Written by our assessment team: what the criteria mean in practice, the evidence that works, and where learners get caught out.
What this unit is really about
Unit 307 is the most project-shaped unit at Level 3: you take a real change in your own team from idea to evaluation, and the portfolio is largely the artefacts that change produced. LO1 is knowledge, but LO2 and LO3 are eleven criteria that track a single piece of work through planning, agreement, implementation, issues and evaluation.
Two consequences. First, the change you pick decides how hard this unit is. Second, it needs to be finished — or at least implemented and reviewed — inside your enrolment period, so you can evidence 3.6 (evaluate the impact).
Helpfully, the spec is explicit that change here can include continuous improvement. You do not need a restructure. A revised handover process, a new rota approach, a changed inspection step or a switch of tool are all legitimate, and they are far more likely to complete in time.
Picking the right change
A good 307 change is:
- Yours to lead, so the evidence is attributable to you
- Small enough to finish in a few months
- Big enough to have stakeholders — if nobody needed persuading, criterion 2.5 has nothing to show
- Measurable, because 3.6 asks for impact, and an impact you cannot measure is an opinion
- Likely to meet resistance, honestly — 1.3, 3.3 and 3.4 all live off the friction
That last point is worth dwelling on. Learners instinctively pick the smoothest possible change and then have nothing to write for "manage issues that arise" and "support team members through change". The change that went sideways in week two makes a much stronger portfolio than the one nobody noticed.
The evidence that works
| Criterion | Artefact |
|---|
| 2.2 — SWOT of the proposed change | An actual SWOT grid. The spec names the methodology, so use it and label it |
| 2.3 — resources | The costing, staffing or time you needed, and where it came from |
| 2.4 / 2.5 — stakeholders and agreement | A stakeholder list with interest and influence, plus the email, minute or sign-off where agreement was given |
| 2.6 — change management action plan | A dated plan with owners — a table is fine, it does not need software |
| 3.1 — communicate to the team | The briefing note, slide or email, plus a video clip of the briefing if you can get consent |
| 3.2 — monitor progress | Progress notes against the plan, showing the dates that slipped |
| 3.3 / 3.4 — support and issues | Reflective account of the resistance and what you did; one-to-one records |
| 3.5 — stakeholder feedback | The actual feedback, analysed — not just collected |
| 3.6 — evaluate impact | Before-and-after numbers, plus an honest judgement including what did not improve |
Note the difference between 3.5 analyse and 3.6 evaluate. Analysis is what the feedback says, including where it conflicts. Evaluation is your judgement of whether the change was worth doing.
Models: use one, and use it honestly
Criterion 1.5 asks you to describe change management models, and the temptation is to describe three and apply none. Far stronger: describe them, then say which one you actually used and where it did not fit.
- Kotter's 8-step change model — good for a change that needs coalition-building; most Level 3 changes legitimately skip several steps, and saying which is a mark of understanding
- Lewin's change model — unfreeze, change, refreeze, plus force field analysis, which pairs well with the SWOT
- ADKAR — individual-level, and useful when your resistance is one specific person rather than the team
Assessors read a great many portfolios claiming a textbook eight-step programme was followed exactly. They read very few that say "I used Kotter's first three steps, ran out of appetite for a formal coalition in a team of six, and did the rest through one-to-ones" — and the second is better evidence.
Useful reading:
