DfE Digital, Data and Technology podcast

Improving equity in the workplace

Here’s our 5th episode of the second series of our ‘Think digital, act human’ podcast. This episode is all about the importance of diversity in the workplace. 

In this episode we’re joined by an external guest, Clara Greo, who’s a freelance service designer and equity advocate.  

This is a frank and honest conversation with Clara about how employers can start making small differences to improve diversity. Clara also shares her tips on how to support people of colour within an organisation - as diverse teams build better services. Any facts or figures mentioned were accurate at the time of recording in October 2022. 

 

 

Transcription

[intro music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Hello. Welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education where we tell you everyday stories of digital and technology specialists working on extraordinary projects. But today we've got a big one for you. We have an external guest and a brilliant one at that. Welcome to Clara Greo.

 

Clara Greo Thank you Adaobi. It's lovely to be here.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So we know that you're a previous civil servant, so you kind of know what it's like on this side of the of the microphone, I suppose.

 

Clara Greo That's right. I was at GDS Government Digital Service for eight, eight, eight or nine years.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor And what do you do now?

 

Clara Greo So at the moment, I've. Well, I've just had a baby, so I'm on sort of mat (maternity) leave. But I have been running some training courses in service design.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Okay, so you are a service design expert, but one of the main reasons that we're talking to you today, apart from your wonderful Clara, you're a very nice person to talk to you. Apart from that, we know that you're also someone who is how can we say this? Someone who's who enjoys talking to employers, enjoys talking to the public about the importance of what, diversity like, what would you say?

 

Clara Greo Yeah, I think so. Well, so when I was a lead designer at GDS, so we had a design community of I think it was over 30 designers by the end of my time there. And when I joined, it was all white men who knew each other. This is sort of 2014 and then slowly became slightly more diverse over the years. And then in the last few years, we really decided to ramp up that move towards becoming a more diverse community. And that's because. More diverse teams build better services. That's one reason. Umm it makes for a more enjoyable place to be for everyone, if it isn't just a monoculture and everyone looks the same and knows each other. It's just a more fair and equitable way to be an employer, so everybody should have an equal chance of working as a designer at GDS or working anywhere. We wanted to try and make that a bit more of a reality  in our design community. And we know that there are a lot of underrepresented groups in design, in the design industry, in tech in general, and we wanted to sort of start doing something about that and to do that by leading by example really. So we looked into why we weren't matching, why, why our demographics weren't matching the demographics of the public that we served and then tried to address those problems as we saw them coming up.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor It does feel like the whole conversation about diversity and inclusion has become more equity. You know, like whenever I think of equity, I think of this. It's like a it's like a well-known graphic of some people looking over a fence. One of them super tall and has no problem, just looking over the fence. And then like two of the lads, like one's middle height, one's kind of like much shorter. And the idea is if, if you all stand on boxes, which is equality, you've all got the same box. Yep two of them are okay, but that shorter person still can't see over the fence. Whereas if it's about equity, ensuring people have like the same experience, then the tallest person doesn't need a box. The middle person needs only one box and the shortest person with two boxes. They're all kind of able to see over the fence.

 

Clara Greo I love that graphic and I particularly love an update to that where I've seen the people are all the same height, but they're starting from different positions on the grounds so is like a stepped thing on the ground. And that represents the historical oppression and sort of marginalisation of people. And then the fence is also sloped upwards. So the fence is working against people. So and I think I like that version which represents the present day sort of systems of oppression and exclusion. And I like that because it's not about, Oh, you're tall and you're really short and it's your fault that you're short and we have to give you three books it's like, No, the ground I'm standing on is lower and the fence is higher. I've got higher barriers than you do. So yeah, it's a good I'm sorry. That's not why we're here.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor No, that's that's a really I'm going to have to check that out and see if I can find that graphic

 

Clara Greo I'll find it for you yeah. I run another training course called Power Privilege and Design, which is sort of part of the whole educating in user centred design thing. And we talk about that one a lot.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So before we dig into this idea of recruiting in a way that is equitable and recruiting diverse candidates, but that are I suppose diverse compared to the people you usually recruit. Let me just ask you about user centred design because there may be some people thinking, Well, if I'm designing a product, isn't all design user centred?

 

Clara Greo By default I think the tech industry and government tends towards not being user centred. We tend to be either policy centred, so centred around what a minister, for example, has promised to deliver or what a policy team has decided we need to deliver, or we tend to be tech centred. So we have a piece of technology that does a thing, so we're going to deploy that in some way regardless of what impact that has on people. So whether it's AI or a web chat or a new just any kind of new piece of technology it's often centred around the tech and what the tech can do and what what we can build it to do rather than on users and people and what they're trying to do and what they need to support them to do the things they're trying to do. So user centred design is all about how do we understand and engage with users and communities and what they're actually trying to do, and then how do we make sure we create products and services that helps people do those things?

 

Adaobi Ifeachor As a product manager, I understand in that struggle. So I think if you're in the private sector, if you work like a Start-Up, you probably have maybe some founders or co-founders who find it a little bit hard to let go of those reins. And, you know, it's kind of maybe founder driven but then in.

 

Clara Greo Yeah, ideas centred, yeah definitely.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Yeah ideas centred and then in the public sector, I think that is a real key difference. It's not just are you trying to drive revenue or not. But there's also this whereas the the kind of momentum coming for this work coming from. And when you work in the civil service, you may have a brand new minister who's like coming in, making promises for what they'd like to help the the public. And then eventually that comes down to your team and you're like, Oh, right. Okay, let's just check whether this is actually a problem that anyone's having. So, yeah, very interesting.

 

Clara Greo Absolutely. And I think that's the reason I'm drawn to the public sector, is because in the private sector, it's a bit more of a difficult argument because you have to justify why being user centred  will mean you make more money usually. But in the public sector, one of the reasons for public services existing. So whether it's central government or local government or NHS or whatever it is, those organisations exist to serve users. So if you're not meeting user needs, you're not doing the thing that your organisation is there to do. So it's kind of an easier argument to have with people to just say we have to be user centred because that's why we're here, that's what that's the point of government.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So let's talk about this idea of recruitment and why it's important for employers to even think about diversity in terms of the types of people they're getting in the door. Because you see people who've listened to the show will know that I am originally a Devon girl and there were - I used to be a journalist back in the day - and there were people who I talked to, employers, and they'd say things like, We really want to have diverse staff, but we just can't seem to recruit people who come from diverse backgrounds, Like maybe, maybe the diversity isn't there in the population we're advertising to, or maybe they just don't hear about these things or whatever. But it was really interesting, a tweet that you made where you where you were saying, Clara, 'are you wondering where to advertise roles to get more diverse candidates to apply? Try running a careers event. The problem isn't that we're not finding out about the job. It's that we have questions and concerns that aren't being addressed'. So that's like flipping the whole thing, isn't it? Can you could you start by talking a bit more about how people who would like to hire more diverse candidates, how they can go about doing that with this careers of an idea or anything else? Any other advice you have?

 

Clara Greo Yeah, sure. So I think I don't think the problem is that people, people who are more diverse than your current organisation is made up of aren't hearing about the jobs. I think that's where a lot of people go to. It's like, Oh, we need to publicise it, we need to get on the right job boards or whatever it is, get on the right Twitter accounts, and then suddenly all of these black and brown people and LGBTQ people will suddenly apply for jobs. I don't, I don't think that's what we're doing wrong. I think it's unfortunately more systematic things that are stopping us from having a more diverse and equitable workforce. So things like. Is there something about your recruitment process that is excluding people? So often is it the criteria that you are scoring people on? Is it the way you've framed your job specification, the things that you've asked for, the the words that you've used in the job specification? Is it the reputation of your organisation? I mean, people talk to each other, people aren't silly. We ask people that we know what, what different places are like to work in. If your organisation just isn't being a very good place to work in or isn't safe for people with, you know, minoritized identities to exist in or isn't a good place to progress in and thrive in, then people aren't going to want to work there, which is, and that's not an easy problem to solve. I'm not pretending it is, but these are some of the reasons that people either might not be applying or might not be getting through your application process.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So how can a careers event help in that circumstance then?

 

Clara Greo The careers event is is something that we ran a few times when I was at GDS, the Government Digital Service, and we ran I think about five careers events some were in person, some were online. And they I think one of the main things they did was turn GDS, our organisation, into people. So the government digital service is quite a sort of a well-known organisation across the tech industry and I think there's a lot of myths and kind of misunderstandings about what that organisation is. And I think one thing that the careers events did was just turn us into people that you could ask questions of and that you could have a conversation with and that were like you, and we would just talk to people answer their questions, tell them a bit about what our day was like and a lot of people would come up to us after the event and say, Oh, it was just really nice to put a put a face to this organisation or to talk to a real person or to you were also friendly or you seemed to get on with each other and you seemed to be friends when different people were presenting different things and talking to each other. And that was really nice and it just makes the organisation feel more human. I think that was sort of one of the biggest sort of non tangible things it did. As well as answering lots and lots of basic questions like, how do I apply, which you've already talked about and you know what, what does a day look like? What is career progression look like? What are you doing to improve the equity and diversity of your organisation? People would ask some really difficult questions and it wasn't always easy to to answer them. But I think just the fact that we were open to hearing those questions and trying to answer them is important.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So we've heard about this idea of a careers event which, which could be a way of making your organisation seem more approachable, less intimidating, less sort of, 'Oh, that's not the type of place where I could get in' to just like opening the doors and letting people see what it's all about, who the people are and what, how they work and that sort of stuff. Do you have one last piece of advice before we go about how what every employer could do to make their recruitment better in terms of attracting and then potentially hiring on more diverse staff members?

 

Clara Greo Yeah, I think I think the most important thing is to listen to what your existing staff are telling you and what your perspective staff are telling you. And listen to their concerns, their questions, their worries, and then try and genuinely address some of those issues. I know that a lot of the issues will be will be big things, that it will feel difficult to change or difficult to do anything about. Or maybe it'll take a long time or maybe they won't be. Maybe they'll be small things. But if you really listen to what people's concerns are and then show that you are genuinely working on improving those things, then people are much more likely to trust your organisation, trust the leadership of your organisation and want to work there or want to stay employed there. I think retention is another thing that we haven't we haven't talked about that's obviously very closely linked to recruitment. There's no point bringing in a wonderful new, diverse workforce that then wants to leave straightaway because they're unhappy, but yeah listening and genuinely doing something and being transparent about what you're doing is really important.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor This is going to sound like a bit of a weird question, but how should an employer listen? Like if you. I've kind of run workshops like on my product team where the team don't quite know each other or maybe it's a bit dysfunctional. The relationship hasn't quite settled down. And you asked them a direct question and then it's kind of like tumbleweed silence. So I imagine if you were an employer an you're kinda at an all staff saying, 'how do you think we can improve?' You might not get the interaction you're hoping for. What are some some good ways of trying to listen to those views or collect them in the first place?

 

Clara Greo Yeah, I think two things spring to mind. The first one is go to wherever people are already telling you these things. So don't try and make a new forum or hold a new workshop or open a new form for people to fill in. People are probably already talking about what they're not happy about somewhere. So go and and listen and be open in those spaces where people already are. And the second thing is, which I've worked in places that have put up a lot of resistance to this, is have an anonymous channel for people to speak directly to leadership. And that anonymity is really, really important to get the honesty that you need and to get around any trust issues you have, especially if there are already, if there's already some broken trust in the organisation from management down to people who are not management, Having an anonymous way of talking and asking questions and giving feedback can be really, really important. And there's there's always this fear of what will come through anonymously. And I think I think that's really unfounded and really blocks people from hearing some really important messages and, and often people who don't feel safe or who don't feel confident or who feel like they might be might be discriminated against because if they ask what their genuine questions are, non anonymously will will feel much more comfortable doing that anonymously. Those are my two things. Yeah. Listen to where people are and and have a way of asking anonymously.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So we've already talked about equitable recruitment and things that employers can do to try and improve their recruitment processes. For those people who are already inside any type of organisation, public or private, if they want to progress into senior roles, into senior leadership roles, are there specific things that organisations can do to support that? Because I'm thinking so often of, not even necessarily the civil service, but other places where I've worked, where it seems actually you get a lot of you get a lot of us brown skinned people in on the sort of, you know, the first floor, but then the higher up the organisation you go, the, the, the few people seem to be retained, the few people make it to those higher echelons. And I'm wondering like, is there is there something else that can be done?

 

Clara Greo This is such an interesting question to be talking about right now. I had a discussion last week with an amazing person who's working in a small group of three to develop a school for black designers, and they've decided that their focus is going to be on how to get black people higher up into different levels of of public sector organisations. So it's strange that I'm having this conversation again, if you want to look up the work that they're doing it, it's led by a woman called Tayo Medupin. And I think if you look, if you Google Hello Brave, school for black designers, you'll find the work they're doing. But they've sort of done some research and worked out that storytelling and helping underrepresented groups tell their stories and sell themselves is probably the most important thing. You know, we have the skills, we are qualified, we are excellent at our jobs. So the theory behind the storytelling thing is that we're just not good at necessarily framing it in the way that the recruitment process wants to hear and that that and the more senior levels want to hear. I'm worried that it doesn't matter how good we get in storytelling. There's things at play in the system which mean that the underrepresented groups  will just continue to be underrepresented because of the ways decisions are made and because of the sort of structural inequities built into the recruitment promotion processes. And that's something that, yeah, we have to we have to hope that that's not sure that those things are being reduced over time, things like things like bias. I mean, it's all it's mostly unconscious bias, isn't it? And and I think also not being in those decision making rooms and not knowing people already, I think your networks are really important. So maybe some other things that would be really great would be. Improving community and improving networking opportunities and improving kind of mentoring and things like that. We had a we had an interesting an interesting series of talks when I was at GDS (Government Digital Service) where senior civil servants would talk to the rest of the organisation about how they got into their role and sort of how they found doing that role. And what I noticed from those talks was so often it was, oh, I was I was chatting to another senior civil servant, I happen to have coffee with this, this man or this woman. And I, you know, I my, my dad was friends with whoever and and those types of connections were what gave people the opportunities to be known and to get the roles and to get the skills needed to do the roles. And I to be honest, I don't know how you replicate that for for other groups that are underrepresented.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Well. I'm not saying I have the answer here or the DfE has the answer here, but within a month of me joining DfE. My line manager at the time said, 'Would you like to go on to like a leadership course that's aimed at people of colour?' And I was in my head, I was like, No, I don't. No, actually I do not. I think I just politely said that the main reason was because in a previous place I'd worked, I'd really thrown myself into like staff networks, co-chairing here, co-chairing there, and I was exhausted and I was like, I don't want to I can't do I can't do anything else. But when I read the sort of like blurb of what it was about and the fact that my manager would be going through complimentary training at the same time as me, I was like, okay, let me give this a bit of a, let me give this a bit of a look. I think it was called Power of Choice. That was I think it's like an external thing that comes into companies or whatever. But the reason I bring this up is because of when you said you don't know how to replicate these conversations. I don't know how to replicate them either. But one thing that we were told to do in this in this kind of scheme was to work on Vic Project. V I C. And I'm going to completely forget what they they all umm, what those things meant now. But I think there was visibility. I was like impact. I think it was impact or importance, but basically like a high impact, high importance and C was complexity. So what they were saying was, you need to make sure after you finish this training course you need to pick yourself out a VIC project. Have a look around your organisation for where you might be able to help with something or lead on a project and maybe speak to your line manager about how you might be able to create a VIC project if there's not an obvious candidate. And the idea was you were putting yourself out there on something that was, you know, valuable, visible, that had high impact and was complex. So that you would be seen by, you know, senior management to be doing something that was that was really valuable. And and so they might not have had time to have a cup of tea with you. They might not knew you exist before that, but after they saw this VIC project, they'd be like, Hmm, who is that? Who is that person over there? I am very impressed with them.

 

Clara Greo I totally get that. And I think that is probably a really good strategy for people who want to progress, who haven't been noticed. But the thing that worries me about that is that we're saying that the underrepresented groups need to work harder, work on more complex, more visible projects, have less choice. I mean, maybe, maybe I just want to do that quiet little project in the corner that nobody's noticing. But I can't, if I want to progress in my career I have to go and do the highly visible, complex, noticeable ones. So, you know, it's again, putting the burden on the underrepresented groups to fix their career paths, you know, learn something, do better.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Interesting.

 

Clara Greo Whereas if if you're not in an underrepresented group, you've had the cup of coffee. You don't have to work on the VIC project because they've seen you. They've noticed you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Yeah, I know. I know what you're saying. I wanted to come back to some facts and figures that come out of DfE recently. The first one being that in 2018, not that long ago, the percentage of people from ethnic minority backgrounds was 17.2%. And now it's 19.6% in 2022. Now, the reason why I find that interesting is because the late the last, I think, public census that went that happened put like the amount of people of colour or ethnic minorities at 15%. So does that mean then, Clara, if we're if we're almost 5% higher than the, you know, the, the, the level in the UK as a population as a whole. Does that mean our job's done? Does that mean I mean we can now stop any active pushing and recruitment for people of colour.

 

Clara Greo Sure, if you want if you want us all to disappear again. I think the point you raised earlier that that people of colour tend to be in the more junior roles in the lower levels, find it harder to progress, find it harder to move up to senior decision making places where they'll actually be able to make an impact and make a change. So if one of the things we're aiming for by having a diverse representation of people in the civil service is that it can impact the services we deliver and make those services more equitable, more just benefit the people out in the population, Then the people inside the civil service need to be in roles where they can make that change and where they have an influence on those decisions. And if we're not getting there, if we're not happy in our roles, if we're not progressing, if we're not getting on to projects where we can make a difference, or getting into positions where we can make a difference, then you know, you can have as many percentage people as you like. It just doesn't make any change.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor That's interesting, isn't it? Like you're kind of suggesting that that stats of how many ethnic minorities are interviewing, how many ethnic minorities work for your company may actually be hiding a more systemic problem. That is, are those people are the same people staying? And how far up in the organisation are they going? Does that mean do you think that perhaps any employers listening should think again about their sort of KPIs? Take a look at whether they might be hiding other issues.

 

Clara Greo Yeah, definitely you need to look at what you're measuring and work out what needs to be measured. And probably you'll need to do that by talking to people of colour in your organisation and working out what's going on for them. If you've got 19% people of colour in your organisation, but 12% of those are on the verge of leaving because they're so unhappy, it's not a good statistic. So you need to work out what matters to them. What, what, what are the problems, what are the barriers they're facing? Are they all burning out? Are they spending all their time in the in the BAME networks not getting recognised for all that extra work they're doing? So what's going on? And is it actually making a difference? And I think we probably need to start measuring outcomes of services. So what the what the outcomes are in the services that we deliver and have a look at how that ties back to the make up of the people who deliver and create the service. I think that's a really interesting thing that we haven't done enough of.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Wow. I've never even really thought about that before.

 

Clara Greo Because that's one of the aims of doing this, isn't it? We're trying to make our services better, not just make our organisations better, make the actual things we deliver better. So let's, let's measure that and see if it's a correlation.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So as an example, a project I'm product manager on at the moment is creating a new digital service for social worker assessment, something that is not coming at it from a sort of, 'are you meet your standards', but it's more 'how can we help you? How can we support you?' That sort of thing. It's going to be it doesn't exist at the moment. It's going to be created. So how would how would your suggestion work then? Would we look at I don't know how many, I'm throwing out something crazy here, but how about looking at how many social workers from different sort of backgrounds are being retained or.

 

Clara Greo Yeah, being retained, progressing? You could even look at, because the the the aim of the social workers role is to support children and families. Right? So, I mean, I haven't really worked in this domain. So you could look at the, the outcomes for different children and families with different demographics and see if changing the demographics of the social workers and the demographics of the people who deliver the service that you're working on. How how that impacts through to children and families would be really interesting. So I can imagine, you know, if there was a Romani Traveller family. They might have better outcomes if their social worker understood more about that and if the people who developed the systems at the social workers are using or relying on understood more about that community. Then that will have that will have a better impact on those end users, the children and families at the other end. So, you know, it's kind of we need to measure the impacts downstream and upstream. I don't know how you draw this connection because there's so many variables along that route.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor I was just going to say, I was just thinking like even for for my small part of the, my small cog in the machine is looking specifically at like social worker assessments, but there must be so many other variables like pay, like pay or like working hours that that contribute to it. But it's a fascinating conversation. Anyway, but let's move on for time then, Clara. So one other, one other stat I want to throw your way was that the the percentage of people of colour in the senior civil service or rather, I should say, the way they've written it, which is people from ethnic minority backgrounds was 11.1% in March of this year (2022 when we're recording) and the target set for next year is 13%. Now that is below that 15% level of ethnic minority people backgrounds in the UK. So it's not reflecting as much as exists in the reality of the UK. However, what I believe is the case and my producer Lou will let me know if I am off the mark too much here is that when they started measuring this back in 2015, it was 4%, 4% went to 11%. So the reason why I'm bringing this up is, sometimes you look ahead and you see the mountain that you have to climb. And I'm really I'm focusing this externally on employers who might be listening, thinking we want to we want to increase our numbers. But, you know, we don't know where to start and it looks terrible at the moment. But you can look at the mountain ahead, but then you can also turn around and look at like how far you've come in a short time. I don't think it's possible to go from 4% to 11.1% in a couple of years without concerted effort, without you attempting to deliberately make changes. So. Yeah. I mean, what kind of thoughts about those figures, first of all?

 

Clara Greo I think that's great. And I think having figures can be really useful for people to keep them focussed and to, you know, to measure progress and to feel that you're doing something. It's not enough because you can, you can get distracted by those numbers. So you could you could focus on, you know, just getting that number as high as you can, as quickly as you can, and not worry about the experience that those people are having in your organisation. And something that we used to remind ourselves of occasionally was that. You might be doing harm to those people of colour to bring them into an organisation that is not there to, that can't support you. So, you know, you might be asking people to come into an organisation where they're not safe, they're not supported, they're not going to be able to progress, they're not getting as much money as they could somewhere else. They're not getting the community they need to grow. So you need to make sure you're actually doing the right thing by those people that are boosting up those numbers for you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor That's so true. I grew up in Devon, which is and I like to joke that in the nineties my family was the black population of the town I grew up in. So, like, sometimes I, I kid you not, I kid, you not, I remember so many conversations started by well-meaning people who had never met a black person before. And so they were like, Hey, hey, I know someone in I know someone in, you know, Exeter. And their black. She's called. She's called she's called Charlotte. Do you know her. And it was kind of like, it meant that at first I used to find it really irritating. But then I realised I am literally the ambassador for all black people in this moment and how I react to this question.

 

Clara Greo Why should you have to carry that?

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Well, this is this is my point. My point is that sometimes. You realise that's on you. And sometimes you're just tired of it being on you. And you're like, if I thought that I was joining an organisation where, that I was going to have to be the ambassador. I was going to have to be the pioneer. I would think twice about joining that organisation, honestly.

 

Clara Greo Yeah, it's a it's a huge burden.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor And I guess I haven't really thought about it that way until you said umm you know, trying to increase your numbers, just the numbers alone might make you ignore or not even see other things that have to come along with the number boost. That's so fascinating. Clara, I could talk to you all day. You know what, that is literally all we have time for. Thank you so much.

 

Clara Greo Thank you so much Adaobi that was lovely to chat to you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor What a lovely conversation. I really hope that you listeners have enjoyed it. I hope we haven't made you feel too uncomfortable. But if there's one thing you know about this show by now, it is that we don't stray away from the difficult conversations. No, indeed, we dive in headfirst. So, Clara Greo, if people do want to get in touch with you, where can they do that? On the interwebs?

