Senior User Researcher

Permanent, Full Time

Up to £51,867 per annum

Location: Chelmsford*

Closing Date: 3rd May 2021

Essex County Council is one of the county's largest employers, with over 7,500 staff who are responsible for services across adults and children's social care, environment and waste, transport, education, planning and benefits. This role will support the front line of local service delivery across a diverse range of public services. You will help to understand and articulate the needs of real people and will see the impact that your work has on people's lives

If you are an experienced and skilled User Researcher who thrives in a creative environment, we want to hear from you.

The role:

• plan and lead user research activities for services
• take user insights and work collaboratively within a team towards design solutions
• explain and communicate user insights to senior stakeholders to build understanding, consensus and facilitate decision making
• work with and lead project teams using Agile practices
• share skills, knowledge and working practices
• help grow the user research community of practice across ECC

On a day-to-day basis

You will:

• advocate for inclusive research and design practices and lead teams in researching, designing and delivering accessible services
• show integrity in your research practice and resilience in advocating for user needs based on user insights
• plan and lead user research activities for services with challenging user needs and on more complex services
• work with senior stakeholders to scope work, develop appropriate research strategies and help inform measures of success
• collaborate with people and teams from across the organisation to align user research activities with wider plans to inform a service proposition
• work collaboratively to take user insights and work within a team towards design solutions
• help inexperienced and/or new teams adopt user-centred practices and embed them into their agile workflow
• explain and communicate user insights to senior stakeholders to build understanding and consensus
• undertake assurance of ethics and consent processes and develop / review privacy and equality impact assessments.

You'll do great here if you

• have experience of working in agile, multi-disciplinary teams from discovery through to a live service
• can help teams adopt a wide range of user research methods, analysis and synthesis techniques, and different approaches to presenting and sharing findings
• are able understand what problem the team is trying to solve and align user research activities to inform decision making and action
• have experience planning user research for services with challenging user needs and complex user journeys and can advise on best practice
• know how to help teams understand the diversity of users of government services, advocate for inclusive practices and help design and deliver accessible services that work for all users
• have experience of managing stakeholder expectations, influencing sceptical stakeholders and know how to challenge decisions that don't meet user need
• can communicate research in a way that engages stakeholders and teams to create shared understanding and alignment

Benefits of working for us

This is a great role in a vibrant and growing team. You'll find an inclusive culture and a place where your opinion is valued. You can find out more about us and the work we do on our Service Transformation blog https://servicetransformation.blog.essex.gov.uk/

The Council has developed a package of benefits that we hope resonates with you. You can find out more about our pay and reward offer on our Working for Essex website https://www.workingforessex.com/working-here/pay-reward/

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 on the 12th and 13th May 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.