About the job

Job summary

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) touches the lives of every citizen in our country at some point. As the UK government’s largest public service provider, we support people into work, help disabled people live more independent lives, improve housing and tackle homelessness, provide the financial foundation for a secure old age through the State Pension, and ensure children of separated parents have more opportunity to fulfil their potential through a better child maintenance system. We are passionate about making a sustainable and positive impact to people’s lives every day by providing a modern, fair, and affordable welfare system. We seek to be an exemplar of the Modern Civil Service so that we can better deliver for citizens and meet the challenges of tomorrow.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is a directorate within DWP that helps separated parents by encouraging and supporting them to make private financial arrangements, and providing a statutory maintenance service where this is not possible for their children, including taking legal enforcement action to collect money when appropriate.

Our service is provided by over 4,000 colleagues, across 8 locations, supporting 900,000 children by arranging and collecting over £1.2 Billion in maintenance annually. Our mission is simple, ‘Get money to children’ to support their life chances and help to lift out of poverty.

Job description

This is an exciting time to be joining CMS as we continue with our ambitious programme of service modernisation.  As Head of Service, you will have a critical role alongside three colleagues in providing strategic leadership with accountability for all aspects of service delivery, people plans and embedding significant change including digitalisation and demand deduction.

The successful candidate will be responsible for:

• Providing inspirational and resourceful leadership to a large team of up to 1,000 colleagues, across four locations through direct line management of 4 Senior Operational Leaders (G7s), in a complex, fast paced operational environment to deliver a quality service. This will include workforce planning, resource deployment, capability plans and all aspect of performance management to meet service level requirements.
• Leading through a period of accelerated change for the organisation and have an influential role in shaping the strategic direction, communicated to colleagues through our CMS Story – enabling a digital transformation programme that delivers increased efficiency and service improvements and supporting the design and implementation of a new organisational model.
• Demonstrating visible leadership through a commitment to people engagement and driving cultural change by empowering others to develop, you will be expected to continue establishing a culture of continuous improvement through remote line management across multiple sites.
• Lead accountability for specific customer segments providing vision and reporting up to the CMS Executive Team, Director General and Minster, i.e. Applications, Maintenance, Benefits and Telephony and Portfolios i.e., Quality
• There may be a requirement to lead one of our Service Centres in a sponsorship role.
• As this role covers various locations across the UK, you will be expected to commit to frequent travel and overnight stays.

Person specification

Your evidence will be assessed against the following essential criteria. You must ensure you provide specific examples to demonstrate these criteria in your personal statement.

Essential Criteria

Successful candidates will demonstrate the following:

• Inspirational and resourceful leadership with a proven track record of leading large teams over 100+ colleagues, making a strong personal impact, demonstrating resilience to deliver against key performance measures timeously and accurately. (Lead Criteria)
• Excellent communication abilities with proven experience of influencing and motivating people at all levels.
• Confidence managing senior stakeholder relationships, including delivering various communications to a high standard to an array of stakeholders including Ministers, Senior Leaders, and Trade Union.
• Ability to identify, interpret and analyse Management Information (MI), and other data to identify areas for action, key risks, and performance hot spots.
• Ability to understand and lead change, inspiring and obtaining commitment from colleagues by encouraging discussion, innovation, and ideas in support of long-term organisational vision.
• Ability to understand and lead transformational change including channel shift and moving demand into digital services, inspiring and obtaining commitment from colleagues by encouraging discussion, innovation, and ideas in support of long-term organisational vision.
• A passion for building high performing teams, actively promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace to drive an inclusive learning culture and create opportunities for all.
• Experience of driving excellent customer service, particularly in a telephony environment, ensuring service standards fully meet client expectations by challenging and improving processes.

Benefits

Working for DWP will include benefits such as learning and development tailored to your role, an environment with flexible working options, a culture encouraging inclusion and diversity and a Civil Service pension Civil Service pension.

CMS is committed to the Wellbeing of all colleagues, support includes Wellbeing conversations, dedicated Wellbeing Advocates in each Service Centre to develop and deliver health and wellbeing initiatives and ‘Hotel CMS’, our own Intranet site offering a wealth of information, guidance and support.

