Service Designer

Fixed Term, 12 months

Full Time

Up to £44,000 per annum

Location: Chelmsford

Closing Date: 11th April 2021

We're looking for an experienced Service Designer to join the Council's Ways of Working project which will transform how and where we will work in the future. The project will support our strategic aim to transform the council to achieve more with less and help create places to grow up, live and work, through digital and workspace transformation. Your focus on users and design skills will enable you to play an important role in Essex's post-pandemic recovery.

If you're a skilled service designer, we want to hear from you.

The role:

• works with executive, senior and operational stakeholders to understand their needs, help define problems and influence a user-centred design approach to working on end to end services
• works with user insights to help teams design user-centred experiences and solutions
• advocate for inclusive research and design practices

On a day-to-day basis

You'll be:

• scoping, planning and leading collaborative design projects that help answer critical business questions and reimagine services.
• mapping user journeys and translating user research into actionable insights, ideas and to make decisions about user needs.
• communicating ideas, explaining design decisions, and building consensus with stakeholders including senior decision makers.
• identifying opportunities for service improvement and cost reduction, and validating the feasibility, viability and desirability of these, building a case for change.
• highlighting opportunities to establish benchmarks and to identify measures to track the impact of changes

You'll do great here if you

• have experience solving complex service design challenges and contributing to design concepts for public services that are simple enough for everyone to use
• can develop and communicate ideas and concepts using a range of methods and approaches
• can demonstrate improving service outcomes whilst reducing costs and applying service-oriented thinking to organisation structures, processes and capabilities
• can work collaboratively with a range of stakeholders, including facilitating workshops, whilst advocating for the user
• have excellent communication skills and know how to bring those who don't have experience of user-centred design along with you
• understand agile ways of working

What you should do next

Please apply via the Working for Essex website. We'd also like to hear about you so please include a cover letter when prompted. Your cover letter should present demonstrable experience of all the competencies listed under "You'll do great here if you". Please try to use real examples and tell us what the situation was, what you did and what the result was.

We are planning to hold interviews week beginning 19th April 2021.

*This position will initially, in line with current government guidance be based from home, with an expectation of being home based for the foreseeable future. However, if / when government guidelines change the role may then revert to being office based, whilst retaining some flexible working options.

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.

We seek the best talent from the widest pool of people as diversity is key to our success.