Grade 6 Changing and Improving Behaviour Statements

Grade 6 behaviour statements

Write a Grade 6 Changing and Improving statement around a clear senior responsibility

At Grade 6, Changing and Improving is about creating useful change, involving people properly and responding quickly when an approach is not delivering the intended benefit. The strongest examples show what you personally decided, how you led through others and what changed beyond your immediate team.

Changing and Improving is about creating useful change, involving people properly and responding quickly when an approach is not delivering the intended benefit. For a Grade 6 role, this usually means leading change across teams or services, challenging senior proposals where necessary and balancing innovation with delivery, accessibility and workforce impact.

A strong example should make clear the value you needed to create, the risks you had to manage and how you enabled others to shape and deliver the change. The result should show measurable service improvement, reduced cost or risk, improved accessibility, stronger adoption or an early course correction that protected delivery.

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What are the Changing and Improving criteria at Grade 6 level?

The official senior-grade behaviour guidance contains 8 points for Changing and Improving. Your vacancy may assess only selected parts, but the statement should make the relevant wording easy to see in your evidence.

Criterion 1

encourage, recognise and share innovative ideas from a diverse range of colleagues and stakeholders

Create deliberate routes for ideas from different grades, professions, locations and user groups, then show which ideas you acted on.

Criterion 2

give people space to take initiative and praise them for their creativity

Give people real authority, time and support to test improvements, and recognise their contribution rather than taking ownership of every idea.

Criterion 3

create an environment where people feel safe to challenge and know their voice will be heard

Demonstrate how colleagues could challenge safely and how you responded when challenge altered the proposal.

Criterion 4

make changes which add value and clearly articulate how changes will benefit the business

State the public-service or organisational value and the measures used to confirm that the change delivered it.

Criterion 5

understand and identify the role of technology in public service delivery and policy implementation

Explain what technology enabled, but keep the focus on the policy or service outcome rather than the tool.

Criterion 6

consider the full impact of implementing changes on culture, structure, morale and the impacts on the diverse range of end users, including accessibility needs

Consider workforce, structures, morale, accessibility and different user impacts before and during implementation.

Criterion 7

identify early signs that things are going wrong and respond promptly

Use leading indicators and early feedback to intervene before a small issue becomes a delivery failure.

Criterion 8

provide constructive challenge to senior management on change proposals

Show constructive senior challenge supported by evidence and a practical alternative.

How to structure your statement

Use a simple structure: Situation, Task, Action and Result. Do not place these labels in the final statement unless the application specifically asks for them.

Situation

Use one or two sentences to set the context. State the service, programme, policy or professional area and the problem that made the example important.

Task

Make your accountability explicit. For Changing and Improving, the task should identify the value you needed to create, the risks you had to manage and how you enabled others to shape and deliver the change.

Action

Give most of the words to the decisions and actions that demonstrate Changing and Improving. Explain how you used evidence, led or involved others and responded when the situation changed. For this behaviour, keep the action centred on the value you needed to create, the risks you had to manage and how you enabled others to shape and deliver the change.

Result

Show what changed because of your action. A strong result may include measurable service improvement, reduced cost or risk, improved accessibility, stronger adoption or an early course correction that protected delivery. Use accurate measures where they help, but keep the result tied to the behaviour.

Subscribers can unlock practical guidance for turning the official criteria into a high-scoring Grade 6 Changing and Improving statement, plus three complete examples written around Grade 6 accountability and impact.

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