 

Clara Greo Mastodon I'm on Mastodon @claragt.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Perfect. And listeners, if you would like to get hold of us, if you want to tell us what you thought, I'm saying this reluctantly. I don't know what people are going to think, but if you want to tell us what you thought, then Google our blog, DfE, Digital blog, and you'll find us we're the DfE Digital and Technology blog. Or you can, I suppose you could try us on Twitter, it's DfE_DigitalTech. So this podcast was brought to you by the Department for Education. Thank you so much to our production team behind the scenes and of course thanks from me your host Adaobi Ifeachor. Bye bye.

 

Insight for people applying to be a senior civil servant

This episode is all about recruitment into the senior Civil Service (SCS). 

In this episode we hear from former colleagues Emma Stace, Chief digital and technology officer, and Jack Collier, Head of digital for schools services.  

This is an honest and personal look at Emma and Jack's experiences and what they’ve learnt along the way. Not everyone is comfortable with networking and here they talk about alternative ways to getting yourself known, headhunting, other people's expectations, and leadership more broadly.

They share top tips for those starting in a SCS role. So if you’re considering applying, this is a great episode for you.

 

 

Transcription

[intro music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Hello. Welcome to Think digital act human, a podcast from the Department for Education where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. 

Today we have a returning guest, our podcast sponsor, and the Head of digital for school services in Manchester, Jack Collier. Hey, Jack, welcome back.

 

Jack Collier Hello. Thank you for having me.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor You look very rested or very energised. That's probably because you are speaking to our listeners. So this is going to be a little bit different from the last time you were on, because I think we were talking about ways of building like workplace culture, like a healthy culture, particularly when you were living in a post-pandemic hybrid world. Well, now season 2 is all about recruitment. And we wanted an episode where we were basically talking about senior recruitment, senior to the Civil Service. People have aspirations to join the senior civil service or to join a senior level company and we're hoping that the advice that we share today will really help those people, people with those kinds of aspirations. And we actually have lined up some sound bites from another special guest, Emma Stace.

Listener announcement. This is your host, Adobe speaking. As you listen to this episode, you'll hear a [music plays] sound. We're using this to let you know that a pre-recorded clip is about to be played. It'll also play to signal the end of the clip. Now back to the episode, enjoy. 

Dear listeners, you will remember that we spoke to Emma back on our very first episode of this podcast. At the time, she was our Chief digital and technology officer. Before she left, she decided to share some very interesting titbits that we're going to discuss today Jack. I hope you're excited.

 

Jack Collier I am. I am. And clearly, those titbits worked for Emma. Let's see what we can glean from them.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Let's go straight to the very first clip. And after that, we'll have a discussion and we'll find out a bit more about you, too, Jack.

[music plays] Well let's dig into this, this idea of senior recruitment verses non senior recruitment. I do want to say like I don't want to say anything that sounds derogatory because that's not what I mean. And obviously I'm in the kind of regular, regular recruitment bucket myself. So what would you say is the main difference here? In my mind, I'm thinking it's like, regular recruitment you're applying for things a lot. Senior recruitment you're being headhunted and invited to apply and that sort of stuff. Is that right? 

 

Emma Stace So let's let's just pick up this idea of senior recruitment. So, I think to your point, you know, particularly in the Civil Service, we have this idea of, you know, the senior Civil Service. And I think probably a better way to frame it is leadership positions, not that everyone isn’t a leader and can influence within an organization, But I think a senior position for me is a position where the impacts in the organisation that you can deliver is beyond your own individual role. That people are looking at you a lot in a leadership position. So I think maybe let's frame it as ‘what do leadership roles look’ like as opposed to senior roles? Because I think, I worry, that even that language makes these roles inaccessible to some people and some people start to kind of go, well it's kind of not for me. Because it sounds very imposing, doesn't it? A senior role. [music plays] 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So, Jack, what are your first thoughts having listened to that clip? Leadership, not senior, is where you feel you fit in - leadership. 

 

Jack Collier 100% Adaobi. So I completely agree with Emma on this. And my view of it is that the Civil Service has a very, very strange mentality around grades and around structure and around hierarchy, which I think is not helpful in the 21st century. It's 2022. My job title is Deputy Director for School Services. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't describe what I do at all. It's a grade. It's not a job. Where Emma talks in that clip about leadership, not senior Civil Service roles. I agree that the term senior Civil Service creates a barrier to people applying, to people thinking that they could do that role, whereas some thought leadership is far more accessible. And I think it describes far better what it is that you would be doing in that role as well. And I mean, my personal story is that I am not senior in an age sense whatsoever. I actually joined the DfE as a deputy director when I was 27. And I think for people, yeah, for people that are maybe a little bit more dyed in the wool Civil Servants, that is a very strange thing to have happened. I think there's a sense that you have to have done your time and you've got to have worked your way up the grades and through the ranks, as it were. And, you know, I don't I don't believe that's true. And I don't believe that's true for anyone else either. I applied for the job because I was interested in the job itself, not in the grade. And that's why I think the term senior Civil Servant can create a barrier. And the way Emma describes it there about leadership is perfect. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor I do remember meeting you and thinking, ‘who is this fresh faced, 19 year old work experience lad’? When you say that you came in the Civil Service at 27, was that, you saw a job and you applied or were you going through that, that Fast Stream process, which is a bit like a graduate scheme?

 

Jack Collier Yeah. So I joined the DfE when I was 27. I joined the Civil Service straight out of university exactly on the Fast Stream, which is the graduate programme. I actually joined as a policymaker, not in a digital role, and I was able to work on climate change policy, which was really exciting. It's exactly kind of the kind of thing I wanted to do. And interestingly, the policy that I was working on was it was a huge failure. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Oh no, what happened there?

 

Jack Collier Well after that I joined a digital team and I thought really interestingly that policy failed because no one really thought about users. No one really designed that policy with users at the centre and thinking about how we can meet user needs through the policy in order to achieve the outcome. So I got really interested in this idea of how can we make digital work in government really, really well and marry the two things up. And so, yes, I digress slightly. I joined the Civil Service on the graduate programme. I left that early in order to pursue that interest and that passion, really around design and around digital and our services and how we can achieve outcomes through that.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor I've got to tell you that’s quite an unusual journey because it's so competitive to get into the Fast Stream. To go through a process that's so competitive to get in and then go, you know what? My heart's over here. I'm going to follow this other path. You're an unusual bloke there, Jack. I think that's in a good way.

 

Jack Collier Yeah. I mean, a lot of people give me advice not to leave it, actually, and I definitely feel like I made the right choice. And that's because I wanted to do something, I wanted to follow my interests and do something that I was excited about. And that is what I would kind of give anyone else. I'd give anyone else the same advice, which is do what you're excited about, do what you're passionate about. And it's the same when we're talking about senior roles in an organisation. Yeah, we talk about the Senior Civil service as if it's one thing it's not. Those are just jobs, different kinds of jobs which require different kinds of skills and different kind of people to do them. The idea of kind of joining the senior civil service I find quite alienating actually. I just applied for a job that I was really excited about, kind of the right time and in the right place, I think for me.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Well, I think that leads us nicely onto Emma's second clip, where I'm talking about a three-year rule that I've been thinking about. And has helped to shape my career so far. I'll be really interested to hear what you think about that.

Let's play the clip.

[music plays] One piece of advice I was given a long time ago by a mentor I really respect was that, you should have a three year rule generally. Which is sort of like, you get into a new role the first year, you don't know what you're doing. You kind of try to work out what you're doing. The second year you're doing it and the third year you kind of you should be focused on your next thing. Do you agree you're nodding along but do you agree with that because you have been here almost five years based on that three-year rule?

 

Emma Stace Yeah, well, I do agree with that. But also sort of it's a principle rather than a rule isn’t it. So I completely buy what you've said in terms of the sort of, the arc of progression and delivering value in an organisation. So I think a minimum of three years is what I think senior leaders or individuals accepting roles in complex programmes should be really thinking about. And then every year on from that, I guess the question is, is the challenge changing? Are you still learning? Are you still bringing energy and curiosity to the role? Have you got the role and what you were working towards, into a place where it's sustainable and you feel like you're handing over something that's better than when you found it. So, I think I would approach it as a principle rather than a rule. I mean, the job that I've been in at the DfE, it's probably the longest job I've been in for like a really long time, like since my twenties. So, it feels like the seasons have come full circle for me in the DfE [music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Jack You know, I'm going to ask you this question. How long have you been in role as deputy director now?

 

Jack Collier I have reached the three year mark Adaobi.  

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So I can start applying for your role then, can I?

 

Jack Collier Well, maybe controversially, I'd probably disagree with the rule, as you put it, the kind of a three-year rule. I think what you're describing is a learning arc. Right, which is that over time you learn and you become more and more effective at the role. I personally don't think that that the arc really should ever flatten, especially in a digital and technology role. There's so much changing in the context in which we're operating, in terms of what we can do with technology, our fingertips, in terms of our teams as well. And so, that arc for me is always there's always an arc. You're always learning and becoming more effective at your role. And I think my advice there would be stay as long as you like. You know, don't feel like three years is the is the barrier in which you've got to start looking. Stay as long as you like, as long as you're interested in it, as long as you're having fun, as long as you feel like you're adding value, as long as you feel like you're learning.

 

I think for me, just to give you an example about Adaobi, I feel like I've always I've always been learning in this role. I joined the DfE to set up the Manchester Digital team three years ago. That role then changed to managing delivery across things like children's social care, early years and schools, it then changed again to respond to the COVID pandemic. And now it's different again where I'm leading delivery for schools in a new portfolio structure and building a different kind of team. So that's over three years. It's been a huge amount of change consistently. And so the role has always changed and always been a challenge and I think that's what I look for in a role, a bit of a challenge where you can grow and you can learn. Equally you could step into a role and find out it's not the role for you. And in those circumstances, you don't feel like you need to stay for three years. Go find the thing that excites you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor I think you and Emma were saying a similar, you know, the spirit behind what you were both saying is very similar, which is that - do you feel like you're still bringing energy to the role? Do you feel like you're still learning? And if you are, then then stay. And I feel like when you were first, coming into your own, you take your first kind of career job. I found that rule of three helpful because, well, I don't know. I'm kind of just on the cusp of still being a millennial. I think I'm like, on the last year, possibly still being in on that millennial. Right. So when I kind of was starting to think about careers, I was a bit scared in a way because I was thinking, I have, I get itchy feet. I want to work on this exciting project. And then when I finish that, like, what else is happening in the world that I could kind of move to?

I think that advice is very useful to people who might be thinking about, you know, leaving after six months or something. It's kind of saying like, you know, get in there, see yourself mature, see yourself grow, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I kind of like what you said, the spirit behind it, which is really, are you still getting something from this and are you still giving something?

 

Jack Collier Yes. And I think probably a good takeaway from that mentality as well is that, don't beat yourself up in that first six months. In that first year, if you feel like I am struggling a little bit, you know, this is a big challenge. It's something new. I certainly found that myself. What I tell new starters now is, you know, after three months, you might think things are starting to come into place. But I think after six months, nine months, you'll start to go, Oh yeah, now I get it, now I get it. And really, until that point, you know, it's on us, it's on the team to support you, to be able to perform, to get you to that point. But it takes time and you shouldn't feel like you have that pressure to perform on day one because it is a complex organisation with complex work and you know, you're kind of a new person stepping into that is a lot of work to do in the early days, just in terms of building relationships, building knowledge, understanding the acronyms and all of those things which until you've done them, you can't perform in your role. So there is a sense of needing to build yourself up and not beat yourself up if it doesn't all fall into place on day one, two or three, you know. 

Adaobi Ifeachor That's really interesting. Are you talking about the these senior civil service roles as well as just generally?  

Jack Collier 100% 

Adaobi Ifeachor Because if you're on the outside and you're seeing someone in a leadership role, it may seem like they present really confidently and they kind of know what they want to do. And they come in with a vision and, you know, they're holding listening sessions of stuff with their staff and all that sort of stuff. And you really feel like, all right, well, okay, they they completely know what they're doing. But are you saying like on the inside, they may well feel like they really don't know what they're doing? And that's okay if you're if you're in that bucket. 

 

Jack Collier Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I definitely did not know what I was doing when I joined as a senior Civil Servant, you know, as a leader. But I think that's true of anyone. It's not just me and it's not just true of the senior roles. It's anyone stepping into a new environment, a new context needs time to learn that. And to an extent, you'll be making it up as you go along. The things that you described there, things like listening sessions, you know, are ways in which you can help get yourself oriented, help get your feet on the ground. As a leader, stepping into an organisation, often people have a, I think like 100 day plan and that always felt to me very scary. I didn't have a 100 day plan. I felt like I should have, but I didn't. Instead, what I did was understand what people needed from their leadership, where, what the history was in the organisation that would lead us to this point. What did my boss in that case Emma, want? Where did she want to get us and how was I going to help her get there? 

So there's steps that you can fall back on, and I don't think they're particularly that different to what you do in any other role either, it's just on a different scale. And in some cases, therefore, it takes a bit more, more time, I think, to perform really effectively as a leader. I certainly felt under a lot of pressure when I joined it in my first senior role. As we talked about, I was quite young. Coming into that role was quite aware that there's probably quite a lot of eyes looking at me and so I felt a lot of pressure to perform really effectively from day one. And actually, looking back, I shouldn't have felt that way. And that therefore was my advice to anyone stepping into those leadership roles. Ask for the help, ask for the support, both from your team and your peers, and you’ll get it because people want you to succeed. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So that is some really. Really useful advice for people who are new into a leadership role. But let's move to the next clip from Emma, where she's talking about the very beginning of the process, which is finding those senior roles in the first place. 

[music plays] What does recruitment look like in the kind of leadership roles, leadership positions? 

 

Emma Stace So I think well, firstly, there are fewer of them, so they're probably a lot more competitive. I mean, I kind of feel like as particularly at my level now where, you know, I'm really picky about what roles I want. But equally, the competition for the roles that I'm probably attracted to is more intense. So, I think it's more competitive. I think leadership roles are often about networking. So, I know we're going to talk about networking a lot, aren't we? And I think someone once gave me some advice, which is if you're going for a senior leadership role, and I think this is in whatever organisation you work for, so it's not Civil Service specific. The campaign for the role is beyond sending an application and turning up for an interview. I mean, you kind of need to find out as much about that organisation as you can, the people who work within it. If you know a board member or someone who's worked in the organisation, you kind of really need to immerse yourself in a kind of discovery process before you actually pitch up for an interview. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor For these leadership roles. In your experience, is it a case of they're not advertised? You just kind of reach out to places that you're kind of interested in working with and start that networking process? 

 

Emma Stace Not in my experience. So I do know, some people who are much bolder than I am, who will kind of go, I'd like to work for this organization let's have a chat. So, I do have colleagues and friends who are more like that. I'm probably a bit more conservative and a bit more shy and go down the formal interview route. So, you know, kind of head-hunters often have the roles now, so, you know, kind of we'll know if there's all kind of large recruitment agencies often have some of the key executive roles. Increasingly, people are advertising on LinkedIn. So I think, you know, a good LinkedIn profile is really important. And then obviously network so, you know, kind of people know people, clearly that's an important route in to senior roles. [music plays]

 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Wow. So I've got to ask you, Jack. What does? I love the term that Emma used there about the campaign for a role. The campaign for a role is more than just writing an application. Would you agree with that when it comes to going for a senior role here or anywhere? 

 

Jack Collier Tricky one, actually Adaobi. And maybe that's because I haven't actually applied for many senior roles. I think what Emma describes is definitely true in terms of, if you want to maximise the chances of success in your application for a job, you know, immerse yourself. Because that's going to lead you to be able to talk more authoritatively, to be more confident in interview situations, etc.etc. 

So, I think Emma provided some good advice there in terms of maximising your chances of success. However, the flip side of that is that I don't think there's kind of like a, you know, a dark underground network of black market of leadership positions going on where people are getting contacted and people are shifting around and this kind of thing. Almost all of the roles I've looked at or which I've been on interview panels for or I've been interested in or advertised, they've all been on LinkedIn. You might be approached by Head-Hunters that says, ‘Hey, we've got this role. Have a look at it and see if you're interested’. And so, I think it's important to do your homework and do your research, but that doesn't mean that you need to kind of be on the special WhatsApp or something like that, where all the best roles are going.

They're all out there and you can you can do that without necessarily being that super connected person. And actually, you know, if you're not that super connected person, if that's something that scares you a little bit and I'm probably one of those people that's not very good at networking, there are different things that you can do to help get your name out there and be that person, that a head hunter might say, ‘Hey, we're advertising this role. Will you have a look at it and apply for it?’ And that's things like; go and talk at a conference, write a blog post, get on your podcast Adaobi or host your own.

 

But, you know, there are things that you can do to showcase that you are passionate about what you do. Because ultimately, I've been on the inside table lots of times where we're recruiting people to senior positions.

We’re after someone first and foremost, who is extremely excited and passionate about what they do and how they do it and how they support other people to do that as well. And, you know, we all know that interviews are a awful way of of getting people through the door. But I can't think of what's the alternative. But certainly, I think having a panel of people understanding someone’s brand or someone what someone brings to the table before they even walk through the door is a massive plus, especially being on the other side of the table where you're thinking around what were they going to bring to the team, what can what can this person bring to a team. Cause it’s not about necessarily getting the best person for the job, it's about getting the best person for the role without make sense. It's not about taking all the job description tick boxes. It's about how is this person in a senior position going to lead this team, build the right culture, all those kinds of things. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Yes to everything you said about the blog, raising your visibility beyond the role and company you're in. And also no, because and let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. It's because I think that you're quite an unusual chap, to be honest. Jack, like you have spoken about basically getting into a role that people 20 years older than you were wishing that they could kind of get into. Like you have, you've had perhaps the challenge of a little bit of ageism, people wondering whether you are the, you know, the intern for the month or, you know, the new deputy director. And that has had its own challenge. But I'd say. There are groups of people, particularly women, particularly people of colour, who are up against some real unconscious bias. And sometimes things that are worse than that, and you almost have to prove yourself a bit more that you're a candidate that should be taken seriously. And it 100% should not be that way at all. But I'm a realist. If I want the job, I know that I've got to put in some extra time to make

myself credible in a way that maybe, not to be rude, but maybe that a young white man who appears middle class does not have to. So that's why I would kind of say yes to all the visibility things, yes to that. But then also as Emma said, competition for the leadership roles can be fierce. And imagine that you are up against someone who does those extra things. And by extra things, I mean, yes, to all the visibility things that we've talked about. But they also do a bit of homework, find out they know that a close friend is close friends with someone on the board, that they can have a lunch, that they can just, you know, maybe have a phone call or what I would call just extra steps. And I think it's all fair in love and right. If I'm trying to get a job and I happen to know somebody, then I think I'll use that connection. And if I don't, I mean, this is getting on to controversial ground. But if I don't know somebody and that's that that's the downside to this, if you don't know somebody, you have to be bold enough to network and form connections. And I've spoken on a previous pod where I've said, you know, for my current role, I didn't know anybody in the Civil Service, but I did a bit of homework and I found some people who were doing the role that I was applying for and I reached out to them on LinkedIn and I had like a kind of remote coffee with one of the guys, and he kind of really was very honest and frank about lots of parts of the culture and the job that I was applying for, and that allowed me to speak in a more intelligent way about the role than I would have been able to if I'd just applied, you know, just the regular way. So, I'd say yes to everything you're saying. However, let's be real. Let's be real people. We know that some groups, for whatever reason. Have a taller mountain to climb. And it shouldn't be that way. But. But it is. Or there'll be more women on boards, right? There'll be more women CEOs. So that would be my, I'll give you a right to reply though Jack.

 

Jack Collier No, I agree with you, Adaobi, and I think, so I guess I get quite a strong emotional feeling and if someone were to say to me, you know, if you want to be successful in this role, you've got to get in touch with a board member or, you know, someone who knows someone. That, to me feels really wrong. It's definitely not how I’ve I don’t think ever got on a job, actually. And as I said, maybe that's because I'm just really rubbish at networking. But as you say, let's be realistic. I said at the start. I do think it increases your chances of being able to get, as you say, talk more intelligently at the interview, feel more confident going into the interview. My point is, it's not that not the only way to do it. And you shouldn't feel like that is a mountain that you need to climb. You know that you have to make those kinds of networks at a really senior level in order to be successful at a senior level. And there are other things that you can do. And actually, there's some really great stories, I was just listening to a podcast actually about a guy that does designer at Airbnb, and leads one of the kind of design teams at Airbnb. But Airbnb found him because of what he did and what he was at the time I think actually posting on Instagram about and I thought was really, really cool story. Now obviously that's different to Civil Service. We can't go out and find people and say, Hey, you want this job? We can go out and kind of go, Hey, it'd be great for you to apply for this job, and here's what it is. I think the other thing I'd say as a senior leader within the Civil Service is that we are in a crisis as an industry, as government and as a senior leadership kind of cadre. And that's a diversity crisis. It's an inclusion crisis. You know, it's not a diverse set of people at the top of the most digital organisations. It's not a diverse set of people, top of government digital organisations either. So it is almost, you know, one of our top responsibilities as leaders to be building the bridge and building the ladder so that that isn't a problem in two, three, four, five years time. And that's the journey that I've been on. And I'm really proud of that journey, actually, and I feel really strongly about that. And if I were to be interviewing for a position, like I'd be interviewing for my job, for example, and interviewing candidates. One of the things I'd be asking them is, how do you build those bridges? What's your story around making sure that you're supporting others on this journey as well? I think that's a really, really important thing that a leader has to be able to show in 2022. Yeah, and should have been showing for years before as well.  

 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Right. We're going to listen to the next clip from Emma, where she talks about the shape of her career. 

[music plays] And tell me about that time since your twenties. Have you always been ambitious? Did you kind of say, ‘Alright, I want to get into a senior position somewhere’ and you planned your career? Or has it been more chance and sort of luck than that?    

 

Emma Stace I would say that my twenties, I definitely didn't plan my career. So a very quick run through of my early career experience. I left university. I had no clue what I wanted to do. I remember my dad. Like pitching up at home and my dad saying, ‘You're going to have to pay some money now to stay here, so you better go get yourself a job’. I mean, that was like my level of. That level of ambition and focus when I was like in my early twenties. So I went and got a job actually working for a bank. I was a Fast Stream HR Director and it seems incredible to say that out loud now. And I lasted six months because I just thought this is not where I want to be and who I want to be working with and what I want to be working towards. So it did make me think like, okay, I don't want this job. What kind of job do I want? And in my twenties I ended up in South Africa of all places. I went there because I fell in love and ah, there, partner at the time was moving to South Africa and I kind of went with them and I was a TV producer. I made lots of television back in the day. It was called edutainment. So like Sesame Street, lots of documentaries. But then I made a really concerted effort in my late twenties to get my act together. And two big things happened to me. Number one is I became a single mother and that really gave me purpose and ambition in terms of wanting to be able to provide financially for my for my son. And I did an MBA, which I don't really remember anything of the MBA itself anymore. But what it taught me was that I had a lot of transferable skills, and it showed me that, you know, whoever I was working with, I'm a really strong collaborator. I can bring people together. I'm good at sort of identifying the issues and resolving issues. And so it really taught me that I had some transferable skills. And from now, I've probably been a little bit more aware of how I manage my own career. But I kind of have three rules, which is, number one, can you deliver impact? Number two is it aligned to my values. And number three, are we going to have some fun? That's been my guiding mantra for the past 20 years.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Nice. Interesting that money has not been, not even made or even come anywhere near that list. That feels very intentional.

