Change Impact Assessments and Next Steps

We have successfully completed the NextGen: HN Change Impact Assessments (CIA) with our pilot centres. The structured CIA helps to prepare, support, and help individuals through change by considering how individuals and teams are affected. During our sessions we used the CIA to identify the impact for each pilot centres’ main stakeholder groups and agree key requirements to support effective change.

From March to May 2022 we completed 12 CIAs with different centres where colleagues from SQA were present to discuss the main impacts of NextGen: HN and who would be impacted by changes. Below are some examples of key stakeholder groups discussed:

Delivery staff
Marketing and Recruitment
HEIs
Schools
Students
Transition and Articulation partners
Student support teams
Employers
Parents
Quality departments
Business Support teams

The CIA process varied slightly with each session. However, the main themes and actions were similar for all pilot centres, with the sessions providing an opportunity to discuss potential ‘barriers to change’.

The key starting point for successful and sustainable change is ensuring understanding from impacted stakeholder groups. A valuable takeaway from the CIA sessions was to ensure information is cascaded to the correct individuals, in the most effective way. The sessions also helped to improve internal collaboration and communication in centres.

Following each session, pilot centres received a CIA document to support their preferred way of working and to ensure effective review and support implementation of change.

Centres will use the CIA tool in different ways, recognising the benefit of reviewing and monitoring the CIA document regularly. This will ensure all impacted stakeholders are fully informed and involved with NextGen: HN developments and equipped to deal with changes.

Next Steps:

Pilot centres can now use, review and monitor their individual CIA document to support ongoing internal collaboration and communication as they progress through NextGen: HN pilot delivery.

We thank all our pilot centre colleagues for their support and assistance with CIA sessions.

If you have any queries, do not hesitate to contact us at nextgen@sqa.org.uk.

Gavin Mackie

NextGen: HN Strand Lead Change Impact Assessment/Change Management Practitioner