Education
Benefits
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Contents

  • Location
  • About the job
  • Benefits
  • Things you need to know
  • Apply and further information

This role may be based in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Sheffield. Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.

About the job

Job summary

Do you want to work on services that help and support millions of people?

Do you want to work of some of the biggest transformational changes in the UK?

If yes, this role may be perfect for you!

DWP Digital offers fulfilling careers for people who want to use their skills to make a genuine difference to society. We’re part of the UK’s biggest government department, supporting millions of people every day. 

We’re looking for Lead Service Designer who can help DWP Channels and the wider Department to identify, explore and understand key problem statements and collaborate to hypothesise and test different approaches to ensure that we can deliver the best outcome for the people and colleagues that use our services.

Digital Channels drives and enables the modernisation of DWP’s customer contact, helping customers communicate with our department via the most appropriate channel. We run some of the UK’s largest 'Live Services' including the telephony, bulk printing and the scanning and indexing of all incoming letters and forms. It is hugely impactful role, which touches nearly every point of contact we have for over 20 million customers.

We are looking for confident candidates with great facilitation skills who can help bring teams and stakeholders together, provide frameworks and common languages to help understand problems.

You’ll be working alongside other user centred design professionals who are committed to deliver the best possible outcomes for all our users and ensuring everything we design is accessible to everyone.

You’ll join a highly supportive community, sharing your expertise, and learning new skills from those around you. As a Lead Service Designer, you will play a critical role in being a mentor and role model for the wider Service Design team.

Job description

As a Lead Service Designer, you will lead and drive the exploration and understanding of emerging business strategy and the channels we use- working closely with Product Managers, Architects and other Service Designers to mature and adapt our services to meet the needs of all the people who use them.

You will be as passionate about people as you are about service design, championing and leading collaboration between teams spanning digital, policy, legal and others to define, design and deliver a great service.

As a Lead Service Designer, you are an expert practitioner. You have a proven track record of representing and advocating for user-centred design even where it’s not present but should be. You will have excellent workshop facilitation and stakeholder skills to engage with colleagues from across the Department.

You will have proven experience in driving awareness of service performance and improvement needs which have resulted in successful service outcomes. You understand user needs and business or policy goals and can support strategy and decision making.

You will set direction to define and then implement good practice and make sure that useful guidance, tools and patterns are available across services and teams to solve recurring problems for users. You will define and initiate work to designers so they can visualise whole services, both end to end and front to back, across business areas or departments in order to reduce or remove issues and problems. 

Role and Responsibilities

  • Understand user needs and help others to do understand them too, so that collectively we can design services to support those needs.
  • Align and lead the communication with Lead Product Managers and policy colleagues to define the user journey and articulate the vision for products and services.
  • Engage and manage stakeholder needs across different areas with a focus on heading discussions at senior departmental level.
  • Demonstrate strong working knowledge of service design in practice as a recognised industry expert and help others to understand its value for both service users and in helping the department to meet its business objectives.
  • Lead design direction based on evidence.
  • Drive the creation of high-quality service design deliverables, including personas, experience maps, insights packs, user flow maps, and service blueprints.
  • Analyse research findings, data, insight gathering, critical thinking and concept generation.
  • Understand as-is service design and identify improvement opportunities.
  • Analyse pain points within services and communicate and share design solutions that fulfil user needs and business outcomes.
  • Drive the communication of insights and stories around the strategy and concepts being designed to senior stakeholders and management.
  • Use prototyping methods to communicate and share ideas and concepts with real users to encourage collaboration and iterative processes.
  • Lead the adoption of best practice and build a strong open and collaborative culture within the department and feed into the design community.
  • Analyse and identify cost saving opportunities whilst implementing best practice service design.
  • Define the service design approach and key items on the design agenda, working to implement best practice.
  • Actively provide support and mentor team members whilst developing appropriate training to support designers.
  • Lead the capability and promote service design in and beyond the Department.
  • Support recruitment for the DWP User Centred Design community.

Person specification

When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:

  • Lead criterion: Have significant experience of hands-on service design.* 
  • Provide leadership and expertise at program level to develop end-to-end, front-to-back services using wider Government principles and evidence that meet citizen and colleague needs as well as department objectives. 
  • Be comfortable influencing and communicating to a wide range of senior and other stakeholders on the value of user centricity, your strategies, approaches and decisions. 
  • Lead on the creation and maintenance of a positive and collaborative working environment. 
  • An initial sift may be conducted using the lead criterion stated above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift. 

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact natalie.selby1@dwp.gov.uk.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £72,664, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £21,050 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

  • Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
  • Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
  • Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
  • Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
  • Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
  • Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
  • An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.

This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post. 

Salary Information

Pay for this role is from £72,664 to £77,740. 

Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview. 

Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer should maintain their current salary. 

Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion may move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or 10% increase in salary whichever would be the greater. 

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

  • Name : Natalie Selby
  • Email : natalie.selby1@dwp.gov.uk

Recruitment team

  • Email : digitalrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles. If you wish to make a complaint, please find further details here https://careers.dwp.gov.uk/how-we-recruit/.

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Confirmed 30+ days ago. Posted 30+ days ago.

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