Advanced Customer Support Senior Leader
Department for Work and Pensions
Apply before 11:55 pm on Wednesday 16th October 2024
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About the job
Job summary
DWP delivers a range of services to a broad customer base of around 20 million customers.
This is a high profile and business critical role.
This critical role supports DWP in our learning, coaching and embedding safe delivery of service. Learning from serious cases to understand the reasons for safeguarding and cutting across product lines to improve outcomes for our customers most at risk.
You will be accountable for the advanced support of customers in your geographical area. Be the central point of contact for DWP for all service lines, where a risk arises, delivering improved outcomes for DWP’s most at risk customers.
As a Senior Operational Grade 7 leader, you will play a key role in service delivery for your customers, people and stakeholders.
We welcome applications from candidates who demonstrate inspirational and resourceful senior leadership who drive tailored customer service and performance to deliver a positive and efficient service working in a fast paced and challenging environment.
Job description
You will be an integral member of the Senior Leadership Team within the District, taking a personal lead in embedding learning and strategic thinking for the Department’s Advanced Customer Support agenda across all DWP Product Lines.
You will create and sustain effective relationships with senior stakeholders, including Directors and key partners/stakeholders, to develop stronger working across DWP to create powerful, purposeful partnerships, supporting improved outcomes for the Departments most vulnerable customers.
You will be a resourceful, self-starting senior leader with experience of delivering excellent customer service in a fast paced environment, looking for opportunities to create a collaborative approach across your geographical area of responsibility with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, such as Local Authorities, NHS safeguarding leads and local police.
You will represent DWP at Adult Safeguarding Boards in England and Wales and Scottish equivalent (Adult Protection Committees (APCs) in your District, to give account for any individual customer’s experiences through their journey in DWP. This is a critical aspect of the role and will be one where you are supported by the Customer Experience team, but you will personally be required to attend Boards.
You will be confident in using a range of data and insight to draft reports that will be used to provide evidence to influence Senior Decision Makers.
You will role model exceptional leadership, working flexibly across boundaries, building capability, by providing support, guidance and coaching to leaders and colleagues to protect and deliver a positive, tailored service for our vulnerable customers across service lines to reduce cases of risk.
You will actively participate in multi-agency boards in your geography, ensuring all stakeholders are clear about DWP’s role and accountabilities, how we can support at risk customers and look for opportunities to create a collaborative approach across your geographical area of responsibility.
You will be the Senior person responsible for contributing to Internal Investigations and Internal Process Reviews working with the Customer Experience team.
You will work in partnership with the ACS Operational Delivery team to identify issues and ensure that learning from this intelligence is shared to support a better customer service.
Through your behaviour and ways of working, you will be creating an environment that ensures DWP is an inclusive place where people can be their best.
For the Leicester, Northamptonshire & North Scotland role, these additional duties are applicable:
Visiting Leadership role includes direct line management of Senior Executive Officer leaders who are accountable for providing a responsive, professional, caring and compassionate DWP visiting service; achieving challenging performance measures to deliver a consistent visiting service across your geographical area across our national DWP visiting network.
Provide people leadership to your team of operational leaders, communicating at all levels and across boundaries, helping develop skills to deliver improvements to the customer journey by supporting the identification, prioritisation and implementation of improvements and efficiencies to ensure maximum value and affect.
Person specification
The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their potential and capability in the following areas.
Lead Criteria - You are an inspirational and resourceful leader able to set and articulate a strong strategic vision to others, developing team plans and activities to deliver against Departmental objectives, demonstrating genuine care for colleagues and delivering great customer outcomes, in partnership with internal and external stakeholders.
You can demonstrate positive customer service outcomes by understanding complexity and diversity of customer needs and expectations.
You have a passion for improving quality and evidence, influencing/challenging policy at senior levels to support vulnerable customers, landing these changes with operational colleagues and coaching/mentoring when required.
You make/initiate changes which add value, with a strong focus on improved customer outcomes and performance by encouraging innovation, giving people the space to take initiative, challenging assumptions and being able to compromise where required.
You take responsibility for delivering a timely, high quality and cost-effective service with focus and energy, supporting own and others wellbeing and clearly evidencing how you do this.
You show resilience and are confident with initiating difficult conversations and taking control of challenging situations including with senior leaders.
Desirable
- Previous experience of working with Vulnerable customers.
- Knowledge of DWP product lines.
- If applying for a role within Wales, the ability to speak Welsh.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Changing and Improving
- Managing a Quality Service
- Working Together
Benefits
- An occupational pension with an employer contribution of over 28.97% plus a range of other benefits - Benefits of the pension scheme - Civil Service Pension Scheme
- An Employee Assistance Programme - a free and confidential service providing information and counselling to help with a range of work, family and personal issues.
- A comprehensive reward scheme which includes vouchers and monetary awards.
- Access to discounts on a range of products and services.
- A range of schemes to help you budget certain costs.
- 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 (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.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and Personal Statement. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
CV
Your CV should set out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements (providing reasons for any gaps in the last 2 years).
The CV is an on-line tool accessed through the Civil Service Job site and there is no requirement to upload your personal CV. Please put the main content of your evidence and skills in your Personal Statement.
Personal Statement (maximum 1250 words)
The Personal Statement should explain how your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role.
When completing your Personal Statement, please read and understand the Person Specification within the advert, as this is what your written evidence will be assessed against.
It may help to use the WHO or STAR model to explain:
What the task/work was, How you approached the task/work/situation and what the Outcomes were. What did you achieve? Or What was the Situation? What were the Tasks? What Action did you take? What were the Results of your actions?
On-Line Assessment
After submission of the first stage of your application you will be invited to complete a Civil Service Judgement Test. If you successfully pass the test, you will be invited to complete the final stage of the application. Please complete the online tests as soon as possible (within 24-48 hours is recommended), the closing date for the tests is 23:55 on 16th October 2024. If you fail to complete the online test before the deadline your application will be withdrawn. Guidance for the test will be available when you are invited to take the test. The tests are administered online and accessed via the CS Jobs website.
Written Sift
The written sift will be conducted using evidence from your Personal Statement and will be assessed against the Key Criteria within the advert. In the event of a large number of applications, we may use the following Lead Criteria to initially assess your application during the sift stage. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift or direct to interview.
Lead Criteria:
- You are an inspirational and resourceful leader able to set and articulate a strong strategic vision to others, developing team plans and activities to deliver against Departmental objectives, demonstrating genuine care for colleagues and delivering great customer outcomes, in partnership with internal and external stakeholders.
Presentation/Interview
Candidates who successfully pass the written sift will be invited to interview, which will be conducted via Microsoft Teams, lasting approximately 45 minutes and will commence with the candidate delivering a 5 minute presentation.
The presentation will cover ‘Leadership’ and details of the presentation topic will be included in the invite to interview. The presentation will form part of the assessment.
Following the presentation, you will then be asked questions around your skills and experience on the following behaviours:
- Changing and Improving Level 4.
- Managing a Quality Service Level 4.
- Working Together Level 4.
You will be asked a mixture of Behaviour and Strength questions. The Behaviour and Strength based questioning explores what the candidate can do/has done, as well as their potential.
An example of a Behaviour question would be;
Tell me about a time you have set about improving customer service, giving a sense of pace and criticality of success? How did you ensure this activity achieved its objectives whilst keeping costs under control? What tools and techniques did you use?
It is difficult to prepare for Strength type questions, however you can think through your answers, focus on your achievements and aspects you enjoy and decide how these can be applied in the organisation, we do not expect a full STAR response. The panel is interested in your first reaction to the question and information or reasoning to support this.
The evidence you provide in your application must relate to your own experiences.
Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
After The Interview
Once all the interviews have been conducted, candidates will be notified of the outcome by email. If you are successful at the interview stage, we will be in touch to offer you a role. Offers will be made in strict merit order to the highest scoring candidate first.
Further Information
Find out more about Working for DWP
New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.
A reserve list may be held for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. Any move to DWP from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk
The reserve list may also be used to offer future permanent opportunities, not necessarily restricted to the current locations included in the advert. They may also extend to permanent opportunities which arise across the wider DWP network. Any such offers would be made in strict merit order to all candidates remaining on the reserve list. The location and job role would be fully explained to you. Refusal of the offer would not change your reserve list position.
Candidates should note that if successful in this campaign, you will be expected to remain in post for a minimum of 18 months before applying for any other lateral moves within DWP.
If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.
In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service /Disclosure Scotland on your behalf. However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.
For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on 0870 609 6006 and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email Info@disclosurescotland.co.uk
Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.
A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.
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.
Before applying for this vacancy, current employees of DWP should check whether a successful application would result in changes to their terms & conditions of employment, e.g. mobility, pay, allowances. Civil Servants that would transfer into DWP from other government organisations, following successful application, will assume DWP's terms & conditions of employment current on the day they are posted, unless DWP has stated otherwise in writing.
DWP is a family friendly employer and part- time and job-sharing working patterns within these hours may be available, based on the needs of the business.
Reasonable Adjustments
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 DWPrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk 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 you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.
If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
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Nationality requirements
Working for the Civil Service
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).
Diversity and Inclusion
Apply and further information
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : CED Enabling Recruitment Team
- Email : cedenablingservicesrecruitment.cedenablingservicesrecruitment@dwp.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : dwprecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Further information
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission. Click here to visit the Civil Service Commission.
