Lead Service Designer

As a Lead Service Designer, you will lead and drive the exploration and understanding of emerging policy and business strategy for the Universal Credit service working closely with the Lead Product Managers and Product Strategy team to mature and adapt the service to meet the needs of all the people who use Universal Credit.
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 its 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 Universal Credit and other 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 Digital Product 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 ******.
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 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (prorata 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 years 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 Womens 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 The London pay for this role is from 78,843 to 83,957.
The regional 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.
Things you need to know Selection process details Stage 1: Application As part of the application process yo ur application will consist of three parts: 1.
A Personal Details application form.
2.
Your employment history detailing your responsibilities, skills, accomplishments, plus your qualifications and relevant training.
Please copy this information into the box field provided.
3.
Personal statement up to 1000 words.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line withessential criterialisted inthe Person Specification.
The sift panel will use the information in your employment history and personal statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge against the essential criteria above.
You will receive one combined score for both your Employment History/CV and Personal Statement, which will be provided in your Personal Statement score.
Applications will be sifted at regular intervals from the date the posts are advertised.
Please apply as soon as you can, do not wait until the end of the campaign.
Important Information You will be asked to complete your employment history any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form.
Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered.
If your employment history/personal statement contains any personal details your application will be withdrawn.
Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
Stage 2: Interview If youre successful at sift stage you will be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams.
There, you will be assessed against the experiences listed in the essential criteria .
Questions in Advance To help you prepare and settle into the interview you will be sent the experience-based questions in advance of the interview, 7 days prior to your interview.
These questions should be treated as confidential and should not be shared.
The interview panel may ask you other questions which will not be shared in advance, including follow-up questions, and those about your experience.
Candidates should be asked further probing questions if their response is deemed to require further information to determine suitability for the role.
You will also be asked to do a 10-minute presentation on a specific topic related to the essential criteria.
This will be provided along with the experience-based questions.
Candidates are strongly encouraged to secure their interview slot promptly to ensure fairness in preparation time with the questions provided in advance.
Interviews will take place from mid-January 2025.
Further Information Find out more about Working for DWP For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital.
A reserve list may be held for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made.
Reserve list candidates will be posted in merit order by location.
The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles.
Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words.
Applications will be screened and if evidence of plagiarism or copying examples/answers from other sources is found, your application will be withdrawn.
Internal DWP candidates may also face disciplinary action.
Reasonable Adjustment At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce.
We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health.
Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.
If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact Government Recruitment Service via ****** as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
Complete the Reasonable Adjustments section in the Additional requirements page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process.
For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if youre deaf, a Language Service Professional.
For further information on reasonable adjustments, terms and conditions and how we recruit visit the How We Recruit, page Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements This job is broadly open to the following groups: UK nationals nationals of the Republic of Ireland nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window) nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020 Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window) Working for the Civil Service The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window) .
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities.
As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found.
To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) .