We Value Everybody is one of our five Core Values here in CMS. We have active National Network Groups for Race, LGBGT+, Disability, Carers, Wellbeing, Faith & Belief and Age. Our monthly People Group meeting draws these groups together to listen, act, and update CMS Directors with our plans. 

CMS Colleagues have the opportunity to join HASSRA, a vibrant and successful organisation that provides a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly). It also has an important part to play in helping us achieve a healthy work-life balance and wellbeing in the workplace.

Working hours - The contracted working hours for the Department are 07:45 hours to 20:00 hours, Monday to Friday, and 08:45 hours to 17:00 hours on Saturday.  Employees are contracted to work a specific number of hours per week within the above times.  Employees will be required to work the number of hours per week for which they are contracted. For example, for full time employees this will be 37 hours net (42 hours gross including meal breaks). For part-time employees it will be less.

Access to flexible working hours scheme will be available.

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 needs of the business, but personal situations and other relevant circumstances will also be considered. 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.

Please refer to the candidate pack for further information contained in this section of the advert and more information in relation to the Benefits of working for DWP.

Location

Applicants should apply for suitable posts where they can travel to and from their home office location daily within a reasonable time.   

Please be aware that this role can only be worked in the UK and not overseas. Relocation costs will not be reimbursed 

Hybrid Working

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.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

Application process 

Stage 1: Application & Sift

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete: ​

1. Personal Details application form. ​
2. Personal Statement (1250-word limit)
3. Anonymised CV.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Use your 1250-word Personal Statement to describe how you meet the Essential Criteria as detailed in the job advert. 

The CV is an on-line tool, there is no requirement to upload your personal CV.  When giving details of your employment history, you should include details of work you have completed and projects you have been involved in. However the CV is not scored so please put the main content of your evidence and skills in your Personal Statement.

Your Personal Statement should contain no more than 1250 words. The layout is entirely your choice, you may choose narrative, bullets, etc. You may choose to address each criteria separately; however, one narrative example may cover and evidence several of the criteria. Please share with us what makes you suited to this role. We would like to find out what you can do, the skills you hold and the life experience or passion that you have that could be aligned to the criteria listed within the Person Specification.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING ANONYMISATION​

Due to the DWP’s use of anonymised recruitment practices it is not possible for applicants to upload/attach a CV; any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form.

When entering information relating to your employment history you will be asked to remove any personal details that could be used to identify you. This relates to name and contact details which might usually appear on your CV/Personal statement. Failure to do so will result in your application being withdrawn.​

Sift

The sift panel will use the information in your Personal Statement to assess your experience, skills and knowledge against the essential Criteria outlined in the advert. ​

Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the Lead Criteria ‘You will be an Inspirational and resourceful leadership with a proven track record of leading large teams over 100+ colleagues, making a strong personal impact, demonstrating resilience to deliver against key performance measures timeously and accurately’.

Candidates who pass the initial sift will be progressed to a full sift where all applications will be assessed and sifted against all the essential criteria outlined in the advert.

Please note depending on the volume of applications we may choose to invite candidates straight to interview and dispense with the sift stage.  For this reason, the timeline for the interview window is subject to change depending on the approach we choose to take.

Interview

Unless you are otherwise informed, the final stage of the process will be a blended interview via Microsoft Teams.

The blended interview will consist of Behaviour and Strength questions. The Behaviours being assessed at interview are:

• Leadership (Lead Behaviour)
• Managing a Quality Service
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions

All elements of the interview will be via video link, and the entire process should take approximately 45-60 minutes.

As part of the interview process candidates will be asked to deliver a 5-minute presentation, details of the subject will be sent in advance of the interview.

A blended interview aims to be more of a conversation at interview, offering a more inclusive approach.

The Strength and Behaviour based questioning explores what the candidate can and has done, but also their potential.

Please refer to the Candidate Pack for further information.

Approximate sift and interview dates:

Sift Applications -   5th – 9th February

Interviews - 22nd – 29th February

Sift and Interview dates are subject to change.

Further Information

Find out more about Working for DWP

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

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

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.