Who we are

Essex County Council's (ECC) reputation as an ambitious, progressive council has never been stronger. We continue to make Essex a thriving county to live, work and visit. ECC is one of the county's largest employers, with over 7,500 staff, providing many services including adults and children's social care, environmental, transport, education, planning and benefits.

The Service Transformation team is one of the few established multi-disciplinary teams in local government. We're problem solvers, and we take a user-centred approach to complex problems to help teams build good services that support the needs of Essex's residents and businesses.

You can find out more about us and our work on our Service Transformation blog.

Who you are

You are an experienced Service Designer with the confidence and expertise to lead multiple and complex projects.We're looking for someone who is autonomous, curious, good at quickly developing strong working relationships and able to get into the details of specific projects whilst also seeing the bigger picture.

Your skills

You'll have a service design qualification or equivalent on-the-job experience, strong visual design and communication skills and the ability to take a service design project through from initial scoping right through to implementation and evaluation.

What you'll do

You will:

• Advocate for user-centred design across the council and work in the open to upskill others and promote awareness and understanding.
• Work collaboratively with service areas to scope new service design projects that meet ECC's Strategic aims and financial considerations.
• Work strategically on end to end services to deliver improved service outcomes and costed savings with minimal support.
• Work collaboratively with user researchers, designers, product and content specialists and other change colleagues across the organisation.
• Compile user research into actionable insights and lead design activities that build on your findings.
• Use quantitative and qualitative data to produce designs that meet user needs and provide a persuasive case to influence senior stakeholders.
• Develop ideas and design concepts using sketching, prototyping and iterative design.
• Make the case for design decisions, explaining and communicating ideas to senior stakeholders to build consensus.
• Identify service patterns and help drive the continuous development of design patterns and standards.

Next steps

For more information, please email

Please apply via the Working for Essex website (www.workingforessex.com) to be considered for this position.

Interviews will take place 12th and 13th January 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.

Please note that Essex County Council has determined that the off-payroll working rules will apply to this assignment and where a worker elects to provide their services through an intermediary (such as a personal services company) then income tax and primary national insurance contributions will be deducted at source from any payments made to the intermediary.

As part of employment with Essex County Council should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please visit: https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service

Essex County Council is proud to offer an excellent benefits package to all its employees. For more information please use the following link: https://www.workingforessex.com/benefits/

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.

If you have any queries regarding this role, or require anything further, please email or call us on 0333 013 5888. Lines are open Monday to Friday 08:30 - 16.30.