e.g., Operations, Payroll or IT), ensure each attendee is a strong representative for their function—someone who understands the current process and can speak to requirements and decisions on behalf of that area.
Duration and format
Recommended duration: 2 hours
Format: typically remote, using a collaborative whiteboard for journey mapping and activities.
A typical session runs as follows:
Welcome & context (5 mins)
Design thinking & alignment context (10 mins)
Setting the scene — define role change scope + change types (15 mins)
Current-state mapping — how role changes work today (15–20 mins)
Rose, Buds & Thorns reflection (15–20 mins)
Journey mapping — future state role change process (25–30 mins)
Defining success + launch planning (10–15 mins)
Next steps, forms + setup tasks, ownership (15–20 mins)
What you’ll walk away with
By the end of the workshop, you will have:
A current-state role change journey map
A clear set of Roses, Buds and Thorns:
Roses: what’s working well today
Thorns: pain points, inefficiencies, risks
Buds: opportunities for improvement
Agreed success criteria for role changes (what outcomes matter most)
A future-state role change journey map, aligned to your operating rhythm (e.g., pre-start changes, effective-dated changes, approval stages, onboarding to new role)
A practical next-steps list, including:
Forms that need to be created (and what each one is for)
Other setup/configuration tasks (approvals, permissions, notifications, reporting, templates, enablement)
Owners, timelines, and dependencies
Why this workshop matters
Role changes often become painful when the process is unclear, inconsistent, overly manual, or fragmented across multiple teams and systems. This can lead to:
Delays and bottlenecks (approvals, handoffs, unclear ownership)
Payroll and compliance risk (incorrect pay rates, missed effective dates, missing documentation)
Poor employee experience (unclear expectations, missing onboarding to the new role)
Data integrity issues (role history, job fields, cost centres, reporting misalignment)
High-effort admin work and rework across HR, leaders, payroll, and IT
A well-designed role change process creates a consistent rhythm of request → approval → update → communicate → transition support, ensuring the right people know what’s changing, when it takes effect, and what needs to happen next. This workshop creates shared understanding and alignment before configuration begins, so decisions are clear and implementation is smoother.
How to prepare
To make the session as effective as possible, we recommend the following preparation:
Optional pre-work (recommended)
Ahead of the session, you may be asked to complete a short questionnaire covering:
How role changes currently work
Common role change types (promotion, transfer, secondment, acting arrangements, pay changes, location changes)
Known pain points or challenges
Variations by role, location, entity, or business unit
This helps your facilitator tailor the workshop but is not mandatory.
What to bring to the workshop
If available, it helps to have:
Any role change documentation currently in use (policies, approval matrices, templates, letters/contract variations)
Examples of role change scenarios that occur often (and those that cause the most complexity)
A view of who is involved today (leader, HR, payroll, IT, operations)
Any governance rules that matter (approvals required for pay changes, compliance steps, effective dating rules)
A sense of what outcomes matter most (speed, consistency, auditability, payroll confidence, employee experience)
What happens during the workshop
Your facilitator will guide the session using a lightweight design-thinking approach focused on clarity and alignment.
1) Map the current role change process
We’ll document how role changes work today across key roles (e.g., manager, HR, payroll, IT), including manual steps, workarounds, and where things slow down or break down.
2) Identify Roses, Buds and Thorns
We’ll reflect on the current process to clearly separate:
what’s working
what’s painful or risky
where the biggest improvement opportunities are
3) Define success
Before designing the future state, we’ll align on success criteria such as:
what “good” looks like for role changes in your context (clarity, speed, governance, employee experience)
what adoption looks like (leaders consistently using the process, reduced exceptions/workarounds)
what would cause failure (unclear ownership, too many approval steps, timing vs payroll cycles, limited enablement)
4) Design the future role change journey
Using your success criteria as a guide, we’ll design a realistic, scalable future state—focusing on:
clear role change types and triggers (and when each pathway applies)
approval flow and governance (who approves what, and when)
effective dating and timing (how changes align to payroll cycles and operational needs)
who is involved at each step (leader/HR/payroll/IT/operations)
where you need standardisation vs flexibility
how the employee transition is supported (communications, onboarding to role expectations, access/equipment)
5) Confirm next steps and ownership
We’ll finish by agreeing:
immediate next steps
owners and timelines
dependencies, approvals, and risks
a draft list of forms to create and supporting setup/configuration tasks
After the workshop
Following the session, you’ll receive a summary capturing:
the finalised current-state and future-state journey maps
your agreed role change definition/scope and success criteria
a list of forms to be created and key setup/configuration tasks (e.g., approvals, permissions, notifications, reporting)
confirmed owners, next steps, and indicative timelines