 

Emma Stace Well, I think it's you got to be paid enough to feel valued is kind of my benchmark. And certainly as a woman, I want to be paid equitably to everybody else working in the organisation. And I've been in roles where I found out that I have not been. So I know my worth. I'm prepared to negotiate for my worth. That money has never been the kind of driver. I think if it had Adaobi I’d have stayed at the bank at the first job. So I learnt that early on is that money doesn't necessarily mean you're satisfied in your career. [music plays] 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor And now coming back from that clip from Emma. Jack. Really briefly, do you. What would you say is the most important piece of advice you can give to someone about planning their career to get to the senior Civil Service? Is it more get your foot in the door, anywhere, doing anything, even if you don't really enjoy it that much. But it will help you kind of like, with your next leap? Is it you know, think about money if that is what kind of motivates you, or something else, like what would you kind of tell people when they're thinking about planning their career?   

Jack Collier Yeah. Yep, sure. And I think you probably know what I'm going to say to this Adaobi, which is that do what you're passionate about. I would say to anyone as well, don't feel like you should aim to be a, you know, a senior Civil Servant. Because as we talked about, that’s just a great in an organization. You know, what is it that you want to achieve? What do you want your career to look like? That might be, you know, I want to lead a design organization, I want to build services, I want to build a culture and environment for people to flourish and find out the things that excite you. Emma talked about going to a bank and finding out what didn't excite her, and I think that's really important too. And actually one of the great things about the Fast stream was being able to rotate through seats early on in my career where I got to try different things out and it was really through luck and chance that I ended up in a digital team and found out this is something I really, really enjoyed and was really passionate about. And I think that really carried through in terms of what I went on to do in my career. So my advice would be, do what you're excited about and you know, you'll, you'll end up in a good place. Don't try and be a specific grade or something or follow the money, you know, do what you're passionate about that excites you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Emma’s next clip was actually quite surprising. It's about the kind of tests that can be run to find the right leader. Let's play that clip. 

[music plays] When it comes to the interviews themselves, though. A lot of roles that are not in those leadership positions you might go to 1 interview and maybe you were asked to complete some sort of activity present back to the panel. Are you like, I'm assuming there's more than one interview because it's such high stakes getting the right person? And are you ever asked to do something where you'll present back to people?

 

Emma Stace Yes. So interviews that either I've been through or my colleagues or friends who I know who are sort of operating at the leadership level in organisations. I mean typically it's a first round interview where you've gone from a long list to a short list and you'll have a first round interview and then they'll go back to the hiring manager and have a conversation around ‘We want to take these candidates through’. Typically that's probably around four or five individuals, and those four or five individuals may be asked to do things like psychometric tests, which will kind of assess your personality, maybe some verbal reasoning tests to assess like, you know, are you natural at working with numbers? Can you synthesise information really quickly and assess a position. Staff panels, so that's often really important so meeting the staff or meeting the potentially the leadership team who'll be working with you so they have a stake in who the successful candidate is. And then usually a formal panel in which you may or may not be asked to present. You know, first 5 minutes tell us what you would do in this role and what impact you might like to have would be a typical type question. [music plays] 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Jack, are you kind of a, are you in favour of things like psychometric tests, anything beyond like an application, a straightforward interview, like a presentation? It feels like at senior levels more is demanded. Are you kind of, is that something you would support?

 

Jack Collier Yes. It’s a tricky one, right? Because the heart of all of this is an interview. And we just talked about how interviews are really terrible way to understand if someone's going to perform in that role and if it's a role for them, actually. So, ideas around psychometric tests and verbal reasoning tests and things like that, are really just augmenting the interview. I would say the core of the Civil Service remains that kind of competency style of questioning in an interview environment. So unfortunately, if you want to progress within the Civil Service to a senior position, you've got to get good at interviewing. And that's because that's ultimately where it will come down to. Once you've made a sift. Once you’ve made it through the sift, you go to an interview. Now, there might be other things around that we just talked about, like psychometric tests. And but you won't, you won't fail to get role on that unless you really kind of come out extremely strangely. And the other thing I would say is quite common feature of senior Civil Service interview process is a staff panel which can often be quite nerve wracking for people walking into that kind of arena, which is where you essentially meet what who might be your future staff members and they will feedback to HR on how you interacted with those people. And I've seen that. It's really, really interesting, actually, because it might be that you hold some biases that are shown through your interaction with staff members. Now staff members feedback to HR, HR observe the interactions, and they'll feed that into your interview panel. So it helps build a better interview overall. But ultimately it's down to that application process and the interview itself.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor With our final clip. We get some tips from Emma for those wanting to kind of who are aspiring to senior or leadership positions.

[music plays] Is there anything else about leadership recruitment, leadership interviews that is different that you wanted to call out? 

Emma Stace Yes, I think like the really big difference, and this is kind of what I tell people who I mentor and may maybe going for a leadership position for the first time, is in a junior role you'll be interviewed in terms of can the person technically do the role? Have they got the right level of skills and experience to do the role. In a leadership position I think the interview panel are much more looking for ‘Who are you? What do you value? What do you believe?’ So if you think about leadership, it's about what energy are you going to bring. What are your values? How do you lead? How do you build teams? Do you appreciate your own impact on others? So I always try and coach individuals going for their first leadership role in kind of three ways and this is really good advice that was handed to me in which I have actioned in my own career is number one, the first 5 minutes really matter. So if you can get through the first 5 minutes confidently in an assured way, it's pretty much free sailing from there on in. So if you're asked to do a presentation practice, it's practice again and again and get through those first 5 minutes in a really assured way. And then the other advice to candidates is really show up in terms of who you are, what you believe, what you value, because that's the difference, I think, between doing a junior role and interviewing for a junior role versus kind of showing up in a leadership position. So I'm really interested in how candidates learn, what mistakes they've made and whether they're mindful of those mistakes and can play that back into kind of being a stronger leader in the future. So all of that really matters. So my advice to anyone listening to this thinking, Oh my God, I'm just about to apply for a big senior leadership position is believe in yourself. Everyone's making it up all the time anyway. So there's no such thing as a perfect answer and there's no such thing as a perfect leader and really tell the story of who you are and what you believe in.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Wow. So I. The first thing that comes to my mind after hearing that is, how many people and I'm specifically talking about my underrepresented groups here, women, people of colour, for example. How many people just look at the senior leadership, or leadership positions and think, you know, that's just that's not something I can achieve. You know, that's too I'm they're not going to want me or like I haven't got enough experience for this or whatever. But hearing you say that it's as much as, a large part of it is about how you sell yourself and your your values and how how you would kind of the kind of culture that you would create as a leader that is super important. And I think when you when you boil it down to that, it kind of opens the door a bit more, doesn't it? You start thinking, well, yeah, you know what? If, if, if, if nothing else, we've all worked for absolutely terrible managers, right? In the past, for whatever reason, they've been terrible. And I've always thought I've always thought to myself, thank you for being a terrible manager, because now I know how not to do it. And when I am in the position where I'm leading other people, I will create a culture this way, I’ll allow this. We all have that experience, we've all have those kinds of thoughts, and it's really nice to know that we can bring those to the table in a in a leadership interview and smash it, basically.

 

Emma Stace Yeah. Your response and reflection prompts me to also offer one final piece of advice on this discussion, which is if you are applying for senior leadership roles, ask to be on senior leadership panels. So if you're a Civil Servant listening to this, ask if you can be, for example, on a senior Civil Service panel, because actually there is nothing better than learning from how other people show up to an interview and listening at the end of it to the panel's remarks. And so, I'm always particularly for those I mentor, I always try and either get them on panels that I'm chairing so that they can have that experience. But equally, you know, knock down the door and say, I'd like to give it a go. Because I think you can learn a lot from just watching others, both the good and the bad Adaobi as you said.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor That is great advice. [music plays] 

Do you have a final tip for our dear listeners that might be useful for them?

 

Jack Collier Yeah. So I've been doing a lot of coaching actually for people that are aspiring to move into those roles partly as well because, you know, I've been going on to shared parental leave and so I wanted someone to step up into my role. One thing that I've said to people consistently is who are you? I think Emma talks about this in the clip a little bit. What what's your brand really? Think about it as a brand. What's your brand? What do you bring to the role? What do you lead for and how do you lead? If you can answer those questions, and you can bring those out in interview. I think you've got a really good chance not of walking into any job, but walking into the right job where your brand and what you're there to do kind of fits really well into the into the job that you're applying for. And I think that's, that's worked to a degree for people that I've been coaching. It's been really interesting kind of supporting people to really get across who they are and what they can bring to a role. And that's important at a senior Civil Service kind of position, that leadership position, because you're not being asked to do a single job. You know, I, I talked about earlier all of those different things and how the role has changed. And, you know, I was hired a specific stage of DfE’s growth and we’re now at a different stage of that. But the skills that I've got and I think what I lead for has remained consistent throughout. And that is super important, I think, at this leadership level.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Thank you so much, Jack. And thanks to everyone who's been listening, we hope. As usual, we hope that you enjoyed it. And also, thanks to Emma for providing these clips just before she left for the Department for Work and Pensions. We know it was a busy time, so we're glad that she was able to fill us in there. So, Jack, if people want to connect with you on the interwebs. You have a Twitter I believe, @JackCols. Is that right?

 

Jack Collier That's the one, I guess drop me a DM or tweet at me. I'm really happy to support people, particularly if they're interested in kind of stepping into these leadership roles. Hopefully I can help.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Perfect. So if you dear listener have something you'd like us to cover in a future pod. Please do tell us. Our Twitter is DfE_DigitalTech and our blog. You can just Google it. It's DfE digital blog. You'll find us.

 

Thanks so much to Lou Mullan and Rosie Roff our wonderful producers and thanks from me your host Adaobi Ifeachor. Until next time, goodbye.

 

 

The interview panel’s perspective

In this episode, we hear from Nettie Williams, Head of Community and Communications. 

 

Nettie has been a civil servant for 22 years and has sat on several interview panels - for a variety of grade’s and roles. Here she shares her advice on how to get to the interview stage - and offers a unique perspective as a panel member. 

 

Transcription

 

[intro music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Hello. Welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. Today we're going to be talking about interview panels. For you candidates who are perhaps thinking for going for a promotion. Or maybe you're outside of the civil service and you just want to know, how does it all work? Well, you're very lucky because today we're going to be lifting the veil on that and understand how it's all made. So, our guest today, people, our guest is Nettie Williams. Some of you might be thinking, I've heard that name before, and that's because Nettie is one of the Podcast's producers. Nettie, welcome to the pod, on the front end.

 

Nettie Williams

Hi. Thank you for having me.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So how does it feel being on the front end of things instead of in the background? 

 

Nettie Williams

Thoroughly nerve wracking. Like I'm in an interview, to be honest.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

The reason why you're a guest on the show isn't just because of your experience behind the scenes as a producer on the podcast, but you're actually someone who has held interviews. You've actually been one of the recruiters. That's right, isn't it?  

 

Nettie Williams

Yes, indeed. Many times. Many times in the civil service in different departments.  

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  

And I've only worked at the Department for Education in the Civil Service, but since I've been here, I have made a point of being on interview panels as well. And if you're outside the civil service, you should know that there are different grades. So I've kind of sat on panels for main staff and senior civil servants as well. Where's your experience lie, Nettie?  

 

Nettie Williams

My experience for recruitment is generally middle grade, sort of what we call grade seven and below. Also junior grades. So people who have maybe come in at executive officer level or a higher executive officer level, and then they worked their way up to a grade seven, what we call middle management. But often I've also recruited digital specialists, been involved in panels, recruiting digital specialists. So I've got quite an array of experience, but I haven't interviewed senior candidates like yourself, Adaobi.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Well, what I want to say first off is that I really want people to understand that when you are coming to an interview, if you're invited to an in-person interview or a remote interview, the main thing you should realise is that the panellist across the table from you, at least in our case, as in the civil service, they really want you to succeed. We're not, we're not putting people in and like putting in nasty questions and trying to trip them up.  

 

Nettie Williams

Yeah, absolutely. We want to set you up for success, which sounds like a bit of a cliché, but we really want people to shine. We're not there to catch you out. The interview, the time slot you have, it's your time to talk about what you've done at length and to be questioned about that so you can flip it. You can invert it and think this is a golden opportunity for me to talk about all the things I've asked about whether it's my voluntary work, my personal life, or my professional life. This is my time to shine and no one is there to trip me up, we're genuinely here to get the best out of you.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So what do we mean by sifting, exactly, Nettie? 

 

Nettie Williams

So sifting. Apparently it's not a widely used term across all the sectors in recruitment. To sift is when you go through all those applications and you cross-check with your list of criteria with what the candidate has included. And I think somebody might have mentioned already in this podcast, if you put a heading by the piece of text that talks about you meeting the criteria that helps people like me get through the sift smoothly and more quickly. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

That that gemstone of great advice was me. And so basically what I'm doing right now is I'm jumping on civil service jobs and I'm searching for digital jobs across all of the different government departments, not just Department for Education, but you've got Ministry of Justice there, department for Work and Pensions, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, Ministry of Defence and so on and so forth. And if I click on a senior user researcher, it's about 54,000 to 64,000, and it's a grade seven, which is a really good senior role before you get into like executive type positions in the senior civil service. It says here they're looking for three. I'm just having a look, see the location. It says these roles will be based in London. I think whatever the location says these days post-pandemic, I think you should still go for it anyway.

 

Nettie Williams

Yeah, and it's always worth asking and reaching out. And it's entirely up to you as you do that after you've submitted an application and know that you've got an interview or before you even submit an application. As Vita Shapland-Howes said on a previous podcast; do ask those questions, find out. Reach out. Get to know the people. Have that call. That's absolutely fine, do that. It makes sense. And also, yeah, that the world has changed. COVID has brought a different a different working reality and if you're in digital and technology jobs, that might mean that the flexibility is greater than what was originally stated in the form online.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So on this particular advert, which is for a senior user researcher, I picked at random, it's for the Department for Work and Pensions. It says a bit about the department. It says a bit about the job description. So as a senior user researcher, you will be doing all these other things x, y, z. Then it says some behaviours that you'll be tested against. You'll either see stuff like, essential skills or you might see behaviours. So in this particular example that I'm using, they've said; We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process: Changing and improving. Communicating and influencing. Delivering at pace. 

 

If there are not that many applicants, maybe ten or less, that sort of thing, they will look at your application in reference to all of the different essential skills or behaviours. If there are loads, like I said, there were 200 on one recruitment round that I sat on a panel for then they're not going to test you against all six because frankly we haven't got that amount of time to put into sifting the applications. So we'll just test you on the top three. So that's pretty crucial to know. That means those top three behaviours or essential skills are where you really have to kind of go to town demonstrating that you know what you're talking about. So for this one, for example, the bottom behaviour or essential skill was delivering at pace. n that case what I would do is I would have a section of my interview answer, I would give it a title saying 'Delivering at pace' and under that I'd use the star method. So I'd kind of say, what was the situation where I delivered at pace? What was the task that I had to do? And it's really important you talk about what you did rather than the team, and then what was the action that you took to deliver at Pace? And then what was the result of you taking that action? And actually. It is okay if you have an example that was a bit of a disaster. That's okay. That shows a like a human side of you. As long as if it ended badly, as long as you then explain what you learnt from it, how you've taken that learning and done other things with it. 

 

Nettie Williams

Yeah, that star model is quite straightforward and I think once you get into the pattern of answering questions according to Situation, Task, Action, Result, (STAR) it's pretty straightforward. One thing I'd say is for a lot of people, they're not used to this style of interview and they're not used to the STAR. And we know that. We understand that. And it takes us back to that point about we don't want to trip people up. So that's why we ask what we call probing questions or follow up questions. So if somebody talks about the situation and the task and the action, but they don't tell us the result, they don't get to that point, we will follow up with a question saying, oh, what was the result and what was the outcome? And that's because we want you to shine. And we know that nerves can take over and you might forget to give us that fourth component of the answer. So we're here, Like I say we're on your side, and we will ask plenty of questions to make sure we get all we can out of you so that your score is better than if we hadn't asked those questions.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Well Nettie, I'm going to throw you under the bus now because I didn't tell you I was going to do this, but let's see how it goes. If I was going to ask you, you're in an interview now and I'm like, well, Nettie, thank you very much for coming for this interview to be a podcast producer. Could you give us an example of a time when you had to deliver at Pace? I'm literally making up this this question on the spot. And, Nettie, using that STAR method, how would you answer?  

 

Nettie Williams

I would always take a breath. I think it's really important for candidates to not feel rushed. You can think, you can say, bear with me, I'm just going to run this through in my mind. Also candidates are allowed to have a notepad. I'd take a deep breath. I just plan out what to say. And then I would start talking about, well, in 2017, I was leading a team and there was a ministerial ask, which was that we covered an event on social media and then I would start to talk about what the problem space was and what the task that I needed to do. And then I would go into specifics of what I did and the outcome. But what's important to remember, Adaboi, is you don't have all day to answer these questions. That's why practising beforehand at home just to get your your mouth around the words is really good because it just helps you feel a bit more prepared for the interview to think about how to tell your story, in about 5 minutes, because that's how much time per question you will have. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

That's such a good point. I'll tell you what I do as well as a little tip is for those three bullet points, changing and improving. Maybe you've changed something or improved whatever it is. Communicating and influencing. Influencing is probably about like stakeholders or influencing members of the team who feel quite differently from you or, you know, that kind of thing. And delivering at pace is pretty straightforward. But what I'll do is I will write those bullet points. Write those behaviours or essential skills down on a blank word document or something. And then I will do like a search online for competency based interview questions, questions that ask you, just like I did, like a time when you have demonstrated some potential thing. And so if you do that, you could put communicating competency interview question or something like that, and then you'll get like a list of them. And I will write the different, I'll write a couple of different versions of each question under each heading, and then what I'll do is I will try to come up with at least two examples for each question, and I will make sure that they are different examples from the one I put on my application. Because if the interview panel wants you to probe a bit more deeply into something you've written, they'll ask about that. But mainly if you can show like a different flavour of it, you know, like if you can share like a different example, you going to sound yourself in really good stead. And as Nettie said, practice, practice, practice. So for the communicating and influencing. I may have the one that I wrote down on my application form, but then when it comes to interview, I will have 2 really solid examples that I could talk through in the STAR method and I practised it and I feel really confident about it. So yeah. That's kind of how I would approach tackling that sort of thing.

 

Nettie Williams

Yeah, I think you have to be quite systematic. You have to be prepared and systematic, but that's good. Preparation for an interview. That that's, that's gold.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Okay. So we've sifted. We've gotten rid of the applications where just looking at their CV and seeing like, oh, they don't even remotely have any applicable experience here. And I'm immediately removing those from the pile. Then I'm kind of looking at the ones that do probably a little bit more. Am I seeing those key words, like, I have hundreds to scan through. So I'm seeing like, do I have keywords here, like what are the sorts of things they're saying? And then it starts looking good. I'll go to the application answer. Now, this is where a lot of people fall down, in my opinion, because at this stage we're not asking you for much. We want your work history and we want an application answer. And sometimes you'll see an application where someone's written maybe like a couple of sentences. I'm always really shocked when I come across this where people haven't really given an in-depth answer. On the flip side, don't write war and peace either, because all you're trying to do with this application is get an interview. You're not actually trying to get the job at this point. You're just trying to get through to an interview. So all we need to know is, those essential skills or behaviours we've asked for. Give yourself some subheadings. Write something that demonstrates, not just I have skills in influencing people, how have you? Give me an example, a specific time when you have influenced something. If you can do that under all of those points you've got yourself an interview.  

 

Nettie Williams 

There is something to add there Adaobi, on the GOV.UK platform which is where people input their, their applications. There's a thousand word limit on that page and a thousand words i t's not a lot. So if you've got to answer anything between six and eight job criteria, within a thousand words, you need to be really concise.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Or at least really hit those top three really hard. And then the other one's a bit less so. Also, here's something that's worth knowing, is that if you have a disability, I speak as someone who's neurodiverse so I know what I'm talking about here. There's a section or a checkpoint where you can say that you have a recognised disability. Now what that means is if you meet the essential criteria that we've asked for, then we will take you through to interview. It may, there may be all sorts of reasons why this application process is not bringing out your best, is not allowing you to demonstrate what you can do.  So because of that, we do allow people who show that they have all the essential skills and behaviours through to the next stage. Now that does mean that you have to kind of deliver a strong interview, but it's something to bear in mind. Don't feel, I guess I could say, because I have dyslexia, for example, I don't necessarily consider that a disability. But if it guarantees me an interview and I've shown that I can, I've shown on paper that I meet the essential skills and criteria and I'm guaranteed an interview off the back of that, I think use the assistance that is there under the law, like use the assistance that is there to allow you to shine and do your best in an interview. I know that might be a little bit controversial, but it's an option that I think you should be aware of if you do have a disability.

 

Nettie Williams

Absolutely. And also when people get to interview, we do ask them if they have any access needs that they might not have already declared. So some people like the questions to be copied and pasted into the chat, which is great because nerves can get the better of people. And to have  a question reiterated and text really helps. Also, we're setting tests, writing tests or presentations. If people need extra time to prepare that they will they will get that as well.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Okay. So we've talked  about the application process. You've been sifted, you've booked your interview day. Now it's the interview day. Nettie, what what are the... Give me some examples of things that you've experienced as a panellist where they're like the perfect examples of what you should not be doing.

 

Nettie Williams

Okay. The one that really strikes me is if you are asked to do a presentation and that presentation needs to be 5 minutes long, it should be 5 minutes long, it shouldn't be 6 minutes long or 2 minutes long. If it's in an organisation that are big on user needs, then do what is asked. And that's something I always look at because I think it's about reading instructions and meeting user needs. So stick to stick to what's asked. What I noticed in candidates is they are often very nervous, understandably so. I urge people to try and not be nervous. You know, it's a hard ask isn't it, but I find that making people comfortable, checking they've got water, maybe cracking a joke or two (I'm not talking Stand-Up Comedy) but you know, we're all humans. And also telling people about tech issues They happen to the best of us, all of us, all the time. And they will happen in interviews. And there's absolutely no need to worry about that. I see people get really anxious when there's been bandwidth problems. And it's okay to turn your camera off and you know in what is now more often than not a remote world online you know it's okay for us to switch cameras off, use the chat channel and flex. You know, these are changing times and we're very responsive to that. Nothing is set in stone and we are on your side.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

And I'd say if you, particularly if you're in person, then the kind of routine I go through... To be honest, I think I'm one of those rare people who don't really get interviews. But I certainly have some, you know, extra energy when I get into the room. Maybe that's nervous energy, who knows? But what I'll tend to do is I'll ask a question as I'm sitting down, and it's really just to give me an extra moment to breathe and settle and a way of just spending time looking at each interviewer and just kind of getting to feel more comfortable with the situation I'm in. I remember like I was going for an interview about this job reporting like I used to be a journalist, people, this is a this is a whole different side of Adaobi. But like I used to be a journalist and I was going for an interview about an African news desk job, and there was like a new minister, like the minister for like some kind of relevant government department had just been announced that day and I kind of asked a question that was relevant about that, and we chatted about that for a couple of minutes. It was really just a way of making me feel comfortable. So I've noticed, like in DfE, what tends to happen is that the first question is not marked or graded in any way. It's just just kind of breaking the ice question. 

 

Nettie Williams

Yeah, and that's a good thing. It's 5 minutes for people to chat about themselves, their motivation for applying it puts more ease. And what I would also like to say is, we all need jobs, we all need to pay our rent or mortgage. You know, people need jobs, but people also need to choose the employer as much as the employer needs to choose the person. So I really urge candidates, before you have an interview, you might be having a conversation down the pub or in a cafe the night before with your friends going, I'm really nervous and if I got the job, I wonder what the culture's like. I wonder what my boss would be like. And you've got those questions, ask them. Ask them in the interview. Be your true self. And, and if you get the reaction from us that you want, that's a good thing if you feel that we're authentic that helps you choose us for the right motivations. So ask questions that you think maybe you should ask it's absolutely fine. I love the bit of the interview where people ask me and my panel colleagues questions is my favourite bit. I think it really shows people's personality and, and it's nice to have the tables turned.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yeah. I did actually ask once, 'So does the team ever like spend time together outside of work? And and the person was like, well, you know, it's kind of shift work, so there's not really a room for that, although sometimes we do go out for drinks together and that sort of thing. So it's kind of like a nice little way of finding out what the atmosphere, like what the team culture was like. And so yeah, feel free to kind of ask those things. I'd say in your practising of your interview questions, when you are speaking aloud, it's really important to speak them aloud, not just like read back answers you might have typed. When you're practising it be aware of like your body language like how you're sitting, whether you're fiddling with your hands or tapping on a glass of water or something. Be aware of verbal tics that you might have. And one way of checking cause you're not always aware of things that you say all the time. So one way of checking is just to practise your answer and record it as a voice memo or something and listen to it back. And you'll hear you'll start to hear things that you might not have heard before. Because when I've been on panels, sometimes I've heard people say stuff like 'like' all the time. So they might.. Let's talk about the weather and say like 'the weather, like in Manchester. Well, it's like it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of sunny today and like, that's like not really like'. And and I'm just laying on thick here but there are different kind of verbal tics that people have and they're not aware of it. And when they are answering in an interview sometimes all you can hear is that, like maybe they're saying umm or ahhh and those kinds of things if you can kind of you know, try to reduce it, it will make life easier. So those kinds of things. 

 

Nettie Williams

Good point. Good point.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Right. Is there any sort of final advice that you, I'm just really aware of everything I'm saying right now, in case people are like Adaobi, you say the word 'like' and 'sort of' and, 'you know', and kind of all the time. Well, you know what, guys? It's different when you're on a podcast. It's different when you're on a podcast. But let's go back to my final question, which was. Is there any final advice you'd like people to walk away with? You know, they've gone through the interview, they've asked their questions. Remember, don't ask about the salary at this point. Vita told us, don't ask about salary in your first interview. What else should they be thinking about?

 

Nettie Williams

There is something which is really positive for people who pass the interview but who don't actually get the job. So in the civil service we have like a benchmark. You need to score, say, over 20 in order to be considered as having passed the interview. So say four people get 20 points or more. The person with the highest number of points, say 26, will get the job. But the people who get between 25 and 20 are put on what we call reserved list. And that's a list of people who have been interviewed, who have done really well and who will be considered for jobs that have, I think is at least 50% of the same job criteria. So don't be disheartened if you don't get the job. You will be put on the reserve list. And that means there are opportunities possibly for you in the pipeline. And you can have a follow up conversation after your interview. So all is not necessarily lost. So that's a good point to note. And just ask us questions. Interview us as much as we interview you and we're on your side.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

The last things I would say then is sometimes it can take ages to hear back. Hopefully not in your case if you're going for a job in the civil service. But sometimes it can take a long time for people to get back to you. And that's because after the interview, either immediately after, the next day maybe, even a couple of days later, all of those people who were on the panel need to come together, will discuss all of the candidates will, score each particular thing that we were asking for. So like on those behaviours that I mentioned will score the candidate on how they demonstrated something. And when we differ widely, so I might say,' Oh, that was terrible. I think I'm gonna have to give them a one' and somebody else might be 'I thought it was great I think they should..' I mean, the extremes are very unlikely, but it does happen more than you'd think. And so if I gave them a one and Nettie gave them a five, there would need to be some discussion there and some debate around what the final score would be. And there are times when you have to fight for a score for a candidate because you know, you feel that they are being marked too harshly. So you'll kind of bring up examples. So you'll talk about how they answered something in the interview and maybe even go back to their application and say that, look, we know that they have this kind of experience and, you know, you you root for people based on their performance. And if you feel like another panellist hasn't quite scored them as high as you as you think they deserve, then you will put forward your reasons on how they performed and how they wrote an application as to why. So that whole process can take a little bit of time. So don't feel disheartened if you don't hear back immediately and then, oh was there anything you wanted to say at that point, Nettie?

 

Nettie Williams

Just, there is a moderator who will be involved in all those discussions, making sure there's balance and those discussions take place fairly and the score that is agreed on is done so with transparency. So yeah, it's a healthy, it can be a healthy debate, but a necessary one. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yes. And I will say it's so important that the moderators are there. If you're trying to, let's use an extreme example. If you're trying to...you like the same band as the candidate. This has never happened, by the way. This is an extreme funny example. If you like the same band as a person, you're like, 'Well, I really think they should be scored here because they also like the pretty reckless.' The moderator would jump in at that point and say like that you can't score accounts on their band choice. Don't be ridiculous. So when I say there's debates, it's a it's a healthy debate based on the evidence that was provided in the interview and in the application forms. And yeah, I think that's kind of it. I guess the thing is, hopefully if you do decide to go through this process, you'll notice that it's quite a diverse group of panellists, and that's because we want to make sure we're representing the candidates who are applying and that they feel confident that. You know, when you go for an interview, you also see someone who's like you or you can see yourself in that organisation by the people who are sitting on the panel. Nettie, is there anything final, final. You want to say before we wind this up?

 

Nettie Williams

 think you've covered it all, Adaobi. Thank you. That was really useful. I've learnt stuff too. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Awesome. So thank you to everyone who's been listening. We hope that you really enjoyed it if you did, and even if you didn't, we'd love to hear from you and get some feedback on how we're doing. So our Twitter is  DfE_DigitalTech and our blog is easily findable on Google, DfE Digital and Technology Blog. Thanks so much to my guest pod producer Nettie Williams. Nettie, where can people find you on the interwebs? 

 

Nettie Williams

They can find me at nettie noodles. @nettienoodles on Twitter. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Speak to you next time. Bye. 

A diary of a successful job candidate

In this short episode, we hear from Tom Adams, Head of user research, about the last time he interviewed for a Civil Service role. 

Tom talks about how he prepares for job interviews, how he harnesses his nerves, and how recruitment is different in the public and private sector. So a great listen if you’re thinking about joining the Civil Service. 

 

Transcription

 

[intro music plays] 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Hello. Welcome to Think digital, act human. A podcast from the Department for Education where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. This episode is for all my job hunters out there. If you're preparing for an interview and you're feeling a bit nervous. If you've read all the advice on the Internet and it's still not really kind of clicked with you, this is your episode. It's kind of like a diary of a successful candidate. We found someone at the DfE who applied for a digital job and he was successful. So he's going to talk to us about his tips, his tricks, what he did to prepare and what he did afterwards, frankly. So we hope that you'll like it. Enjoy.

 

Tom Adams

My name is Tom Adams. I am the Head of user research at Department for Education. The last role that I actually interviewed for was for lead user researcher at Department for Education, and that was just before the pandemic. So to prepare for the interview. This is the third civil service interview that I've done, I think. And so actually I'd had a bit of practice by that point preparing for civil service interviews. So what I did was I really focussed in on the job description and what I call the essential criteria in the job description. And I made sure I had a range of examples that I could talk about from that job description. And I used something called the STAR format, which you can go and read about online to structure. But I basically just made sure I had a lot of examples to talk about. I am somebody who does, who can wing it and can just sort chat around, but I know that if I start off with some quite solid examples, wherever the, wherever that goes and whatever kind of follow up questions I had, I was reasonably confident that I'd be able to be able to cover them and be able to cover those essential criteria.

 

Tom Adams

 So one thing I like to do when I go into those is sort of feel confident in myself. So this sounds really odd, but what I did for a previous interview was I went and bought a new pair of jeans that morning, and so I was wearing a brand new pair of jeans when I went into that interview and you just sort of feel a bit smarter and you know, and sort of, I don't know, I think part of it might be thinking about something other than the interview, because otherwise I find I might obsess on the details before I'll go in there. But, you know, it's feeling confident in myself as I go in there and also making sure that I'm not just obsessing over every single possible minute before I go in there about that interview.

 

Tom Adams 

I felt quite confident going into this interview because I knew that I could do the job and I knew that I had solid examples to talk about. I also already knew a couple of people who were working in Department for Education, in user research roles. So I had a good idea of the community. I knew I managed to get a good idea from talking to them of the kind of thing that was valued here at Department for Education, which helped me choose some of the things I was going to talk about in the potential answers I might talk about so I did feel quite confident, like, quietly confident with this one. Also, when you go into an interview, you never know. So there's always nerves. So you might hundred percent know that you're really great, but somebody else might go in who's even better than you. So you're still a bit nervous. But I try and get, I try not to have those nerves when I go into interviews and just do the best that I can. And if somebody is better than me, fine. But as long as I can come out and feel like I've done the best job. I find nerves can be quite useful going into interviews, although only to an extent. One thing I used to do, although since I got middle aged and started getting fat, I do this less. But I used to buy some sweets before I went into like a big meeting or an interview or anything like that. I’d just get like a packet of wine gums and like eat a packet of wine gums and have that sugar burst before I went in there. Or I might have a coffee, but I had to be really careful that I don't have too much sugar or too much coffee because then that puts like too much of an edge on the nerves. But I think nerves, nerves aren't a bad thing. I think if you're not nervous going into something that might mean that you're not, you know, that you're missing something. Two things that I always do in interviews now that I've learnt over 20 years of different jobs and going for interviews, I always take in notes because my mind goes blank sometimes. So I might have five amazing examples that I can give. But if I can't remember at the time, then then what's what's the point? So I take in basic notes. I don't, I don't write things out for me to read out, but I take in prompts for me to remember the right examples to tell. And I know having been an interviewer as well as sitting on interview panels, I like it when people bring in notes. You know, you're not going to be judged. I know that I'm not going to be judged poorly for bringing in notes, it shows that someone's prepared and thinking about things. So I definitely write down my examples and take them in and use them as prompts for when I'm giving answers. And the second thing that I always try and do in interviews is - at the end of my answer, so I've given my example, I've answered the question I will ask the interview panel; 'did that answer your question? Is there anything else that you'd like to hear from me?' And that allows you know, it's a bit sneaky in a way, because it allows them a few minutes to think about other things they can ask me, which allows me to be able to give the best answer. You know, they will always ask follow up questions. But this means they're actually going and having an opportunity to consider those follow up questions a little bit more. I have found that that has kind of slightly got a slightly surprised response from a couple of panels, a couple of job interviews. And it can give me a second chance sometimes if  my first answer hasn't quite answered what the panel are looking for. It gives me a second chance to give a different example sometimes. So it's a bit sneaky, but I find that that has definitely worked. 

 

Tom Adams 

After the interview, I genuinely don't remember what I did. Probably what I did was,  went home and did bedtimes and read stories and didn't think about it afterwards. It's kind of the, is the worst time you know, you've done everything you can and, you know, you just have to wait. And with particularly civil service interviews, you might have to wait for a couple of weeks before you hear because that's just how the process works. And it is tough. You are always thinking about it and thinking of the different things you could have said and you know, the missed opportunities. But you just have to kind of get on with it afterwards and carry on, life goes on.

 

Tom Adams 

So I had quite a long private sector career before I came into Civil Service, and one of the things that I found very surprising coming into service were how different the interview process is. So in in private sector, I was used to going to two or three rounds of interview and whittling down from lots of lots of interviews down to the last two and and having different, you might have questions, like interview questions in one interview and then you go back for another one and you're doing a presentation in the Civil Service. So I found it really quite a culture shock for me that everything is done in one and you're in there in an hour when you're out. And it felt, it felt quite scary the first couple of times I did that because I felt like I didn't have time in an hour to really get everything across that I needed to. I think there is quite a lot of pressure on that, but I think the way that I've dealt with it subsequently is just think, well, what can I do? What can I say in the answer and really think about those potential answers beforehand. And what we certainly do in the Civil Service, which I didn't find in public sector, was we kind of tell you in the job applications what what we're looking for in in that job. So I could look at the job spec for my job and understand the examples that I would need to give. So as long as as long as I really started picking apart that job and that look, that role description, I could plan the kind of answers that I would need to take in that interview. And I could be confident that I was taking everything I needed to in there in a way that I couldn't do in the private sector. So I think if you're coming from private sector, my experience was definitely you will find it a culture shock coming into that interview but there are there are advantages to it because you can really tailor your answers based on that job description. I would certainly advise if you've got questions, ask them. And I know at the Department for Education, you've got a really good recruitment team who will make sure that the right people get those questions and will respond to those questions. So there's always an opportunity here at DfE for you to clarify what a panel might be looking for from you and clarify more about the role. So, so definitely, we are a place where you can come and ask questions before you come into that interview.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So that was Tom Adams, Head User Researcher at the DfE talking about how he made it into DfE digital. And that is one view of the interview process that is a successful candidate's view. But of course, there's the other side of the table. And next episode, myself and a special guest are going to be talking about what it's like to sit as panellists, interviewing people. What we're looking for, what we're expecting and what we kind of think about when we're going through the whole process. We'll reveal everything. We're pulling back the curtain, people. So we do hope that you'll join us. Until then, you can find out all about us on Twitter @DfE_DigitalTech. And of course, you can Google our blog, which is DfE Digital blog. Thanks again to Tom Adams and thanks to you dear listener. See you next time. Bye.

 

[outro music plays] 

 

Job application do’s and don’ts

Here is the brand new series of our ‘Think digital, act human’ podcast. We shine a light on the stories of the people behind our digital and technology projects.

 

In this second series, we’ll be focussing on Civil Service recruitment.

 

In this episode, our host, Adaobi Ifeachor, gets to know Vita Shapland-Howes, Recruitment and early talent team lead for DfE Digital and Technology. 

 

Vita gives us an overview of the recruitment process from start to finish. She also talks about what panel members look for in an interview, what makes a good job advert and name-blind recruitment. So plenty of tips for both candidates and employers.

 

Transcription 

Adaobi Ifeachor

 

Hello. Welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education. Where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. 

 

Welcome back, listeners. This is the very first episode of our second season and we've got a bit of a doozy for you. So this season we've decided instead of doing an eclectic mix of subjects like we did in the first season, we’re going to focus the entire season on recruitment. And why are we doing this you might be asking. But we decided we wanted to demystify the entire process. So for people who would like to go into the civil service but have no idea where to even begin because there's so many different types of jobs, there's so many different types of departments, even. For those types of people this is going to be a great season for you, but also for people who haven't really considered the civil service. This should be enlightening for you too. I'm particularly thinking about you digital and tech specialists, because when do you get your qualifications, when you get your experience, is the civil service the first place that people think of for a digital tech career? I'm not convinced, but perhaps this recruitment series, lifting the veil, will kind of inspire you in new directions. So our very first guest of our second season is the brilliant Vita Shapland-Howes. 

 

Hey, Vita, how are you? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes Hey, Adaobi. I'm very well, thank you. I'm very pleased to be here. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So for our listeners, who are you and what is it that you do? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes So I am the digital and technology recruitment and early talent team lead. I lead in all things to do with attracting new people to work with us in the Department for Education as a digital and technology specialist. And we do all the recruitment for this area, as well as the onboarding of digital and technology specialists. So when you join and you need all the kit to do what you need to do, as well as meet all the people that you need to meet, we help set up your sort of beginning and introduction to your career within the Civil Service. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor What are the different stages in terms of like you hear whispered on the internal grapevine that somebody might want to offer a job, open a job vacancy. What happens then?

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

 In terms of how we do it now? We do ask generally just for CVs and personal statements. So that's normally how you start off the process with us. But instead of doing that to an email address, like you do with other organisations, just submit it through there or through LinkedIn, we have to put every job role onto civil service jobs. That's our kind of portal, that's our front door to our recruitment service and process. So even if you see our jobs on LinkedIn or other job boards, you will have to be led to that site. And then it might take a while for you to hear back from us. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So let's dig into some of the things that you said. Is the deadline I like a hard, super hot deadline? If you miss an application deadline, could you try and work out who the hiring manager and just sending you stuff anyway? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

It is a super hard deadline. That's a very good point, Adobe. No, you would not be able to send your CV to the hiring manager. I mean, you could definitely get in touch in case there are other opportunities in the future. But because everything goes through a specific system, it is a no go after a specific time and generally it's at midnight on that closing date. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Okay, this is the part that I found super different when I applied for my role as a product manager was that it seemed to be completely blind. They didn't want me to include my name anywhere. They basically were like I don't tell us anything that might identify anything beyond the generic about us.  I don't even think I put the years of my jobs. I think I put like two years here. One year they're like, I was super generic. And then when I was at the BBC before this, I helped to launch a pan company, Women's Network, and I was super proud of my work there but then I was like, oh no, but they’ll know I’m a women if I put that down so I kind of stripped that out. 

 

So I mean, tell me a bit more about that because that does feel like something that is quite different. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

So blind recruitment means, as you've rightly said already, it's about taking off anything that would identify you as a professional. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

That sounds like it could be quite scary because there might be a fear of like how out of date someone's experience might be. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

I still think that you can get that narrative without having those specific dates. And if there are still questions after seeing a CV and you think there may be gaps that’s something you can prob and when you meet them at interview stage. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Okay. So you mentioned a sift stage. What is this sift stage? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

The vacancy holder would receive the CVS and the personal statements, and they sift with the interview panel. So it's not just one person sifting. We want that panel to show the diversity of our organisation and ensure that there's diversity of thought. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

To some roles I'm just surprised by how overwhelming the amount of applications are. And so you might have heard about a lot of companies are starting to introduce automatic sifting. Does the DfE do anything like that. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

At the moment we don't do that. Every application that comes through our door, we have to sift and we have to score. If we were to receive an overwhelming number, say, for some roles, we receive 100/120. In those cases, we can say, and we say on all adverts, the kind of main criteria that we can sift against. So we wouldn't have to necessarily sift again at every single essential criteria. But we have to give you a score, at least on one of those. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Well, talking about adverts, that makes a really good segue way into our first clip because we're doing this episode a little bit differently. 

Our production team have been squirrelling away some audio clips in the background and they've spoken to a few different people in the recruitment journey and we're going to play like a few different clips. I'm really interested to get like Vita's take on what we learn from these. The first one is from Alison Walker, who works I think she works with you, doesn't she Vita? So she's in the recruitment. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

She does. She's in my team. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Awesome, we’re going to play that now

 

Alison Walker 

If they're picking a lot of essential criteria they're only making it more difficult to attract candidates. We want people who can do the job, but you're not going to have the perfect fit. You know, you want a candidate who can grow and develop into the role. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor What are a couple of the essential kind of criteria categories that might come up? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

So a lot of our roles do have technical aspects to them, a security specialist or those that are software developers, there will be things that they really will be essential to the role, if you are not able to code at all. But of course, there are going to be the sort of softer skills that entail sort of, let's say, stakeholder relationships. That's the kind of key one that we have on our job descriptions a lot, because within a huge organisation like Department for Education, you will always have different teams of different people to work with or to manage. And so that's the sort of kind of essential criteria that will come up time and time again. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Here's the thing. Here's what I really want to flag for people who are considering applying. When you're writing your application answer, what you should really focus on is not the desired skills. Because actually, as someone who's been on a panel, we're not marking you on the desired stuff. We're making your essentials. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

That’s a really good thing to point out. Desired criteria are there to show what the panellists may take into consideration, particularly if there's a tie break between 2 candidates. You know, if there are 2 candidates at the end that both meet the essential criteria fully, and that's when people tend to take the desirable criteria into consideration. If you feel that you don't meet the desirable criteria, that shouldn't stop you from applying. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

These are like two of my tips. Take it with a pinch of salt whether this works for you or not, but I find it really useful to put like little headings for each. Say like the first essential criteria is implication and the next one's like great team working or something along lines. I'll have a paragraph that's about team marketing and then I'll have a paragraph about communication. So when a really busy interview panel is looking through your application, they don't have to hunt around trying to find them. Have they demonstrated good teamwork work? Because I can't find anything there. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

That's a really good tip. Yeah. Make it really easy for the panel to, like, align what you're saying with the essential criteria. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Definitely. And here's my second tip, dear listeners, for my role, they had a video of what it was like to work in digital and technology. And I watched the video. I noted down who was speaking in the video then I found them on LinkedIn and I sent them a message and I was just like, ‘Hey, I'm applying for this. I'd love to know more about you’. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

So proactive Adaobi

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Well, this is the thing because you've got the job ad and then you've got things that you're never going to put in a job ad, like what the culture is like, what the difference might be between the aspirations and vision of a company and then like, what is it like day to day, really? So I contacted a couple of people. One person got back to me and we just had like a remote cup of tea. Obviously it went well because I'm here. 

 

So tips aside, I want to hear from you. What is an example of a bad advert? Do you think. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

So? If I saw an advert that takes me more than a minute to get to grips of what the job is, that's a bad advert. There's this like known thing within the industry that it takes somebody longer than a minute to understand a job advert they will not apply. And so, we need all our job adverts to be really short. If I have to keep scrolling down to get to, what would I actually be doing? That to me is an awful advert. I think if you want to grab a reader's interest, it has to be done really, really quickly. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

We’ve got another great clip from Alison. We're going to play that now. 

 

Alison Walker 

We find that not many people do actually email us, but we're always very open to that and probably a great way to also find out any more information about civil service recruitment and any hints and tips or anything like that. All of our team are on LinkedIn. You can usually find us because we should all have the same cover photo of our logo and that's where we have links on our pages and we'll share posts about civil service recruitment. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Vita, so have you have people contacting you about recruitment or like jobs or tips and things like that? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

 have actually through LinkedIn mostly. That's when they're seeing our adverts and I think it's a great way for candidates to find out a little bit more about the role and our process. Normally though, if it's about the role, I'll put them in contact with the vacancy holder, the person who knows most about the team they're going to be joining and the role itself. But initially, I'm very happy to have that kind of first conversation with them. To me, it's like the personal touch and understanding a bit more of the context behind an advert is  really important actually, before you apply and can give you an idea of also what to do in the first stage. 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Definitely. I think this is something I learnt from my BBC days as well. People never tell you this, but when you are applying internally they want you to make the effort of like going along to see that team. Like go along, ask some questions, have a cup of tea with them. If you're an external candidate, obviously that's not something you can do. But as you said, they could always reach out to you. The question I have for you though Vita is, have you ever experienced any approaches where you're like, Yeah, they shouldn’t have done that. Or like, that's a bit too aggressive.  

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Not at all. Honestly, I don't see how it could be any form of mistake, by just saying ‘hi I'm interested’.  Honestly, no. In all my time in this team, three years in this team and X number of years in recruitment elsewhere. I've never had that with a candidate. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Okay, awesome. I wasn't sure what kind of horror stories we were about to get, just  there

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Oh no, unfortunately I don't have any gossip for you no. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So we've got another great clip this time it comes from Luke Slowen. And he's talking about the difference, or at least he starts talking about the difference between the public sector and the private sector. So let's give that a listen. 

 

Luke Slowen

There's quite a lot of difference, actually, we find between, you know, public and private sector experiences when it comes to recruiting for technical roles in government. A lot of it comes down to semantics and language, actually. So what people see in the private sector as a solution architect or, you know, might have a slightly different feel in government. So we have a cross-government digital data and technology profession framework, capability framework. We do try and follow that as much as we can and tailor it for our own purposes. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So you just heard from Luke Slowen there, who's the head of architecture at the department. The first thing I'm thinking there Vita is that if you're doing a particular technical job outside in the private sector, you have to be aware that when you come to the public sector, it may well be labelled something completely different from what you are used to. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

Yeah, totally. And you need to be able to try and map your skills and experiences across and we can help you do that. And I think, you know, going back to your question around reaching out to us, if you are struggling to possibly map your current role with one of ours, we'd be very happy to talk to you about that. I'm just thinking of a typical one in government, another one is the role of the delivery manager. Now, this is a job title that's used across govt, but in the private sector they're called Agile Project Managers or they could be called Scrum masters. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

I do remember when I was looking at jobs for this, I kind of worked as a business analyst and it was very, very much a sort of technical team. But then when I came to look for tech on the website, there wasn't really a tech thing, but that was digital. And then when I was looking at business analyst roles, I noticed the ones that were in the DfE, at least the ones advertised at the time, were much more focussed on data. What would have been a data analyst role somewhere else was a business analyst role here. And then when I was looking at, okay, well what is it that I do? It was more, it fit more with the product management side, the product owner, product management side of things here. So I think like you have to kind of be willing to broaden your horizons of what the title is called and look at the roles and the kind of responsibilities of that role. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Definitely, yeah. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So we are coming towards the end, but I think there is one more clip from Luke Slowen where he talks about the culture of DfE. So this to me and I beg you, dear listeners, to put some weight on this, too. This, to me, is like the most important thing, because you could have a great pay cheque, you could have like a really reputable brand that looks great on your CV. But if the culture of  the place you’re working in isn't great, you could just end up like dreading coming to work each day. But I hope that we can give you a flavour of what the culture here is like. So let's have a listen to what Luke has to say. 

Luke Slowen 

A lot of what DfE is about is the people. The people that are here are passionate about education, social mobility, social work, you know, children, families, learners. That's the world in which we're operating. And lots of people, you know, come here because of that. In government it's no surprise you know, we don't pay as well as the private sector. We can't match those salaries and benefits necessarily. But there are a lot of benefits to working in the civil service and particularly in DfE. That's why I'm here. I'm here because I want to make a difference to learners in the UK. I see all the great work we do. Some of it might be a bit more behind the scenes of the department. As architects, people doing the work to create good services and make sure that data is well used all across the department. But it is really making a difference to children, families, young people, social work. It really is. And it's a great place to work. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Okay. We're kind of at the end of our time together Vita. And it's been really fascinating, actually, kind of fun thinking through a lot of these things. I'd like to end on that idea of money, though. Oh, I would like to touch on that money thing. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Let's do it. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So Luke said that, you know, basically you're not going to you're not going to get rich working for the public sector. That's not what's going to happen here. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

 No 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

But I think it's pretty well paid. I've got a salary that works well for the north west. But talk to me about like that salary range and the fact that it's not hidden basically. Some job adverts, say competitive when it comes to salaries, whereas its something that's pretty visible. As a candidate, If I'm seeing a transparent salary range, can I haggle within that? 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

 Very good question. So it's dependent on the profession, in all honesty. So there are professions where you're able to say, haggle, as you say, more than in others. And I would always say it's worth asking and having that conversation. The reason why certain professions have more flexibility within a salary range that is advertised is because they're harder to fill roles. That means that there is more demand within different industries for these people. Say, for example, for technical architecture, that's what Luke was talking about or architecture roles. There are pay flexibilities so we can discuss pay with the candidate. Whereas for actually recruitment roles, for example, for a role like mine, I wouldn't be able to to haggle unfortunately. So poor me. But yeah, I definitely recommend people getting in touch again if they want to talk about what the possibilities are and we'll put you in touch with our specialist pay team. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

I appreciate this might be a little bit of a conflict of interest here, so feel free to say no if you aren't able to give an answer. But what's the most effective way for people to kind of negotiate their pay? I'm assuming that at interview is not necessarily the right place to be doing that. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

No, absolutely not. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  

Right. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes

You need to wait for your offer to come through before you even broach that subject. And I know that's different again, in other recruitment processes. Some people ask it upfront, for example, to make sure that salary expectations align. Whereas with us. please do you get your offer through first and that's when we can start discussing, but not before. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Okay, awesome. Well, you've got it. That first listeners if you're the person who's like, you know, before you've even sat down and had your free cup of water, you're asking what salary is and when payday is, then that may not actually stand you in good stead. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Doesn’t  come across well? But it's such an important topic, salary. I think, you know, there's a movement at the moment to ensure that there's salary transparency across different industries and I'm really proud to say that the civil service does have that. Not only do we publish salary ranges, but we also publish all pay for public sector workers online. So you can see what people earn. And I think that is really important for diversity and inclusion purposes. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

 

I'm a big advocate of people being really open about their salaries, like just as I mentioned earlier where I contacted someone on LinkedIn, I've had someone contact me before and wanted to know what it's like to work here. And I've been really open about my exact salary because I truly believe that that's the only way that you kind of remove gender pay gap and other types of pay gaps, right? If we're all super honest and feel comfortable to be open about our salaries, then you go in feeling like, you know, you have some power and you have some confidence when you are negotiating because you know what the real wages are. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

Yeah. And it gives those with less confidence the ability. I think it opens the door for people to say actually no and demand it if they're not on the same salary as their colleague who has the same experience and skill set. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Just as a quick aside, there's one company product called Buffer. If you Google Buffer, salary, transparency, they've got a spreadsheet that lists everybody in the company. I don't think it lists the name, but it lists that role, that location in the world and what salary they're on. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

I'm going to have a look at this. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

It's an American company, I think, and I don't know if we're ready for that level of transparency in the UK. But anyway, I want to thank you for listening. Again, we hope that you enjoyed this. We hope that you learnt something new. If you did, leave us a comment on our blog, which is DfE Digital and Technology blog. Let us know what you think. And of course, you can ask questions of myself, the pod team of Vita, either on the blog or 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes 

anytimes, get in touch. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

social like linkedIn. So a big thank you to our guest Vita Shapland-Howes and for all the people who provided our clips, Alison Walker and Luke slowen. So if there's anything else that you'd like us to cover in a future pod, of course, please let us know. Our Twitter is DfE_DigitalTech. I've already told you about our blog, and this pod was brought to you by the Department for Education. The producers are Rosie Roff and Louise Mullan. And I'm your host, Adaobi Ifeachor. Join us next time. Goodbye. 

 

Think digital, act human. Series 2 trailer

Adaobi Ifeachor: This season, 'Think Digital act human' is all about recruitment to the public sector, in particular the civil service. 

Adaobi Ifeachor: Our very first guest is Emma Stace, the brilliant Vita Shapland-Howes, Nettie Williams. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes: Let's do it 

 

Emma Stace: You've got to be paid enough to feel valued. So I know my worth, I'm prepared to negotiate to my worth. 

 

Nettie Williams: You've got those questions, ask them. Ask questions that you think maybe you should ask. 

 

Vita Shapland-Howes: [laughs] Very good question. I've never had that with the candidate.  

 

Emma Stace: One final piece of advice on this discussion, which is…

 

Adaobi Ifeachor: You are definitely going to want to subscribe to us to find out how that sentence ends, find us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Neurodiversity is a superpower

Here is our seventh episode of the ‘Think digital, act human’ podcast. It’s the last one in our pilot series.

We asked the question can neurodiversity be a super power on a product delivery team? Content Designer Laura Croft and Lead User Researcher Simon Hurst, give us some fascinating insight about how the wiring in their brains helps them to flourish in their digital and technology roles.
But it’s not always plain sailing – listen to them tell it like it is.

They explain what ADHD, autism and dyslexia feel like in the workplace, and how their openness is making a big difference to others.

 

Transcription

[music plays] 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Hello. Welcome to think digital act human, a podcast from the Department for Education, where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. And today we have two guests joining us in the pod. We’re going to be talking to senior content designer Laura Croft and lead user researcher Simon Hurst. Hello, welcome to you both.

 

Simon Hurst

Hi, how's it going?

 

Laura Croft

Hi, nice to be here.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

I'm so excited about this topic because people for a long time now have, like employers, companies have been hearing about the importance of having different voices on their teams, like hiring in a diverse way. So having people of different genders, different races, different ages. If you need an example of what I’m talking about just Google racist soap dispensers and you will understand there's a whole struggle for black people, the struggle is real people. But today we're going to be talking about neurodiversity and how that can actually be a bit of a superpower. And the reason why I'm so kind of excited to talk about the subject is because, you know, cards on the table, I myself am neurodiverse. But we're going to go over to you, let's start with you first Simon. What is neurodiversity?

 

Simon Hurst

So neurodiversity a concept that rather than seeing sort of things like autism or ADHD as a disability, it's more that just our brains are slightly different than what would be classed as, you know, everyone else's brain. So the term for that would be neurotypical. So I think it's just this concept that we're wired slightly differently. It does feel a bit odd to refer to yourself as disabled and I would be covered by the equality act, I would be recognised as disabled. But it's just a different way of viewing it, I think, than saying, Oh, you're disabled.  

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So for people who are not neurodiverse and maybe they don't, really, it's kind of outside their experience. What are some of the conditions that would fall under that label? Because you mentioned, I think you mentioned autism. Laura, do you know some of the kind of conditions that if an employer like heard them, they’d go, Oh, OK, now I know what we're talking about.

 

Laura Croft

Yeah. Simon mentioned autism and ADHD, but it's things like dyslexia. There can be other physical conditions that people can develop within their brains that can then mean that they become neurodiverse. I did a podcast with a colleague who had a particular sort of trigger in his brain that meant that he thought differently. It was a physical condition rather than one of these sort of terms that we see around ADHD and Asperger's, and those types of conditions that would perhaps be more common. With this was actually a sort of physical condition that meant that he fell under the neurodiverse category of sort of being disabled or needing some extra support.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So you see, I'm neurodiverse. I didn't even know that that last category was even a thing. So this is why these kinds of conversations are so important. For me, I am dyslexic or I have dyslexia, and I've recently discovered and when I say recently, I mean, this year, people, I'm in my 30s. I discovered that I have autism too. So the reason this conversation is so important. Some people might kind of hear this off the top and think, Oh, neurodiversity, I don't have anybody on my team who’s neurodiverse. But here's the thing, the people on your team who are neurodiverse might not even know that their neurodiverse. So that's why it's kind of super important to kind  hear some of the things that are being talked about today and think, Okay, if my work place kind of like empowers people who have neurodiversity, that works for everybody, that kind of like raises the standards for everybody in a way. But let's get back to this idea of neurodiversity as a superpower, because I can just imagine some people hearing this and saying, Well, oh, dyslexia, is that a superpower? Like, you know, how is that a superpower?

 

Laura Croft

I'm like you, I was diagnosed as being dyslexic when when I came towards the end of primary school and was sitting exams to go into secondary school. That's when it got picked up for me that I was not neurotypical and it was only later in life in my 30s when I was having quite significant sort of mental health problems and trying to do CBT ( Cognitive behavioural therapy) that I discovered that autistic spectrum disorder is the thing that's on my paperwork. So with me, t he way that sort of plays into a superpower and it did take a while for me to really be able to harness it. It is around words. I'm a content designer and I can very easily digest a lot of words and I can spot quite easily when things aren't correct within words. I can't do it with numbers. I very, very much can't do with numbers. But when it comes to words, and being able to do, particularly what we do in the department, putting things into plain English, making things concise and clear I can digest a lot of information and relay that very simply back because the way my brain works. I have to go into the minutia of the detail of something to really understand it. And having that sort of drive in that need to get into the detail really makes me a very good content designer and able to write about subject matters and bring people together to write on certain topics. So I've (over a sort of 10 year career) really managed to harness it.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Simon, is there anything you want to add to that?

 

Simon Hurst

Yeah, I think I was diagnosed with ADHD at 39, having had, you know, depression anxiety throughout my life and everything fitted into place when I was diagnosed. And I've had a screening recently for autism, through work, and that flagged me, as, you know, very possibly autistic, which was a surprise. But it's so hard to get past all the stuff that you've struggled with throughout your life that you maybe didn't you, you just thought you certainly people with ADHD have been told all you're lazy pull you, you know, you just need to focus that sort of thing. So it's quite hard to shift into this mindset of a superpower, and I've struggled with it for a long time, and I would still consider myself to, you know have many, many weaknesses. I think if you look back on why ADHD is even a thing, for example, you know, the theory is that, you know, back when we were cave cave people, ADHD people were great in an emergency. So we were constantly sort of switched on and, you know, focus on our surroundings. So any sign of danger is when ADHD people really kicked in. So to the tribe, we were super powerful. So if you think about the meerkat that sits on top of rock and keeps watch all day, that's like an ADHD meerkat. 

Apart from coming into play in emergencies, which is why you see, you know, firefighters a lot of firefighters have ADHD, people who work in like emergency services. But, the sort of more day-to-day stuff - I'm very good at sort of just spotting either patterns or problems and problem solving. I'm a very intuitive person, so I just can very easily see what I think is an obvious solution to a problem. It's weird. It's almost. And I found this, you know, with partners, ex-partners, things like that. Sometimes looking at people who are neurotypical is like the brains work in slow motion and I can come to a conclusion and it can take people quite a long time to get there. I'm thinking that that was obvious. I think that's a big strength of mine, and people with ADHD do tend to be very honest and sometimes a bit uninhibited. So you have to be careful to manage. So I think now broadly, people value my honesty at times. But I think, you know, sometimes what I think is being sort of just, you know, jokingly honest, maybe I'm not always aware of how it lands. So it is a difficult balancing act. But I think problem-solving and  a willingness to, you know, just do stuff and get stuck in at times is one of my strengths.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yeah. And Laura, what would you say? Like, how do you find that your brain works differently in the day to day when you're at work? Like how is your brain sort of like doing different things than, say, someone who's neurotypical?

 

Laura Croft

I definitely, I'm sort of echoing some of what Simon said in terms of the feedback that I get is you’re rushing too forward, you need to take the team with you, and I've got better at that because I've had some really great coaching. So being able to slow down. But I certainly particularly early on in my career, like Simon said, I'd see a very obvious solution and would be quite blunt at delivering that we just need to do this. And you know, you can't tell people what to do. You have to be able to sort of show them and lead them and show that skills have kind of developed. For me, some of the challenges I face are around verbal communication. That's where I kind of struggle a little bit. So I will get involved when we're doing community things or when we've got show and tells, or we're doing those feedback sessions, I'll be typing. It's actually easier for me to type out my thoughts than it is for me to speak them and so for example, when I've recently got promoted and I'd had a couple of interviews where I’d struggled a little bit with the interview and my manager and I sat down and we came up with some adjustments. The adjustment that we managed to make that we agreed that I could sort of put forward and ask for was to get the questions just a little bit before time in the interview. So I could have them in the font and size wanted on the screen. I could read through and digest it. Where there were two or three part questions I could separate those out. And then I was able to sort of get through that kind of interview process because I'd really struggled. Even if they put them in the team's chat it's quite small, it's difficult to read, you know? So just having those kind of adjustments of being able to have those kind of adjustments here has made a massive difference.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

That is so interesting. I guess I hadn't really thought about it like that. It's like if you have dyslexia and you're a student in exams, you know you're entitled to 25 percent extra time just because your brain's kind of like picking apart the question differently. OK, so if you're in an interview, like one good suggestion you've kind of mentioned is like, can they give you questions a little bit ahead of time? How much ahead of time are we talking about, like in the hour before you go in or what?

 

Laura Croft 

I think I got that, I think I got them about half an hour before I went into the interview, so not in time to be going and stressing at there, but enough time to receive the email opened it up, put it where I want it an be able to read it. And the other thing is they did the same for all the other candidates. So it wasn't that I was advantaged more than the others. They did the same for everybody. Everybody got the same format half an hour before and obviously I've had more experience things, but three interviews over six month period and in the third one the adjustment got it right! 

  

Adaobi Ifeachor

So you know? I'm loving that. That's the difference, isn't it? And that also helps get like buy in from other like members of staff who might be going through an interview and might think, Oh, is it kind of unfair if someone else has an adjustment? If you're making sure that everybody is working from a level playing field? Everybody gets the adjustment, then that kind of makes a difference. Simon, do you agree?

 

Simon Hurst

I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether because, I'm really curious about that, I didn't anticipate that that's how it would work. I don't know if that is standard or if that was done in that particular case. But the adjustment is because we have I mean, the definition of disability is you know, the environment or the social model of disabilities, it's the environment that disables us or it’s society that disables us. So society is designed around neurotypical people, it's not designed for us sorts of people on the fringe. So it's almost like you've made an adjustment to level the playing field, but then you've expanded it to everyone else as well. So I'm not 100% sure how I feel about that.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Ooh, bit of a debate going on here.

 

Simon Hurst

Yeah, I'm just curious more than anything else.

 

Laura Croft

Well, I think, the thing is it needs to be down to individual circumstances. And so for me, the adjustment I needed was that I needed the questions in writing in a format I could easily read them at the point I was doing the interview. It wasn't to give me early sign of the questions, particularly and so therefore, if they were giving me early sight of the questions, that could potentially be perceived as disadvantaging because it's not that I needed it. It was analysed that I needed them early so I could prepare them so I could read them. So I think that's possibly where that balance came. And to be fair, I was I was quite happy with that adjustment and it was something that was discussed. And then it was discussed with me on an individual basis, and I felt part of the process in making the decisions. And I think it's the process that you need to go through. And I think I've been asked so many times before, what adjustments do you need? And it's like, I don't know. If I knew I'd be able to tell you. And so for me, it was being able to have those conversations to have that support, to then be able to identify, well, what? What can we do? And that for me, that arrangement that we agreed worked.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So what I'm hearing is if you realise that, yes, you you want to create like a recruitment process that is, you know, there's equity for people who are neurodiverse because you want to increase the amount of neurodiverse people in your teams Then when it comes to interviews, it's not this is what we think is going to be best for neurodiverse candidates, but it's a let's have a conversation. And actually internally, we're what we're kind of arriving at with this discussion is, have a discussion internally too about at what point do you kind of roll out those sort of changes to other candidates beyond like, you need to have a discussion so that everybody kind of agrees that, yeah, we're comfortable with this for these reasons and and we've spoken to these these particular candidates who might need adjustments. That's interesting to me. I want to kind of just say like, I want to bring it back to this idea of a superpower, though, because for me, I had known for many, many years that I had dyslexia. And for me, that kind of meant that I had a really, really - when I say I've got a poor short term memory I've already forgotten the question - Do you know what I mean? It's already gone out of my head so that that's like a real thing, and that doesn't necessarily, maybe it's because I need to make a complete, reframe everything and make a mental sweat here. But for me, that doesn't feel like a superpower. What I can say is that I get bored very easily. I really enjoy structure. Maybe that's the autism side of my brain. But when it comes to meetings, I am a very, very good facilitator. So I come to the point quickly. We move, you know, meetings aren't just for meetings sake, but we moved on on a piece of work. Everybody has their actions. We know when they’re due and that kind of thing. And if I'm in a meeting where it doesn't feel like that, it feels more kind of amorphous and you kind of wonder, well, what was the point in that then? Yeah that doesn't really work for me. So maybe that's kind of like a little bit of a superpower? But U guess my question to both of you is, why is it important to think of neurodiverse staff as having a superpower, why not just say we welcome all diversity, you know, because it brings in lots of different perspectives?  Why do I need to think of dyslexia as being one of my superpowers somehow?

 

Simon Hurst

I think there's. Somebody talked to me about a concept recently called Clifton Strengths, and I think this is quite a good example of it. And so Clifton strengths it sort of views that whenever anyone does any training or self-development, you're always you're always trying to develop the thing that you're rubbish at. So for me with ADHD, somebody would keep sending me on a planning and time management course because are ‘oh you're not very good at that you need to get better at it.’ And what Clifton, I think the psychologist was called Don Clifton in like the 50s, he said ‘Why do we always develop the stuff that we're no good at? What makes us great is our strengths. So why wouldn't you just apply those more?’ So, you know, if your strengths are, you know, leading and you know, in the bigger picture, why does  somebody then force you to try and do the things that you know, you’re no good at. You don't force Usain Bolt to be very, very good at weightlifting or something. He's great at running. So you focus on that. And I think it's almost an extension of LA that you know that there's some things I'm no good. I can't estimate time to save my life. I'll think something will take me an hour and it could take me two weeks. And you know, at the age of 42, people will still think that I can estimate my own time because it's so obvious that, you know, everyone could estimate time and I just can't, and I'm useless at it. But there's people who are brilliant, but are terrible at my strengths so why not make best use of those strengths? 

And I think coming back to the question, neurodiversity it’s so hard to put a finger on, you know, all these conditions are just ways that we've categorised behaviours that you can't really do a blood sample or a brain scan for any of these. I mean, brain scans is a bit of a red herring, brain scans will look different to someone with ADHD than somebody who's neurotypical. But you can't test it. We've decided that if people exhibit that, that and that behaviour, they are autistic or ADHD, and it's really difficult to then decide. So I think it's maybe a way of sort of brushing over that fact and recognising that actually, you know, people are different and neurotypical people and neurodiverse people do have different strengths. I mean, people who are neurotypical, I see so dependable and ploddy and reliable, but they sometimes feel a little bit like a workhorse at times, like my ex-partner, it was really, really, you know, dependable, but it felt so slow moving talking to her and sometimes the way her brain worked, that my brain was firing off in all different directions that it was just I couldn't imagine being in her shoes. I can't imagine how her brain would work. And I think probably the flip of that is true. And it is. It's quite an uncomfortable feeling, my brain. It is sometimes hard to keep track, so it  does make life a lot harder in many ways. And it takes extra effort, I think, to get through a work day where you're using your strengths because, you know, ADHD has this concept of hyper focus and where you can, you know, shut out everything and just focus on what you need to get done. But that is an incredibly draining mode to switch myself into.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Before I knew that I had autism in my London days, I was living in a shared house with like a shared entrance. So I was the flat downstairs and there was like a Brazilian couple who were just lovely couple who lived upstairs. And one day we got a knock on the door. I open the door and it's the guy from the couple and he's like, Hi, I wanted to let you know that we're having a party today. And I was like, Oh, that's so nice of you, but I've like, I just got back from work like I'm kind of tired, I’ve taken my shoes off and stuff and he just like stared at me blank faced and like my housemate started laughing. And it was only that I realised he wasn't inviting me, he was just saying, I'm having the party, so I just want to warn you there's going to be a lot of foot traffic and stuff like that. That one story is like the story of my life. There are so many points in my life where there's like another level of meaning happening in a conversation, and I haven't quite got it. But I can tell that I'm missing something but like, there's either subtext or I've taken something too directly or something like that. So there's that side of life where things are, you know, I just tell people on my team, listen, just be direct with me. I don't need the subtext. I just need the text. Whereas like, there's other parts of me, that are super creative in a way that I think are quite unique. So let's let's bring it back to the digital world now. Laura, how can, how can our neurodiverse kind of pluses and even even the things where you know you're taking things a little bit too directly? How can those be a benefit, particularly in a digital career?

 

Laura Croft

I think for us, we work in a very user centred design way, we are very about users and like you just kind of pointed out there, one to one kind of face to face I miss stuff too, stuff just kind of goes over my head. But on the flip side, what I can do and what I seem to be, I'm a very empathetic person it's why I get upset about stuff quite easily. I can find that I can put myself in users shoes very, very easily. I can put myself in people's positions very easily and understand other people's perspectives in the wider world. I struggle in a meeting understanding like I can see somebody objecting to something I don't understand why, I might not even understand that they're objecting to something. But I can look at something and look at where we’ve perhaps got a policy that is affecting children and families. I can see where the barriers are. I can imagine what that family is practically going through, where they're having to physically go, what it’s going to be like on the devices they're using, are they using a library's Wi-Fi system to try and do something that's really important that means that they're going to get the funding. And I can convey that when we're doing research, particularly when I was working on user experience teams. Being able to really be the voice of our users and making things as best as they can be for the end users and ensuring that that is seen as being important across everywhere where we're working, whether it's sort of delivery or whether it's in the policy side or whether it's comms side, you know, at the end of the day what does this feel like when it gets on the ground for that person that we're looking to make a difference for?

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yeah, I think that that makes you, I can see how that would make you an incredibly strong content designer if you understand, if you can kind of look at something and see where the kind of pitfalls might be for different types of users. And like as a product manager, I'm starting to just see in this conversation, realise that there were times when I need to have conversations with stakeholders in the business and my, you know, ability to get to the heart of something or speak truth to power or, you know, speak kind of, frankly, has actually really helped avoid a lot of delays and helped win respect in places where, you know, sometimes people might be more political operations, like maybe I should be a political operator maybe I'd be like, you know, kind of Director-General of the BBC or something as if I operated a bit more smoothly. But I'm kind of where I want to be and I can see how some of my quirks have helped me. Simon, you are not just a lead researcher, but you’re also accessibility lead for digital. How does that play into your day to day life in your work?

 

Simon Hurst

My life has been a happy accident, just, you know, stumbling through, a typical ADHD person, no real direction, no real effort at school. I was bright. I was classic, you know, super bright if he only applied himself, kind of thing. So I stumbled through a career in the civil service for, you know, a decade and a half and then found, sort of fell into use of research. Was very, very lucky. And it just was a natural fit for how I think and how my brain works. And I think in digital we do heavily specialise broadly. And I think that then plays to my strengths, you know, problem-solving, hyper empathetic. And I think it's that compassion for users. So you can't help you. There's not many user researchers who are completely, you know, not bothered by what they see. And, you know, I'd worked on a disability benefit,as a user researcher and you know that that was and it was well before in the early days of GDS and it was on an exemplar and it was before, you know, we had a lot of the sort of care and looking after each other stuff in place. It was just, you know, you go out and do the research and it was very, very traumatic for me. And you know, we’d go out for team meals afterwards, and I just suddenly burst into tears because it was so intense. But that really made me realise the difference that making accessibility work for people can have and how easy it is for people say, Oh, it doesn't matter, we'll move that person to another role or, you know, they can get the friend to fill it in for them, which is nonsense because it's, I know what it's like to have to have someone else do stuff for me because I can't do it. And it's really, you know, as a relatively capable adult it's really quite demeaning. And I think it gives me I think ADHD has given me quite a strong sense of injustice as well. So I am quite principled and I do see things very strongly, as there’s a right and wrong, which is why agile and user centred ways of working is such a good fit for me because I genuinely believe that that is the best way of doing things right by people. So I think it's that seeing that it's unfair that, you know, it's almost like it's not like a hero complex of fighting injustice, but it's just, you know, this isn't right. And you know, the way we go, we'll fix it later is not right and not acceptable and is nonsense for us to even try and ever argue that. So I will. I enjoy the sort of honesty and the principled-ness of it as well. And also, it's a thing I can do. So it's playing to my strengths and my interests, so I feel like I'm useful, which I quite often haven't done over the past couple of years with COVID and, you know, being less hands on. As a lead, I am far less hands on than I used to be. So I think, being able to see, I'm making a difference, getting something done has been something that's really driven me as well.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

We've talked about how you, you mentioned briefly, that you were tested recently at work and discovered that you had another kind of neuro diverse condition and I spoke at the top of the post about how in my 30s I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. And FYI people listening, Autism presents differently in men and women. So when you read the conditions that are very typical, you know, online, if you do a google search, those are usually based on men and and so that's why some people won't realise that they have autism until, you know, there were women until a bit later in life. But say you're an employer and you're really kind of like, you're really woke, you really care about these things and you've listened to what we've had to say and you're thinking, this is you know, it's shaky, shaky ground here, but you're thinking, well, you know, I do have a staff member who's, you know, sometimes doesn't really have much of a filter, and maybe sometimes are not quite aware of some of the kind of social cues and that sort of thing. Is it their place to kind of suggest that you, you know, might need to be tested through work, like I can imagine that being a complete minefield?

 

Simon Hurst

I think this is why I talk about my mental health and my ADHD so much. I started doing it a good few years ago, I was getting older. I'd been, you know, experienced depression. I was working certainly in digital a lot of younger people coming into the teams and just seeing someone who has been around. And, you know, I've made a good, a good career out of this. I'm a relatively senior in the organisation, to see people who are openly talking about this and sharing experiences is so, so important for other people to either recognise it, Oh, it's fine for me to speak out because I struggle. Or actually a lot of what Simon or Laura or anyone else who feels comfortable talking about it mentions and might want to just either look into it themselves or come and ask me or anyone else, or just start to look into it a little bit. Because that's what happened with me, somebody mentioned it to me, a therapist, and said, did you ever thought you might have ADHD? And as I read it, it was like, it explains my whole life and why it has led to where I am. And so I think somebody's not imposing that on someone, but I think if there's obvious, I look at some people who don't seem to be diagnosed and I spot traits of myself in them and things like that, but I wouldn't think to presume to approach them about it. But I think if they are experiencing difficulties at work, all this, I think, it’s part of a discussion of either in an ABLE meeting of like performance or, you know, areas where they might be struggling. I think it would depend on the individual and the relationship I had. I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to just say, well, you're clearly terrible at planning and time keeping. I've sent you on training and you're still really bad at this, so you're getting demoted or you're on a warning or anything like that. I think it's complicated.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

I'm feeling like, I'm feeling like this may not be the place for like just your regular one to one discussions with someone who's terrible at planning - do you  think you might have dyslexia? But if there is like a sort of performance issue, it's worth being aware that there may be like an underlying condition that the employee isn't even aware of. And I will say this from personal experience, from listening to you, Simon, from even listening to Laura, sometimes the first clue might be that your employee just has depression. Like sometimes you can have depression, and maybe it's been on and off in your life and you never really kind of nail down why this is happening. And low and behold, you know, if you were tested, you find out that you have autism and you didn't know that but all the kind of effects that you've been living with and having to kind of control subconsciously have just been really driving down your kind of like your mood or your mental health. So so many of these things are linked. But I would always say that if you're an employer, if you're like line managing someone like to have a bit of compassion and also just as soon as you kind of hear that someone might be experiencing depression to kind of let that trigger your antenna to kind of think, Okay, well, there may be things below this that are even beyond what my my employer is thinking about. So that might be a start of a process. But I loved what you said also, Simon, about this idea of it's a safer space when it's like your peers who have that condition and they're talking about those things. So how do you? So what exactly happens at DfE around like neurodiversity community?

 

Laura Croft

Yes, there is a neurodivergent, I think it's called, network within the DfE and they do quite a few things really, one they sort of get on the agendas of the different kind of directorate senior meetings in terms of making sure that it's something that people are aware of with recruitment and stuff like that. But it's a really good kind of support network as well. And so as you've heard from both of us, there is quite a link between mental health problems and neurodiversity. And I think my personal opinion is because the workplace is kind of set up for neurotypical people. And so we need those adjustments so that we can be just as happy at work as as the colleagues where things are more kind of set up for them. Certainly looking at those support groups rather than just, you know, somebody struggling, it's not just perhaps a sort of sickness issue it might not be a sort of skills level issue, it could be all things and signposting to the wellbeing support research that we've got. Both Simon and I went down the diagnosis route from a support therapy, mental health route and a wellbeing type route. And so I'd just be encouraging that, you know, if you can see that somebody is struggling signposting down a route where they can go and investigate and find out more will be really, really helpful. And yeah, I just advise it, we've got so many resources available to us, we've got great links as civil servants and things that are free to watch as part of the civil service, support lines and things like that that we can make use of counselling and therapy services we can make use of. So it’s encouraging people that like that is the right thing to do, don't sit and struggle, we've got all of these things and if you follow these routes what you might find is that you've got a member of staff who really feels part of the team. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yeah, I definitely had, and I know what I'm going to be bringing it to a close in the moment because I know where, like, we've really talked about this, I could talk about this for another couple of hours. But when I look back on some of the struggles I've kind of had in my work life, it's all been around organisation. So like I, you know, time management and and just kind of like poor short term memories. I've had to kind of really rely on technology like I use like a voice assistant to kind of remind me of things I need to do. Like, I have a notebook so I find handwriting really helps force things into my brain. And I've come up with all these kind of like bullet journal hacks and things like that. But if I had known years ago that these were just the result of, you know, being neurodiverse, I could have (I got a real research brain on me) so I kind of researched about it. I would have thought a lot more comfortable with myself, and I could have started talking about it with my colleagues a lot more so they understand what's going on with me. And so, yeah, I loved what we talked about today. Is there anything else that you wanted to say before we sign off?

 

Simon Hurst

I think I wanted to build on Laura’s signposting to the various, I think as well, certainly, and, you know, going going on and on about digital ways of working, but I genuinely do believe that it has helped me and we do take I mean, things like retors and things have really helped me talk about what I find difficult. And the more I've done, the more other people come forward. And, you know, I've responded to the manual of me thing that came out on Emma’s weeknote. And I wrote back to everyone and just said, you know, we should all do this. This is really useful, and I expose a lot of some of the struggles I have through that and what works for me. And you know, I got quite a lot of emails of people I didn't know or slack messages saying, I've read yours and you know, it's so nice to say that I'm not the only person who thinks like this or who has this and it’s things like that that I think we do quite well in digital and technology. And, you know, we've got Slack Channel, which is, neurodiverse people and it's locked so that, you know, if you're not comfortable telling people that you’re neurodiverse but it's just a place that you can chat about stuff and it's trying to do a different job, the neurodiverse network is very much about, you know, making the DfE be better. Whereas this was very much a, I just want to be able to express how I feel and the same with the mental health channel, there are other networks that are more formalised. These are more about just like minded people, so I think it is, keep talking about it and finding other people like yourself and, you know, making them feel that if they want to talk about it, they’re comfortable too, or if they can see all the people who are talking about it, that they don't feel like they're the only one, or that the only one struggling as well, I think, is why I’m so almost overly out about how my mental health affects me, because it's empowering to all this.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Thank you so much, Simon and Laura. I want to plug that manual of me that you mentioned because it's excellent, particularly if you're, if you've got a new staff member joining your team or you, you're on a project even if people already know each other to say hello to, manual of me helps everybody say, look, these are the things about me you need to be aware of, and here's how I best work with other people. So it's a really good way of refreshing relationships and working relationships. So, oh, thank you so much to Simon Hurst and Laura Croft. Both work here at DfE Digital and Technology. I hope this has been interesting to your listeners because I appreciate this is a bit of a different one, and not everybody who's listening will be neurodiverse themselves. But I hope that it’s given you some ideas of how you can help make, bring out the best in your team members and realise that you're not just making adjustments for disabilities, but you're acknowledging that team members who have neurodiverse conditions also are experts at particular things. And you can harness that and really bring that out to kind of create the best digital and tech products that you can.So if you want to hear more from our guests, you can find them on the social webs, Laura is Laura Croft on LinkedIn and Simon I think this is your Twitter handle, Simon Hurst UX, right?

 

Simon Hurst

That's me. Mm-Hmm

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Yeah. Great. So if you dear listener have something you'd like us to cover in a future pod please do let us know, our Twitter is DfE underscore digital tech and our blog is DfE Digital and Technology Blog, which you can just Google and you'll find us. This pod was brought to you by the Department for Education. The producers are Rosie Roff, Nettie Williams and Louise Mullan. I am of course your host, Adaobi Ifeachor thanks for listening. Goodbye.

 

 

Think digital, act human: a spotlight on Shafiqa Gunton

Here is our sixth, holiday bonus, episode of the ‘Think digital, act human’ podcast series.  

In this podcast our host, Adaobi Ifeachor, speaks to Shafiqa Gunton, Programme delivery manager. This is a continuation of Shaf’s conversation from our previous Get help with technology episode.

 

Shaf gives us an overview of what a programme delivery manager is, her career progression in government, and what made her set up an engineering academy for young people in Scarborough.

 

Transcription 

 

[music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Hello. Welcome to Think digital act human. This is a podcast from the Department for Education. It's where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. What you're about to hear is a bonus episode just in time for Christmas. This is an extended version of a chat that I had with Shafiqa Gunton about the Get help with technology programme. You're about to hear an insight into Shaf’s journey to becoming a programme delivery manager.  So that's a delivery manager that sits across a whole range of different projects and looks after a whole portfolio of things. She gave some advice for anyone who's looking to work in product particularly useful if you went to work in product in the civil service. And she also talks about what's next for the Get help with technology brand. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Hello, Shaf! 

 

Shafiqa Gunton

Hello, thank you. Thank you for having me. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So full disclosure, Shaf is my manager, so you know, but don't you worry, it's not going to affect how I treat Shaf in this podcast, Shaf, you're one of the most amazing people I know. I'm joking, I'm joking. OK, so Shaf, tell us what your job title is and what your kind of area of responsibility is at the DfE. 

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

Sure. So I'm a programme delivery manager, so that's a bit of a fancy title for somebody who manages programmes of digital delivery. At the minute, I have a couple of clusters of policy areas, the early years sector, schools and FE, which is further education. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So you're kind of looking at programmes that help or create like services from people who were like real kids like toddlers, almost to, you know, adults in further education. So it spans the whole gamut. Right. So when it comes to Get help with tech as I understand it, and I'm frankly, my understanding may be wrong, that’s absolutely fine. Let me know. But as I understand it, Get help with tech, that kind of programme rolling out like laptops and other kind of digital infrastructure to help kids with remote education. The need for that was kind of tailing off a bit annd then you spotted an opportunity for the brand to live again. Is that right? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

I did. And that's kind of like what a programme delivery manager does. Where teams are doing the really good digital delivery, programme delivery managers are looking up and across and around and actually seeing where we can join up our services, where we can reuse common components, basically not reinventing the wheel, not duplicating effort and again spotting opportunities, as you've said. So we've got this incredible brand from this amazing service that teams have built in the pandemic and they built it quickly and they're doing great stuff and their meeting user needs and making sure that young people can still have access to an education. So really, really valuable, really important. I've been working on something called the digital standards for technology. So these are core standards that schools will need to look to when buying and procuring technology. Now producing that content on its own isn’t going to solve the whole problem. And actually, as you know, Adobe, you've worked on these things yourself, we need to be looking at solving the whole problem, not just the piece of it. So very much thinking about how we can create a family of services that help users when they're trying to buy or procure technology because it's such a broad problem space. There's lots of problems within this problem. And, you know, by utilising a brand that's successful and is trusted, we could look at bringing all of these initiatives and new ones under one umbrella. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So this is about, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is about literally doing what it says on the tin. If a school or an FE (further education) college wants to get help with tech, then you're creating something that will help them with that. Is that right? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton  

Exactly.  So you’ve hit the nail on the head. We just want to we want to make sure that it does what it says on the tin and that's get help with technology. And as I mentioned, that's such a broad space, you could get help with laptops, you could get help with broadband, you could get help with moving to the cloud, you could get help with buying cable, the list is endless. And our challenge is actually, you know, where do we start and where is the most valuable thing that we can do first? And what is the minimum we could learn before moving on to the next thing building the next thing? But essentially, what we want to do first is bring it all together. So kind of create a bit more of a streamlined, seamless user journey rather than having just pockets of services here, there and everywhere. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So if I'm a school leader hearing this, that sounds very exciting. A brave new world. When is this all going to happen? When can I get my hands on whatever the service is going to be?

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

Oh you're going to tie me now to deadlines. I think we're aiming to have something from the next financial year, so it might just be something, you know we’re working in an agile way. So it will be, you know, the minimum viable thing that we can launch. And in my mind, it looks very much like a home page that brings all this together on GOV.UK. And we're working with some amazing content designers and service designers to help us solve that design challenge, how do we present all of this? Because the risk is if you try and put everything together without understanding the user journeys and user needs and mapping that out correctly, you're at risk of advertising everything but reaching no one. So there's a few things that we're working through some knotty, knotty design challenges that will, that will help us unlock some of that over the next few months.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

OK, so that's really interesting to me is that you have this idea of a problem in your head as the kind of programme lead and then you have also an idea of what this could look like, some sort of thing that brings together lots of different kind of like services that help schools and educators get help with tech. But you must know as a programme lead that if you're putting a product manager on that, they may turn around and say: Well, you know Shaf, that idea of a website that's that's not what people want, they want an all singing, all dancing mobile app thing. Are you prepared to have that, you know, that kind of recommendation come back and be something completely different from what you had asked for? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton

I'm not only prepared Adaobi, I welcome it. I love it when people come back and say: you know, we've done the research, we've gathered some data and this is what the data is telling us. This is what our users are telling us. I think certainly when you start kind of an early strategic thinking, you have to have some idea of what this thing could be. But ultimately, we need to start with the problem statements and actually start with what are the problems we're trying to solve. And I love giving those problems to people like yourself who are, you know, incredible at going away and trying to solve them. So, yeah, I welcome that feedback. Absolutely. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

OK, so a couple more questions for you. One, we like to always dig into the background of the guests that we have on this show just to find out how did you get here? I happen to know used to be a product manager at one stage, you told me that. So what are the kind of steps that took you to get to this level where you will oversee so many different product managers and projects? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

I don't know how far back you want it to go, I think we could go back to 13 years ago when I built my first website using Dreamweaver, and it was just a drag and drop horrible thing. But yeah, I think that's where my interest in building digital things and helping people, you know, solving people's problems through digital, that's kind of when it started. Think I've always been really busy in terms of managing or looking after a family of services or websites is what you would call it in the private sector. So I've always had that experience, I guess, it’s a bit of, you know, enjoying and loving what I do, a bit of fate, you know, the right thing at the right time coming along. But the reason why I'm at DfE is probably down to the fact that in my hometown of Scarborough, I help set up an engineering academy for young people and actually help them have a chance at something else other than the kind of, you know, usual regular jobs, which is great but actually expose them to a whole world of STEM careers. And I think that's where I started to get really interested in wanting to become a civil servant and going above and beyond just creating websites, you know, that help people buy things. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  

So then you moved from that to a product management role inside the Department for Education?

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

DfE, yeah in DfE. And yeah, I was kind of again looking after a suite of services. And yeah, it just kind of, you know, the programme delivery manager role came up. I went for the EOI (expression of interest)l I was successful and then applied for the job permanently. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

EOI you said? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

EOI, expression of interest. So yeah, I think you have to juggle things, multiple things at the same time. And that's that's fine. I think I've always worked that way. And I think that's where I thrive. The key thing is I get to work with so many different people. My programme is really rich and diverse in people and thought and I get to work people like yourself, Adaobi, who you know, I give, I give you this, these challenging problems to solve and with a team of digital specialists, you go and solve them. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Thank you, your check is in the post later Shaf [laugh]. So the final thing really is just, is there anything that you, like any piece of advice for other people doing product in the public sector or in the private sector who where maybe there, maybe they have the programme delivery role or they're trying to kind of build that function where they are? Is there any sort of thing you want to tell them or any further piece of advice? 

 

Shafiqa Gunton 

Yeah, I think the advice if I was you know, looking at myself 10 years ago, talking to myself 10 years ago, I'd say be brave. Do you know what, if things don't go the way they should, if you make a mistake, if you break something it’s fine, you know, you learn from it and that's OK, don't be put off by, I guess, the size or scope of the job at hand. Just try it. You know, you can always change it. You can always do something else, and that's OK. But just be bold. And be a bit brave. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Perfect. What a great note to end on. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Thanks to everyone who's listening, we really hope that you enjoyed it, and we hope you have a relaxing Christmas break. A big thank you to our guest, Shafiqa Gunton, Programme delivery manager here at DfE Digital and Technology. This pod (podcast) was brought to you by the Department for Education. Our producers are Rosie Roff, Louise Mullan, Nettie Williams and Leila Haffar. 

And I'm your host, Adaobi Ifeachor. Join us next time in the New Year. Goodbye! 

Think digital, act human: the Get help with technology service

Here is our fifth episode of the 'Think digital, act human' podcast series, which shines a light on the stories of the people behind our digital and technology projects.

In this episode our host, Adaobi Ifeachor, gets to know Rachel Hope. Rachel led the team that sourced, bought and distributed over 1.35 million laptops and tablets to disadvantaged children and young people during covid.

 

Our podcast host Adaobi also speaks to Shafiqa Gunton, Programme Delivery Manager, about her role and what’s next for the GHwT service.

 

Transcription 

 

[music plays]

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Hello, welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. And today's project, when I use that label extraordinary, you know, I'm not using that lightly. This is, this is a pretty juicy one today. We're going to be talking about the Get help with technology programme that helped ensure that remote learning during the COVID lockdowns was something that could continue as best as we we could under the circumstances. We're going to be talking all about it with today's guest, Rachel Hope, who is the deputy director of teacher services here at DfE. Hey Rachel, how are you doing? 

 

Rachel Hope 

I'm good. Thank you for having me along today. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So dear listeners, cast your mind back to the before times when we were kind of entering our first COVID lockdown and parents were kind of panicking. Perhaps you had a career that you could work from home. Perhaps you had a child, maybe more than one child of different ages who both needed access to the family laptop, and that wasn't possible. What on earth are you going to do? It was Rachel's job to come up with a way to make that possible. Rachel, can you tell us a bit more about Get help with tech? Like what was it designed to do and what was the kind of brief that you were given? 

 

Rachel Hope 

Let me start at the beginning, so I think it's fair to say that in any time in recent history, many of us haven't been in this place where our own destiny wasn't really of our own choosing, and we didn't really expect any of these changes to come upon us at speed and that was definitely the case for us here in the Department for Education. So it was a week before schools were closing and there was a team that were working on looking at how the curriculum could be delivered remotely if the final decision was made to, in fact, send children home. And I went across to help the team look at that, and it was a really, really, really knotty, big challenge. And so what we did was we set up a number of teams who went out and really rapidly spoke to schools and spoke to headteachers and teachers in the classroom and parents and some children about what they saw would be the challenges if we had to teach people remotely. What they do already for children who may be often, for example, long term sickness, absence and things like that, and we started to quickly formulate a set of priorities that we'd need to address, including things like safeguarding and policies on how much the curriculum should apply if we were in this world. But for my part, I was looking very much at those who wouldn't be able to interact remotely online. So there's a huge swathes of the population who wouldn't have enough or any access via a computer or laptop or tablet or the internet. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Sorry to interrupt Rachel to hold on a second, just to be completely clear here. This wasn't called Get help with tech at that point, you were just told what happens if you know, sometime in the future, schools close. What are kind of immediate problems to look at? And so I'm hearing like a massive list that like safeguarding. We we kind of had in the news how, you know, people in domestic violence situations, for example, were kind of in their worst nightmare being kind of on lockdown with potentially their abusers. And maybe there were similar safeguarding issues with kids. Or maybe, you know, going to school and knowing that you're going to have lunch that day, it was like a really big thing for them at that time. Getting back to the Get help with tech programme, how did you kind of prioritise like this is the low hanging fruit that we can immediately do something about. I mean, my mind is kind of blown at the moment. 

 

Rachel Hope

Yeah, I mean, and you're completely right actually, that's one thing I should say. While I went across to help the curriculum team, it soon became something much bigger because here at the Department for Education, we're not just about the education that are happening in our schools and colleges. We also look after social workers and we think about vulnerable children and what on earth do we do to make sure these children are protected in a world where social worker visits may stop? So it soon became a much bigger question about how do we connect people to our services that were previously face to face? And it was one of those areas where I mean, there was a lot of new initiatives spin up so I wasn't the only one who was working on all the different things that needed to happen, but it was quite clear there was a gap that the department would need to step into at speed to try and connect these people. And so that's where the Get help with technology programme was born was born out of that that week of looking at where we had our gaps and we went in and basically made the case. And I've got there's so much we could talk about because this is not just the case that we need to be doing something within the Department for Education to close that gap but making that case across government because all of a sudden everyone across government was thinking about how do they offer their services that were previously face to face? 

 

So how does the NHS get all the technology to their workforces who may need to now deliver services online, for example? And there was a vast array of different departments who were thinking about the technology they needed to buy and deploy. I know laptops are delivered in prisons, for example. So there was actually a huge conversation that needed to happen across government around OK, well, the supply is finite. There is a finite supply that will grow over time. How do we make the case that some of this supply really does need to go and support our disadvantaged and vulnerable children here at the Department for Education? 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So your wow. OK, so there's all these kinds of people at your level of deputy director, and they're all kind of, was it a case. The problems were being identified and then particular deputy director is saying, well, that fits really well with the portfolio that I've got, so I'll take that problem on. And then you were thinking, well, Get help with tech, whether it was named at that point or not, that's something that I know I can kind of quickly address. Is that how it happened, but everyone stepping forward and taking ownership of a particular meaty problem? 

 

Rachel Hope 

Yeah, that was exactly it. So. So what happened in that first week was we gathered that insight. We carved up what we thought the biggest challenges would be into four or five different areas and I took leadership of the area, which at the time was actually called digital infrastructure I think we were calling it before it became a much more common sense name and I then took that forward. And then that's when actually the governance systems really kicked in and provided a really effective support. So there was a ministerial group chaired across the whole of government, which came together that week that looked at the needs, these type of needs, the digital infrastructure needs for the different departments and agreed a set of priorities of which departments were going to be initially given a chunk of money from the Treasury to help do this, and we were one of the top three departments. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Did you have to kind of like use your elbows to like push people out the way? Use those sharp elbows? 

 

Rachel Hope 

There was a lot of gathering the evidence really quickly of what we thought the gap was and being really clear what we thought the impacts would be without addressing it and making that case really clearly to our peers and really allowing our ministers to merely make that case clear. And I think it was within two weeks we'd gone through that process of identifying the biggest problems. Identifying this was one, getting it agreed across government that we were going to run with this and start in the process of trying to make it happen, which is a whole another big story. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Oh, well, we're going to dive into that deep story, Rachel, don't you worry. My observation before we do is that, okay I know I say this every single podcast episode, but it's relevant people. I haven't been at the DfE for very long, I haven't been in the civil service very long. What I'm noticing is whilst there are some projects that outside circumstances mean that you have like this immovable deadline, you just have to kind of like find new ways to do stuff. Mostly, I've found that, you know, there's a lot of red tape, and rightly so because, you know, we're spending the public's money on stuff that should, you know, ultimately aid the public. But this wasn't really one of those situations in a way, because, yes, money had to be spent responsibly but the crisis was here now like the fire was already burning, you know? So did that mean that you had to completely change the way that you would normally go about a project this massive? 

 

Rachel Hope 

I think in in a way actually having all of the having agreed methodologies or approaches to getting something done was helpful, and we didn't necessarily go about it in whole new ways, but we did go into about a whole new speed and the ability to convene people. So, for example, we did produce a business case and we did put that business case, which went into all the aspects in front of our investment committee. But that business case was draughted within that first week, bringing in lots of experts who were willing to give up their time immediately to help us. And we had a extraordinary committee convened where we pulled in experts from across government who could offer us real good challenge and quick challenge. So it wasn't necessarily about not going through those processes, but really making those processes work. It was almost that the stakes were even higher to get it right at speed. And because of the crisis, everyone was willing to make the priority call that this is the thing they needed to go and do and support. And that was just brilliant. We saw a real meeting of expertise on this. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So from that business case, if you can cast your mind back, what was some of the top objectives here then? I've talked a little bit about the laptops. That's kind of like the big thing that people might remember from the news is that there were lots of kids who weren't able to kind of be educated remotely in the way that the rest of the class were because for whatever reason, that family couldn't afford it, they couldn't get access to a computer. So I know that that was part of it, like making sure they had access to it. But like, what are the other headline things here? Did any kids have to? Did any families have to put in money to reserve one of these things, like how did the system work and what were the other things beyond laptops that you were trying to do? 

 

Rachel Hope 

And there's quite a lot in here. So there were four key parts to what we were doing under our part to Get help with technology. So the 1.3 million laptops and that number is growing now. But the 1.3 million laptops we delivered. We also tried to make sure people were connected to the internet. So we did that through a few different ways. So we gave out 4G wireless routers with associated data on it. But we also worked with the mobile phone companies to get them to offer free mobile data to people that we identified who needed it. Then we worked with schools to get schools who didn't have things like Microsoft Teams or Google for education, those sort of digital education platforms. We got those installed in the schools who didn't already have those, and then we provided training for schools. So we set up what we call the Edtech demonstrators. But that was essentially schools who were almost best in class ar using digital products to educate children, and they went round and supported. We paid for them to go around and support the other schools who were further behind in their digital journey. So they were the sort of the four big things laptops, internet, schools platforms and then the training that we rolled out together. And then you said at the start, what are the objectives? So we were sort of focussed on a few things, but crucially, we were trying to make sure that disadvantage gap between children wasn't going to grow over this period. We wanted to make sure people still had an equal ability to access education. But we also wanted to support those who are vulnerable. So we gave out support to children who had social workers as well as care leavers, for example, where remaining connected is so important to that person's well-being and health. So this was quite a wide ranging programme. That was trying to meet multiple objectives that we would otherwise be meeting through or face to face services. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Okay, so you've had your kind of crisis triaging the problems, everyone's carved out an area of responsibility. You now know you got Get help with tech. I'm assuming at some point the name change so it was Get help with tech instead of Digital infrastructure. Now, now what do you do? And by the way, I just want to know what your mindset was. Did you feel an incredible amount of pressure and you just had to be like the cool, calm, collected lady at the top? Or were you just too busy to even worry about that stuff? So, you know, how are you feeling? And what did you do next? 

 

Rachel Hope 

How am I feeling? Back then it was a wonderful world where I still look after my existing work, which was supporting teacher recruitment and retention, so it's making sure I was able to I had a deep feeling of trying to support my existing team through this because what we have to remember was this wasn't just having to deliver all new work in a crisis, it was also all of us individually and the people in all teams were going through that personally as well. So everyone was thinking about what did it mean for me? How am I going to educate my own children? How am I going to make this work? So there was a high degree of looking at the problem and trying to get that done, as well as just that deep sense of trying to make sure all of the people I care about deeply and my teams are supported and able to do what they need to do. So there was a real degree of spinning lots of plates. I just so thankful looking back to having some fantastic people to work with and being able to tap people on the shoulder and say, Hi, I'm doing this. Can you come and help? And everyone sort of putting down what they're doing and coming alongside each other to make this happen was really, like heartening. And that's what kept me going. But it's also what made the programme deliver as well. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So what did delivering the programme actually entail? Like, I'm coming from a very digital had space as a product manager, and I kind of know if I'm having a conversation with my deputy director that you know, Oh, this is kind of one of my stakeholders, and I'm going to try and work out what the other needs might be. But how did this work in this case? Because it wasn't just purely digital like you, you spoke about physical hardware needing to get to students and stuff like that. And I assume perhaps you also had to think about things like fraud. People taking this is like an opportunity to perhaps get a laptop they wouldn't necessarily have gotten to that school. Maybe, I don't know. Or maybe that wasn't a concern. Maybe it was just. We've just got to trust everybody at this moment, it's too fast to think about. You know what, what were the first steps of getting this programme realised? 

 

Rachel Hope 

probably at its core was making sure that we had an integrated policy and delivery team and delivery in the broadest sense. So I'll describe what we delivered in a second, but it meant that we had digital teams building digital services. We had commercial teams who are putting in place these really big contracts at speed, and we had policy people thinking through probably your question of, who does get a laptop? There's not an infinite supply, who does get a laptop, how's that prioritised and where does it go? So all of those people were working and they had to work completely together at all times to make sure that the feedback loops were happening in minutes rather than days. And so what we actually created, let's bring it to life. Let's take the laptops to begin with. We built a digital platform on which we interacted with eventually all schools or those who are responsible for schools, so multi-academy trusts or local authorities. And we basically invited people in to order their laptops through that. The schools and local authorities for vulnerable children were allocated a certain number of laptops based on the number of children who were eligible for free school meals. So that's how we divvy it up. But it is a whole other layer of complication in all of this, in that not every school uses the same technology. So some people might operate with Google and Chromebooks or Microsoft or Apple, and you wouldn't want to start introducing a different type of technology and overheads of that into the school sector because we want these laptops to be used for years and years to come and not just in the crisis. So we needed to make sure we could service the different needs and that those laptops also had the appropriate safeguarding software on them so they could be given out, but also with the ability for schools to add  their own. So there was all of this nuance. So that all had to be mediated through our digital service. And then that went through once they were ordered to a company who we contracted with, who would pick and then courier the laptops out to schools and then schools would give those to the children who were in need. And because we couldn't service everyone immediately, and I'll come to this, there was a set of priorities of which year groups first off and then and then onwards as we gradually got more laptops in. 

 

So that was a huge part of it, the number of laptops, which I probably should touch on. So there just simply wasn't the volume of laptops in the country to service all of our needs at once. So we were in bidding wars because at this time, you might remember at the time, like New York were put in in massive bids for laptops. Whole countries like we were were putting in massive demands for laptops so that the demand went off the scale. So we really needed to leverage, you know, the UK's buying power. So we went into the market and secured these laptops, but a lot of them had to be built to order, so they had to get built. They had to get transported to us and then they had to get out to schools. And again, this was in a pandemic. So for example, I learnt a lot about the supply chain, but a lot of these companies won’tjust use commercial flights, they will use passenger flights to transport things like laptops, and obviously they all stopped. So the huge demand just for space on planes that we needed to negotiate. So our Secretary of State wrote to leaders of different airlines to try and get our shipments prioritised. We worked with the border borders and Customs to make sure as our laptops arrive, we were fast tracked through that and we were able to get it through as fast as we possibly could. 

 

But it was a constant need to make sure that as things were being built and shipped into the country, we were able to ship them straight out to schools and then schools onwards to pupils. So it wasn't a matter of, for example, going down to PC World and grabbing the latest laptop because there just wasn't that many. And I used to know the stats off the top of my head. But it was we worked out at one point when we were trying to do this of how many Wembley stadiums full of people we'd given laptops out to. And it was it was eye watering when you actually think about what 1.3 million laptops means. And when they started getting delivered, we were getting great photos back of lorry loads, turning up at local authorities and multi-academy trusts with these laptops because they were just simply so many. And I have to say there's a huge thanks to teachers and school staff and social workers, people in local authorities who came up with all sorts of fantastic ways of then getting these laptops onto children. So we again had photos come back of fire engines being used to drive them round. And we we had videos of local authorities packaging up all of the laptops to go to the different areas. And it was really a national effort to get these out and across the country. And you know, the sad thing is that we just wanted to do more and more quickly at every point, but we were working within this sort of global supply chain. I think it was sort of  for me, hit home when I got an email sent to us from a social worker where a child had written up a thank you letter to us on their laptop and had drawn a picture on there using their computer to say how much it had made a difference to them. And it was those moments when you're you're tired and you're doing everything you can to to make this work that it really hits home the sort of impact you were having for these individuals. But yes, it was all the way from thinking of planes, customs, warehouses, fleets of couriers out to schools, one local authority I think even hired a night club because they were close to hold all the laptops so they could up to act as a mini distribution centre and then teachers on their bikes and in cars and fire engines going out and dropping the laptops off to the children. 

 

And I think the BBC did some great coverage of a mum getting handed the laptop for the first time and the floods of tears she was in and I have to admit at that point I was also in floods of tears as well watching it. It really was that sort of coming together of everything. And you know, you always can do things better. But I think the crucial thing was having coming back to your world as a product manager and some of the things that you'll do all the time. It was having teams that were, you know, we had user researchers in the teams at all times. We had like real time data coming through. Every time we saw a problem, we were fixing it, we were fixing it, we were fixing it. We couldn't do absolutely everything perfectly upfront, but we were learning every step of the way which just made more and more of it possible. And that was just brilliant. 

Adaobi Ifeatchor

That's amazing. You know, I've got so many questions I could talk to you for like another couple of hours without even a break but I'm conscious of time and I do want to just kind of ask about how your teams were made up. Because obviously you're working with it's not just you doing all this like you talked about the Secretary of State Gavin Williamson at the time, negotiating with airlines and beneath you I'm assuming you have product managers or were you also working with supply chain experts? Like what was the makeup of your team? What did it look like? 

 

Rachel Hope 

So we had two core multi-disciplinary teams who each own in a different part of the digital services we were providing. Initially, we were focussed around one building the work we needed to do for laptops and one working around what we need to do with all the mobile phone data companies and the work we're doing on the internet and then sub teams off that.

 

But essentially, we were made up of policy advisers who could think and respond to the huge amount of demand for what we were doing in progress reporting and also all the policy questions that were emerging as we were learning as we went through. We had fantastic digital teams, which sort of what you'd picture if you're running a beta service that we we went I think we went to Discovery to beta in about four weeks. 

 

So you had your product managers, your delivery managers, your user researchers your BAs (Business analysts) and all of your technical development teams. 

 

And then we had sitting alongside them, your commercial experts. But I have to say one of the key things I probably should say in all of this actually was the wonderful working with the people who were delivering the laptops themselves. So we created a contract where we could have a partnership between them and that meant that we created one, for example, user  support helpdesk and we shared who was picking up tickets on that between us and our suppliers. They were completely integrated in the team. We met three times a day at a senior level to check how things were going between us and the people doing the supplying.

 

And so the big message in all of this was, rather than all the different component parts is we operated as a single unit at all times rather than trying to do - this is the point where my responsibility ends and your responsibility starts. We all collectively looked at the data and collectively tried to grapple with the same problems, and I think that was the key to making this happen at such speed. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

OK, that is an extremely important point. I'm going to come back to in just a second. Firstly, I'm curious, though, when you talked about having product managers, did they only have sort of like digital responsibilities or did you have like a product manager whose job it was just to do like supply chain stuff? So like getting the built laptop into the hands of the Multi Academy Trust or something along those lines? Were they involved in like the off-line stuff as well as the kind of stuff that was happening digitally? 

 

Rachel Hope

Yeah, it's like the end to end journey almost. Yes, I mean, the different parts of the process. So obviously, when we're working with a contracted organisation, you had all of the laptops in the careers they would they do the ins and outs of assigning it to each carrier. But we had to be in a world especially when we had allocations of how much people could order and they might not order all of their laptops at once because I physically couldn't store them all at once. They had to order them in parts. You'd have to make sure that was flowing. So you'd have a product manager who'd be able to see everything from the point of try and raise an awareness of what a school (let’s take a school) may need to do all the way through to. When has that school actually received their laptop and how are they flowing through? So yes, they'd have that whole end to end oversight, even if they weren't necessarily responsible for the team picking up the laptop and putting it on the van that night.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Perfect. So going back to your point about how it wasn't about just doing your bit, them throwing it over the wall to the next person. This is part of basically like service ownership or service ownership model in a way like it's not about, you’re not an island basically. And I'm told that you were one of the trailblazers of the DfE service ownership model. Is that fair to say? 

 

Rachel Hope

So I'm a huge, huge. I mean, yes, I'm a huge champion of this. I could talk for hours. It's probably a whole other conversation and coffee about service ownership, but I fully believe that the best way to focus on the problem, experiment to make change is integrating policy and delivery and integrating all parts into single teams. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So service ownership model on one side, Get help with tech owner on the other side, you've just been nominated as one of the world's 50 most influential people navigating disruption. Can you tell us about that? Because this work that we've just been talking about today is what has presumably led up to that nomination. How does it feel? Do you feel like you are one of the world's top 50 most influential people in the disruption space? Yeah. Let us know how you feel. 

 

Rachel Hope

Yeah, what a question. I mean, I think it's recognition of lots of things that are happening and recognition of the teams themselves in what they're doing in terms of bringing a lot to bear what a lot of what you can learn from software development to policy making. So it’s injecting that agility into policymaking, which allows us therefore to navigate things like disruption or sometimes be disruptors in and of all selves in terms of making change. And I think I'm just really excited, really excited that people are recognising it and recognising what the benefits can be because it's not just about the outcomes that we're seeing and what we're delivering, either through the Get help with technology programme or the work we're doing on teacher recruitment. What it means for me is there is probably a change that's happening and this is recognition of the change that's happening within government and outside of government, which is a desire to be able to make change happen much more quickly in response to much more real time and better data of of of how things are panning out. And I what I'm really excited about in terms of this recognition is our ability to to sort of show how it works, showcase it and then allow people to work in these ways elsewhere because I'm nearly certain everyone, when they get into these types of teams, absolutely love and thrive in them. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

And so this nomination comes from apolitical doc and it's their agile 50 list. Have you taken a sneak peek at that agile 50 letter to see who else you're up against and what other projects might be interesting because we can all learn from each other, right? 

 

Rachel Hope 

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I'm quite excited, hopefully going to be talking to each other. But I think the one thing that stands out to me, which I'm really interested in for the future, is those who are really making this now data rich world work for them. So there's I think there's a huge change we have on our hands with all this real time data that's flowing around that we start to become a lot more intelligent in terms of how we target policy and interventions. And I think we're still just at the thin end of the wedge at the moment of what can be done. So I was looking across at some of the people on the agile 50 list thinking, Wow, look at the change your leading, that’s absolutely fascinating and brilliant. So there's definitely a lot we can learn from them 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Now before we kind of close this off I think of this, of Get help with tech as like the purest example of why so many of us get into public service, why we join the civil service, and that's to make a difference to members of the public. It sounds so cheesy when I say this, I'm not going to burst into song or anything, but I just wanted to get like a really brief snapshot of like, how did you get to where you are now, Rachel? I'm assuming you went through secondary school, maybe university. What did your career trajectory look like after you finished your formal education? 

 

Rachel Hope

Yeah. Well, I grew up on a sheep farm in South Wales so ending up working in Whitehall does feel quite a jump, but that was a long journey in between the sheep farming and working in Whitehall. But in terms of my career, it has been, you probably won't be surprised here based on what I've said, a blend. So I've worked across policy teams, including working in some central departments like the Cabinet Office and H.M. Treasury, which has given me a real insight into how some really quite big decisions are made. But I've also spent some of my career working in big delivery programmes, for example in H.M. Revenue and Customs, which is a huge and quite impressive operational organisation. And it's been just brilliant, being able to come to the Department for Education and work in a space where I can bring all of that together, when I could bring the skills and experiences I've harvested through my policy roles, together with the experiences I've had leading digital teams and big delivery programmes and just not have to be one side or the other. And I can start to say, Hey, it's the same coin and we're all, we can now lead all these two teams together. So that's been my career in an absolute snapshot. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So for people who might be outside in the private sector, I'm thinking, Well, you know, I think, you know, my skills and experience could have been really useful at a time like, you know, the the beginning of the COVID lockdown. Perhaps I could have brought something to the table and they’re thinking about government. What can they kind of do like? Why do you even start like so many people reach out to me and say, like, well, basically they have questions about which department do you even go into because they're not. The cultures are very different in each of the different government departments. If you're on the outside looking in, where do you even start to kind of like work out whether the civil service might be right for you? 

 

Rachel Hope 

It's definitely worth having a look around if you spot jobs you like, even if you might not think of applying them yet. Go and email that vacancy holder, as we call it, and ask for a coffee. The one thing I can say that's universal about the civil service is people are so open and friendly and willing to share what it's like. The second thing to say is a lot of what we do, you're able to shape a lot of the roles you go into yourself. So what I often say to people is, take the first step, come see what it's like and once you're in and you understand it's grown, you can start to carve out a role which really allows you to use your skills to make change, like you said, for the public good. And I think the only final thing to say is there is nothing quite like it knowing that you're getting up every day and no matter how hard it is, you are trying to make things better. And I think that ability to do that in your job is just brilliant. The one other thing I'd also say is the civil service is great at supporting people to grow and train and learn new things so you can come and you can can sort off in your area where you've got the real deep expertise, but then you can also pick up new skills as you go along and you can really become developed in a way where you can run some of these really big areas, which cut across so many different ranges of skills. Civil service just supports and supports you to do that. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

 So Rachel, where can people find you on the social website? You're on Twitter. 

 

Rachel Hope 

Yes, Rachel hope 3 other people go in there first on Twitter and you'll find me on LinkedIn as well. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

Well three is the magic number. 

 

Rachel Hope

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. More than happy for anyone to reach out and ask for a coffee and or come and see what we do in the teams. It's sometimes brilliant just to come and watch what the teams are doing  and talk to them about how they work. 

 

Rachel Hope 

So what you've heard dear listener, is not the end of the story.  We have a little bit of an insight for you about what's coming up next for Get help with tech and to help us tell that story is our next guest Shafika Gunton or Shaf as I call her. Hello Shaf. 

 

Shaf Gunton 

Hello, thank you. Thank you for having me. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

Tell us what your job title is and what your kind of area of responsibility is at the DfE. 

 

Shaf Gunton 

Sure. And so I'm a programme delivery manager, so that's a bit of a fancy title for somebody who manages programmes of digital delivery. So at the minute, I have a couple of clusters of policy areas. The Early years user group and then we've got Schools and we also have FE, which is further education. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

So when it comes to Get help with tech as I understand it, and frankly my understanding may be wrong, that's absolutely fine. Let me know. But as I understand it with Get help with tech, that kind of programme rolling out like laptops and other kind of digital infrastructure to help kids with remote education, that was the need for that was kind of tailing off a bit. And then you spotted an opportunity for the brand to live again. Is that right? 

 

 

Shaf Gunton 

I did. I did. And that's kind of like what programme delivery manager does. I've been working on something called the digital standards for technology. So these are core standards that schools will need to look to when buying and procuring technology. So very much thinking about how we can create a family of services that help users when they're trying to buy or procure technology. How can we make sure that we're, because it's such a broad problem space, there's lots of problems within this problem. And, you know, by utilising a brand that's successful and is trusted, we could look at bringing all of these initiatives and new ones under one umbrella. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor 

 

So this is about. And correct me, if I'm wrong, this is about literally doing what it says on the tin, in the school or FE college, which is further education, wants to get help with tech. Then you're creating something that will help them with that. Is that right?

 

Shaf Gunton 

Exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head. We just want to make sure that it does what it says on the tin and that’s gets help with technology. That's such a broad space. You could get help with laptops, you could get help with broadband, you could get help with moving to the cloud. You could get help with buying cable in. The list is endless. And our challenge is actually, you know, where do we start and where is the most valuable thing that we can do first? And what is the minimum we could learn before moving on to the next thing building the next thing? But essentially, what we want to do first is bring it all together. So kind of create a bit more of a streamlined, seamless user journey rather than having just pockets of services here, there and everywhere. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So if I'm a school leader hearing this, that sounds very exciting. A brave new world. When is this all going to happen? When can I get my hands on whatever the service is going to be?  

 

Shaf Gunton 

Oh, you're going to tie me now to deadlines. I think we're aiming to have something from the next financial year. We're working in an agile and agile way, so it will be the minimum viable thing that we can launch. And in my mind, it looks very much like a homepage that brings all this together on GOV.UK and we're working with some amazing content designers and service designers to help us solve that design challenge - is how do we present all of this? Because the risk is if you try and put everything together without understanding the user journeys and user needs and mapping the app correctly, you're at risk of advertising everything but reaching no one. So there's a few things that we’re working through some knotty knotty design challenges that will that will help us unlock some of that over the next few months. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

OK, so that's really interesting to me is that you have this idea of a problem in your head as the kind of like programme lead. And then you have also an idea of what this could look like, some sort of site, some sort of thing that brings together lots of different kind of like services that help schools and educators get help with technology. But you must know, as I programme lead, if you will put in a product manager on that, they may turn around and say, Well, you know Shaf, I like that idea of a website that's that's not what people want. They want an all singing, all dancing mobile app thing. Are you prepared to have that kind of recommendation, come back and be something completely different from what you had asked for? 

 

Shaf Gunton 

I'm not only prepared Adaobi, I welcome it. I love it when people come back and say, you know, we've done, we've done the research, we've gathered some data and this is what the data is telling us. This is what our users are telling us. 

I think certainly when you start, kind of like early strategic thinking you have to have some idea of what this thing could be. But ultimately, we need to start with the problem statements and actually start with what are the problems we’re trying to solve. And I love giving thoes problems to people like yourself who are, you know, incredible at going away and trying to solve them. So, yeah, I welcome that feedback, absolutely. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor

So I just want to say thanks to everyone who has been listening. We hope that you've had a good time. Big thanks to our guests today, Rachel Hope and Shafiqa Gunton. If you're interested in getting in touch with either of our guests, Rachel is on Twitter at Rachel, it's h-e-l, Rachel Hope 3 and Shaf is on Twitter at ShaffyDG. So that's s-h-a-f-f-y-DG. 

 

And if you, dear listener, have something that you'd like us to cover in a future pod. You can always let us know on Twitter as well, @DfE_DigitalTech. Or you can reach us by just Googling for our blog, which is DfE digital and technology Blog. 

We're also, we're also moving on to like Spotify and other different platforms, so hopefully you'll be able to find us just on your mobile device or however you usually like to listen to these things. This pod was brought to you by the Department for Education. The producers are Rosie Roff, Louise Mullan and Nattie Williams, and I'm your host, Adaobi Ifeachor. Join us next time. Goodbye. 

 

 

Think digital, act human: future ways of working

 

Here is the fourth episode of our 'Think digital, act human' podcast series.

In this episode our host, Adaobi Ifeachor, gets to know Jack Collier, Head of Digital for School Services in Manchester.

Jack Collier talks to Adaobi Ifeachor about designing office spaces now that we return to work, and how this impacts culture as well as diversity and inclusion.

 

Transcription

Adaobi Ifeachor  

Hello. Welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education. Where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects. I’m Adaobi Ifeachor. Now in our previous episodes, if you’ve listened to any of our previous episodes, we've had guests from the content design world. We've had service designers, we’ve had an associate product manager, so all these kinds of digital experts talking about how they do their work. But this episode we have something very special for you. We're going to talk about where that work gets done and why that's important to even consider. So with our guest today, I have my, well I usually have a cup of coffee, but today I have a cup of soup. So it's a very special pod. We've got our guest Jack Collier. Welcome, Jack.

 

Jack Collier  Hello. Thank you for having me here.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  Do you want to tell us what it is that you actually do? What's your official title?

 

Jack Collier Yeah, sure. So I look after service design and digital delivery for our services that we deliver to schools and school business professionals. So those are the people behind the scenes that make a school run perfectly. And obviously we want our services that we deliver to those people to run as easily and as quickly as possible.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So when I first started, you were my deputy director. Is that still your official title? Or have you moved to something else?

 

Jack Collier I'm still a deputy director. That's me. DD, JC (laughs)

 

Adaobi Ifeachor That sounds great. Except I'm getting DD Jesus Christ.

 

Jack Collier Oh God. (Laughs) definitely not that.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Never mind, let’s move on. Right so what was really nice, what I I kind of liked about you, Jack, was that when I first started, it feels like every episode I'm say when I first started less than a year ago, but seriously, when I first started less than a year ago you were one of the first people to contact me and you said that you know you were deputy director and you set up a meeting to meet with me and I'm thinking, wow. The deputy director of the Department for Education wants to have a meeting with me and then I find out that there are actually quite a few deputy directors.

 

Jack Collier There are tons of us.  

 

Adaobi Ifeachor What is it that you're all doing? How come there are so many deputy directors?

 

Jack Collier So it's a good question. There are a few of us. Basically, we look after different parts of our operations within the DfE that we deliver to users. So I'm looking after, as I said, the services that we deliver to school business professionals. I've got deputy directors that are looking after services that we deliver to teachers or services that we deliver to vulnerable families. So it's a huge set of things that we're delivering, which is why there's so many of us.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor OK, so something that you have been working on relatively recently is the future ways of working for digital and technology, which is like the part of the department that we work for, what does future ways of working mean exactly? What is its remit?

 

Jack Collier I mean, future ways of working is very much present ways of working now, to be honest with you. But really, what we mean by that phrase, future ways of working, is how the ways in which we're working are changing in this new context. So I think we in the workplace across every sector are kind of standing on a bit of a precipice, a doorway into a whole different future in terms of how offices function, how we use physical space, how we use virtual space. And there are two paths I think you can go down. You can design that consciously how you use that space or you can kind of stumble forward and work it out as you go, maybe unconsciously and not necessarily think about the decisions that you're making. The reason that we consciously set up a piece of work called future ways of working is because we wanted to think about the way in which we work in a design thinking kind of way. So, a user centered design approach, an agile approach, and really consciously step forward into that new world and think about how we approach this, this new context.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  Now this was not a top down approach that you took. We’re both saying the word approach quite a lot we’re going to notice this now as we keep speaking. But you did decide to really involve the staff who are going to be working in that space. Can you talk about why you decided to do that, how you decided to do that and what you found out?

 

Jack Collier Yes, we are a user centered design organisation it runs right through our DNA. That I think means that it’s got to carry through everything that we do. And what better way to do that than to take the user centered design approach and apply that to how we want to work, because the way in which we design, the way we want to work is all about our staff and it's all about our people and their potential and unleashing that. So what better way to understand how to do that than actually go and talk to our staff, and understand what their pain points are, what their problems are, how they perceive the world, the things they're worried about. And so what we did was we went and spoke to people. We had a brilliant little team that really, really poured their heart and soul into trying to understand that perspective and that helped to shape what we want to do going forward. I should say as well that, you know, we're not we're not just designing around what staff want. Instead, we're trying to think about that within the context of our organisation and where we're trying to be. DfE is on a change journey. It's been a very, very policy focused organisation, and we in digital and technology within DfE are trying to push ourselves more towards a service oriented organisation and you can imagine space and environment is very different in those two different kinds of organisations. So yes, we went bottom-up. We went to try and understand what staff wanted and what they felt and what their pain points were. But we also had this view in our mind of where do we want to get to in the future and how can space and environment, virtual or physical ways of working, that wrap around that really help us together?

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So what were some of the things that you heard that were surprising? Like, what were some of the things that stood out for you whilst you did these surveys and these kind of like town halls and those sorts of things like what did you learn?

 

Jack Collier Yeah, I think two things that really stood out to me. One was that there is no consensus. There is no way to please everyone. Everyone wants something slightly different, which I felt was quite surprising, actually. And it really does show the power of  user centered design because I thought everyone would share my point of view of what, you know, what do we want in terms of ways of working? Actually, everyone has almost a completely unique set of things that they wanted out of the future.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Well hang on a second, what is your point of view? What did you think?

 

Jack Collier I wanted a very radical change in the way in which we work. I wanted to think about the office as a base for community collaboration, play even, maybe even that we don't need a permanent office footprint. Maybe we could think about hiring the space that we need when we need it. I think that's future thinking stuff. Maybe that's too radical for where we are now. But, you know, everyone's got different contexts and so you might be, for example, fairly vulnerable, and so, you’re just not up for traveling. And so working from home and making sure that virtual first is embedded in everything we do is really, really important for some people. Other people we know within the team, for example, moved city in order to join the DfE. They don't know very many people here, and they really felt like work was going to be a social place where they could get to know new people and so, coming into the office was really important for them and working in a collaborative way in a physical environment was really important to them. So you can see there's just a huge spectrum of different views, and there was no consensus to kind of work through that and work out what we do in that situation? I think the other thing that I found surprising from the survey was actually one of the questions we asked was do you trust leadership within DfE to deliver on this? And I found it surprising that the majority of people said, Yes, we do. And I think that's quite unique within a large organisation that you have a fair degree of trust in leaders.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor  OK, so from what you said, I'm hearing kind of like two sides of this coin, right? We’ve got this world where people spent, you know, 18 months, almost two years working not from the office and then it’s a question of, are we going back into the office? Are we going back to the before times and using the office space regularly through the week? But then the other side of the coin is what exactly does that office look like and how does it work when we do go in? So like, I’ve been following what some other big tech companies are doing. I mean, like, it's October 2021 as we record this. And you know, we've heard Microsoft say, we’re basically not going to put a timeframe on when people are going to come back in. And then you've got like people in the tech side of banking saying, we want people in as soon as possible. They’re coming back into the office pretty much full time is where we want things to go. Whereas the Department for Education's official advice is we do want you in, two to three days a week. That's kind of right, isn't it?

 

Jack Collier Yes, certainly there is, I guess, an official line around how many days in the office we would like people to come in. But beyond that, you know, it is an empty vessel around how we design the office to be useful and productive for people when they do come in and how we create the environment, virtual and physical, for people to work, whether they're in the office, at home or anywhere else. I think it's really important to kind of pause on a little point, which is that over the course of the pandemic, the make-up of our team has changed quite significantly. In that beforehand we had a base in London and we had a base that was growing in Manchester. We had two very clear kinds of areas where we were growing our workforce. Over the course of the pandemic, that changed quite dramatically whereby actually we are recruiting across lots of different locations, including Sheffield and Coventry, for example. And most of our teams are now based across different locations, so it's very easy to get hung up on how many days people are in the office. And actually the design challenge for us is how do we design an environment that allows people to work from different offices together or different locations together because teams could be based in multiple different locations. And there were massive benefits for us to do that during the pandemic and continuing it now. Which is that by doing that, we can offer people better learning experiences because they can join different kinds of teams that match their learning needs. So, for example, I was able to send an apprentice to go spend time with the apprenticeship service, which is based in Coventry, and he was based in Manchester. He got loads from that experience because it's such a mature digital service. He got to work on loads of AI for example, and with mature software teams, we wouldn't have been able to do that in the physical environment in the before times. The other thing is that we were able to assemble the right skills to solve the problems that were in front of us. So rather than just kind of say, we've got this problem and this team needs to solve it, even though it might not have the right skills, we were able to say, actually, we need this person, this person, this person, because they've got the right skills, to solve this problem. And that was actually vitally important, I think during particularly our pandemic response when everyone was at home and we were able to assemble teams with exactly the right skills that we needed to solve a problem without having any physical divides between people. So I think it's easy to get hung up on this, this idea of how many days people are in the office when actually the design challenge for us isn't about that. The design challenge is how do we create the environment, whether you were in the office or not? Because actually our teams are across all different kinds of locations. The other thing I was going to say was that you started off this pod by asking me what's my job? And it's a really hard question to answer actually, I've got a job title, I just mean, I think I've got a set of things which probably doesn't mean much to people outside of the DfE. Really, my job, as I see it as a kind of senior manager within the Civil Service, is to unlock the potential of our teams and to support our teams. They're the people that are doing real work, right? People that are actually delivering for our users, whether I like it or not, I'm not sat writing code, which is going to be released to our users. That's the role of our teams. So my job is to unlock our potential and get rid of barriers to them flourishing as teams. And one of the big barriers that you see in any organisation, but you know particularly now with this kind of confusing environment that we’re in, is the physical and virtual environments which teams have to work in. And if we can remove that, which is why I was so interested in this piece of work, I think you can get teams performing even better by building the right, physical and right virtual environments for them to be able to collaborate and work effectively.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor OK, so let's dig into that a bit more. So we've got you trying to kind of like make lemonade from lemons and say, right, this is actually a chance for us to completely, from the ground up, reimagine what we want our work environments to be. If staff are already coming in two or three days a week or maybe one or zero days a week. What are they coming into? How are we going to use this space differently? And I happen to know, we have been given some money and some leeway to remake our work space in Manchester. I don't know if this is happening beyond Manchester. Maybe that's something you're aware of. What is the plan there? What is the vision? What are you trying to do? I know you just said you’re radical, you're thinking about collaboration spaces. So tell me, tell me the dirt.

 

Jack Collier Yeah. So I think the first thing to say is that I don't have the answers, and I don't think anyone has the answers for this kind of new world that we're stepping into. But that's fine because most of the things that we're working on, we don’t have the answers and we’re working on really complex problems, right, and that's why we've got this user centered design approach and design thinking approaches, and we're working in an agile way. That's exactly what we're doing with how we create environments both physical and virtual. So what is the vision, where are we going? Well, we've got a brilliant alliance. We've got a brilliant relationship with our estate colleagues, which I think is quite unusual in large organisations, actually. And I'm very, very kind of happy that we've managed to forge that. What we're doing is we're looking at space in Manchester and in Sheffield actually too and thinking about what experiments we can run in that space in order to understand how people work in those spaces. What attracts people to work in the office and how space supports that and what actually turns them off? What makes them say, you know, the office doesn't support the way in which I need to work. So again, it's about removing those barriers, but also creating the space that supports the kind of work that we want to do. So we want to launch a load of experiments with estates. And the thing that I always think about, and I don’t know if you've ever seen the film about the McDonald's founder?

 

Adaobi Ifeachor I haven’t but everybody talks about this 

 

Jack Collier right? I don't think it's a brilliant film, by the way, but there’s a great scene where they essentially prototype up the restaurant space and they do it in chalk, in a car park. And we're not I mean, we're not in that world, we're not exactly doing that. But what we are going to do is we're going to look at bringing in things like modular furniture so we can try different setups, we’re going to try different technology in the space so we can see how that works when working across sites in bringing physical and virtual environments together. And we're going to be seeking feedback throughout this to understand how that works for staff and to measure it as well. Does it bring people into the office? Does it drive people away? And really just take that experimental approach to how we design that space. And that's what I mean about consciously stepping into this question of how do we work in this new world.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So would a Manchester colleague walk into the office and suddenly see that there are no desks. There's bean bags and like virtual reality goggles. I mean, I'm being a bit facetious, but like, how regularly are you going to be doing these experiments and then analyzing the results? What are your measures for success?

 

Jack Collier So I think you've got to go back to that thing I said before, which is space right? And virtual environments, physical environments, the whole thing, how we work, culture is very, very emotive and people naturally jump to, Hey, I really want this. I want virtual reality goggles, for example, and everyone's got ideas. And that's fine. But you're completely right Adaobi, you’ve got your product manager hat on to say this is about what we're trying to achieve. It's not about the things themselves. And if we go back to that statement we made before around, we in the DfE are trying to become more of a service organisation, then the space has really got to support that. So how do we measure our team's ability to collaborate in order to deliver to users? 

A really good example of the kind of things I'm talking about is if you were to go to Citizens Advice head office in London, you wait in the waiting room, you sit there and you look at a screen and on that screen you can see all of the digital interactions that are going on with Citizens Advice there and then. So you can see what are the top search things on Citizens Advice website? What are the top queries, for example. And immediately you enter this headspace where you understand what Citizens Advice does and what it really cares about, right? Because you can see it cares about the users and what advice they're trying to find. So that's the kind of outcome that we're trying to achieve in the DfE, right? We want to see that stuff on walls. So we want to see  TV screens sharing data about our services. Are they up? Are they down? Is there a problem? How many transactions have we served? What are users saying? We want to physically see that right. We want spaces that support the ways of working that enable us to understand the users better. So things like empathy labs, GDS have got a brilliant empathy lab in their London office because, you know, it's open, you wander past it and you are naturally drawn to it and you kind of step in there and you go.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor and what is an empathy lab? For people that don’t know.

 

Jack Collier it's a space basically where you can build empathy with different kinds of users who might be different to you. So they might have visual impairments, for example, and you can try on goggles that might stimulate that kind of experience that they might have. Just having that in the space that you can wander into and experiment and explore with, I think sends a great message about the culture and environment that this organisation has and therefore the kind of services that we're trying to deliver. So when we're talking about this stuff, that's the kind of North Star that we're trying to achieve, how can we curate space? And I keep saying virtual physical because it's not just about the office, but how do you work between different spaces that supports that culture, that way of working, which really puts the user right at the centre. And the thing that I’ll add to it is that it's not just about how we use the space, it is about how other people can use the space as well. So that could be other teams that aren’t digital teams coming into that space and understanding immediately what this team is doing and what it's achieving. Is it achieving success or not? You know, that would be a fantastic outcome. At the moment, we can't do that. We can't do that sat on our laptops, right? We can't do that at home. It's very, very difficult. The other thing is actual users. I would love to have users coming into our space and for us to feel connected to the people that we're serving and users for us in DfE is really, really expansive. But it's things like, you know, how can we support people to come into the office to get work experience? How can we support the mums that might have taken time out of work, who have children, for example, to gain new skills and go into different kinds of employment. So, for example learning to code something, we've got coders on site while we're running coding camps for people that want to retrain. So there's masses of stuff that we could do, which actually brings our users to us as well. And I think kind of creates a more permeable barrier between government and the people we’re serving. And again, when I think about ways of working in space and environment. You can start to achieve some of those things and I think that really drives the culture and ways of working then that teams inhabit.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor so many interesting things that you said there. I'm still struggling to understand how we might measure the success of that objectively. Have you thought about that?

 

Jack Collier Yeah. So it's things like, do people enjoy coming into the office? Do people actually come into the office to collaborate and do the things that we expect them to do physically together, right? Do they spend time together? But I think there are other measures as well that probably aren't as direct, which are kind of these indirect measures. Things like do we retain people better than we did before because people enjoy working together? People enjoy being part of an environment. So those kinds of measures that I think we can start to build out from these experiments, I should say we haven't started these experiments yet. So they're due to kick off around November time or towards the end of the year with the actual physical space.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor The reason why I guess I'm asking about these kinds of key performance indicators is because I'm imagining listeners who perhaps they work outside government and think, “Wow, OK experiments in how we use work space, that sounds great. How am I going to kind of measure whether this is working for us?” And there's some really good stuff you talked about in terms of retention. Because it's so expensive to kind of recruit and train new staff members and you know how many people are choosing to come into office now that you've made these changes. What is the perception of the staff themselves about how much they're enjoying the space? I think you do have to be careful about sort of like surveying people out. If they're like several weekly surveys, everyone's gonna be like, Oh, I don't want to go in just because I have to do another survey.

 

Jack Collier I think just to build on that measurement point Adaobi, obviously it's a massive experiment in and of itself. That massive experiment is made up of individual kinds of experiments, right? So one experiment might be that we want to create a dedicated user research space that we want to soundproof a room and make it private and be able to bring users in or be able to do virtual research from that room. So we then want to build those measures out from that specific experiment. And that would be use of the space, whether more people participate in research as a result. So they get to understand users' perspectives better as a team. You kind of want to break this big experiment ways of working down into smaller bits and kind of be specific about what you are trying to achieve with each one of those specific things? The other thing I'd just add as well around this is that I think it's a massive opportunity to improve an organisation's inclusivity and diversity by thinking about space and environment in this way. So one of the really exciting things that our estates colleagues are thinking about is designing inclusive spaces. So, for example, spaces that work for neurodivergent people or people with neurodivergent needs. For example, lower lighting, quiet spaces where it's harder to be disrupted. And I think that's brilliant and fantastic. That we’re starting to bring that inclusive design thinking into the way in which we design the space. And again, whether that be virtual or physical, you know, the virtual environment, it might be around making sure that everyone understands how to run a brilliant virtual meeting or if you're running a hybrid meeting, making sure that everyone in a hybrid meeting that is physically in a space together still has their laptop on and is logged into the meeting so that anyone who isn’t in that physical space can still see them. And if you want to, you know, participate in that meeting, you still put your hand up on the Team's meeting, for example, right? So there's all kinds of bits and pieces that make this up, but putting inclusivity right at the heart of this is really important too I think.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Brilliant, in one of our previous pods we had head of design, content design; Jen staves. And she talked about the importance of communities of practice, building up this sort of shared culture within particular disciplines. So you know there might be a community for product managers, community for designers, and that's sort of like this intra-culture. But then there's also like this department culture, like there's like a digital technology culture that's been built up. And I felt that as somebody who is very new to work and DfE Digital and Technology is surprisingly quite innovative and people are kind of willing to just take an idea and run with it, which I really like, you talk about experiments and things like that. I'm just wondering how easy or difficult it will be to maintain that culture. Will it have to necessarily change? And before you get started on your answer, I can see the gears moving in your head already. Before you get started on your answer, I want to say this, a few weeks back, I went to perhaps my second social DfE, and it was like a Northern sports day. And we traveled out to like this particular site, Bamford or something like that. And there were just all sorts of events: football, ultimate frisbee, rounders. I was looking forward to rounders so much I can't even tell you, and then I was immediately bowled out. It was terrible. But anyway, how do you keep a culture and sense of rapport and camaraderie when people are really only going into an office two days a week if they feel like it?

 

Jack Collier Yeah, culture is an interesting one. And you mentioned different teams, with different cultures and different communities. And with different cultures, you’ve got cultures layered on top of cultures, right? So, we've got a D&T culture, we've got communities of practice, which I feel is the beating heart of DfE digital and technology, you’ve got team culture, you've got program cultures. It's a complex world and a complex environment. How do you keep a culture? I think for me, it goes back to what I said at the start, it's about being conscious about it. First of all, cultures never stood still. It's always changing and always evolving. And I think every action that we take, everything we say adds to, builds or changes that culture. I think that's particularly true at a senior level as well. Where I guess you've got more influence, more reach across an organisation. But within that context, I know that, thinking about how you maintain or build the culture that you want, you've got to consciously design it and things like rituals are really, really important in culture. If you think about any culture in a more kind of broad sense, a national culture or what have you. Rituals are often the keystone pillars on which that culture kind of rests or kind of goes back to. And I think that's one of the key things that we’ve got to design. We've already got some great rituals, things like Show the Thing where we invite teams to come and show something, ideally something that's not finished. It might be a problem that they don't know how to solve it or a fun project that they want to share with people because they learn something from it. That encourages a culture of sharing and not having to polish things up in order to share them and actually getting that feedback early. It's a great ritual to kind of encourage that kind of behavior. So these kinds of rituals that we've got to think about designing and then putting in place that supports the culture that we want to achieve.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Do those rituals always have to be work related? Do activities like Northern sports day become more important then because you don't necessarily spend as much time in each other's physical presence?

 

Jack Collier No, they do not have to be work related. I mean, people enjoy coming to work. Definitely because the work is exciting it's interesting and you make a difference. But for the people, right, people say you come for the work you stay for the people. And so those rituals could be things like regular lunch time socials, for example. So I think where I used to work, we used to have falafel Friday where we used to go out to get falafel from the market. It's great. It's like a nice little thing to do. But equally, before the pandemic or physically in office together, we used to have a Thursday wellbeing time, which was about two hours set aside to just get together as a team, do some fun things together. I would personally encourage play at work because a load of research shows that that supports us to work better and supports us to bond as teams better. And so actually, I think there’s loads of brilliant rituals that we already are doing and which will continue to build and support that. 

 

Adaobi Ifeachor Perfect that was such a good note to end on. I'm just going to say thank you to everyone who's listened to this. Really hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Thanks to our wonderful deputy director, our DD JC, Jack Collier.

 

Jack Collier Thanks for having me.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor If people want to connect with you on social, do you have a Twitter or is LinkedIn best?

 

Jack Collier Yeah, maybe Twitter is the best place. Unfortunately, it’s not at DD JC. It’s at Jack Colls. So yeah, hit me up on Twitter.

 

Adaobi Ifeachor So if you, dear listener, have something you'd like us to cover in a future pod, please do let us know. Our Twitter is DfE_digitaltech and our blog is the digital and technology blog. Honestly, just Google it, because if we gave you the URL, we'd be here all day. It is really quite long. This pod was brought to you by the Department for Education, the producers are Rosie Roff, Louise Mullan and Nettie Williams, and I'm your host Adaobi Ifeachor. Join us next time. Bye, bye.