User Researcher

Government Business Services (GBS) is a large business unit within the Cabinet Office with around 610 staff. It brings together back office services across government, and supports the Civil Service with high volume HR and finance processes, aligned to the Government's modernisation agenda. GBS was established in August 2020, and includes Shared Services, the Government Recruitment Service, Civil Service and Royal Mail Pensions, and the Platforms and Services unit, which supports these. GBS delivers services for over 400,000 civil servants across government. It supports 1.5 million Civil Service and Royal Mail pension scheme members, and provides recruitment services for around 70 percent of the Civil Service.

We care about diversity and inclusion and actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

We are looking for a User Researcher to join our team in Government Business Services (GBS) to help develop our Civil Service Jobs platform and wider recruitment service. You will help us to transform the way in which the Civil Service recruits so that we hire the right people, into the right roles, at the right time.

As a User Researcher, you will be an experienced practitioner who is capable of planning and conducting user research activities across large and complex projects and services. You will be a practitioner in problem definition and selecting the appropriate research strategies to tackle issues and understand user needs. You will also have experience or a keen interest in developing quantitative research skills and methods.

You will help champion a user-centred, evidence-based approach to formulating strategy and vision, both across the user research practice and the teams you are engaged in.

Government Shared Services (GSS) is a unit within Government Business Services (GBS) in the Cabinet Office. We support the Cabinet Office’s aims to ensure the delivery of the finest public services and improve the efficiency of government.

We are the centre of expertise working across departments to make it easier for civil servants to use platforms for HR, finance and payroll. We are in the process of delivering the new Shared Services Strategy for Government, which delivers services that are better value, and cut through processes that cost time and money. Our overarching objectives are:

1) Meeting end-user needs, promoting excellence and convenience for both staff and managers.

2) Delivering value and efficiency, including by separating technology from service centres, and including all transactional services.

3) Convergence around processes and data, including the consolidation and modernisation of technology platforms, while maintaining choice for departments.

Through this strategy, our ambition is to free up civil servants to focus on what they do best: engaging with and delivering for citizens.

What you will be working on:

You will join our cross-functional agile delivery team focusing on transforming Civil Service Jobs, helping to redesign how the service should be delivered in the future.

The Civil Service recruitment transformation programme will evolve how civil servants are recruited and move around the Civil Service. Focusing on simplifying, streamlining and automating recruitment processes for civil servants joining the government, you will play a key role in helping to design a service that recruits the right people with the right skills as quickly as possible.

Civil Service Jobs is used by over 4 million candidates per year to find and view vacancies across the Civil Service. Each year it handles over 1 million completed applications for 195,000 advertised posts. The live service is used by over 216 organisations to advertise their vacancies and manage their recruitment processes. Currently, Civil Service Jobs is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provision that has been configured and enhanced to meet Civil Service recruitment, digital and security standards.

You will also get the opportunity to work alongside the Online testing and assessment service, which helps the assessment process during recruitment campaign. The service currently supports over a million candidate tests a year, helping departments appoint the right candidates into roles. The tests combine digital and psychometrician expertise to deliver a great user experience and effective evaluation of candidate potential.

You’ll help identify and fix some of the toughest problems in public infrastructure and you will be focussing on the research and design of services at scale. You’ll help the government transform the way it delivers recruitment so that it’s more efficient, simpler, faster and easier to use.

You will be joining us right at the start of the beta phase of the recruitment transformation program. You’ll also work with our wider portfolio of digital services covering recruitment, learning and business services.

As a User Researcher you will:

• Plan, design and prepare a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of government services. This will include choosing the right variety of research approaches (such as surveys, usability interviews, card sorting, guerrilla research etc.)
• Carrying out user research activities from recruiting participants, preparing discussion guides and moderating research sessions
• Communicating user research findings to help the team and wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs - including presentations at show and tells, designing and maintaining research outputs on the team wall, creating formal reports
• Work closely with product managers, designers and developers to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service features
• Advocate for user needs and conducting inclusive research in every activity
• Collaborating with colleagues in developing clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytics colleagues to create a rich picture of user behaviour that informs the road map.
• Contribute to the wider user research community both internally in GBS and wider - including presenting at meetups and writing blog posts.

You will be reporting to the Senior User Researcher.

Research skills

• Experience in using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods such as Usability interviews, A/B testing, survey design
• Research and analysis skills, (e.g. designing, conducting, and analysing data and information from different research methodologies and databases)
• Experience of delivering end to end research projects resulting in better services or products
• Able to process complex information and extract themes and insights

Personal skills

• Excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills; the ability to communicate complex concepts clearly and persuasively across different audiences and varying levels of the organisation.
• Experience in meeting deadlines and delivering high-quality work on schedule
• Experience of aligning user research activities to help teams understand changing user behaviour.
• Experience of advocating for service users or customers and engaging skeptical colleagues and stakeholders to drive changes.
• Willing to conduct user research as a ‘team sport’, facilitating both with external and internal stakeholders
• Have an understanding or keen interest of the Government Service Standard and GDS Service Manual
• The resilience to work in a fast-changing environment and ambiguous situations

These roles are aligned to the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework for the Civil Service. You can view the User Researcher role at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/user-researcher

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Research skills
• Analysis and synthesis
• User-centred and agile practices

• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• An environment with flexible working options.
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
• A Civil Service Pension which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and average employer contributions of 27%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by one day per year up to a maximum of 30.

Job contact :

Name :
Billie Moore
Email :
billie.moore@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team :

Email :
cabinetofficerecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk