Changing and Improving:
Civil Service examples by grade

In my role in a pensions administration team, I noticed that five colleagues and I spent around two hours a day copying details from emailed forms into the case system, and that about one form in ten had a keying error that needed a later correction.

I suggested to my team leader a trial of an online form that fed directly into the case system, since the IT team had built something similar for another area. I checked with the accessibility lead that the form would work with screen readers, and kept a paper and phone option for customers who could not use it.

I set up a four-week pilot for one form type, wrote a one-page guide, and ran two short sessions to show colleagues how it worked. Some were worried it would add to their workload, so I explained the aim, listened to their concerns, and changed the guide after their feedback.

At the end of the pilot, keying errors on that form fell from 10% to under 1%, and the team saved around 40 minutes a day. The form was adopted for three more form types, and I was asked to train two other teams.

As an HEO in a customer service directorate, I was asked to reduce a backlog of 900 complaints that were taking an average of 42 days to resolve against a 20-day target.

Rather than simply adding staff, I ran two workshops with complaint handlers, the policy team and a customer panel to map every step and identify where time was lost. Handlers suggested most of the best ideas, including a triage stage so simple complaints could be resolved by phone within days. I encouraged ideas from everyone, including newer staff who were reluctant to speak up at first.

I proposed a redesigned process to my deputy director and explained the risk: a triage stage might resolve some complaints too quickly and miss underlying issues. To manage this, I introduced a weekly quality check of 20 triaged cases. I briefed all 35 handlers on why the change was happening and gave them two weeks to raise concerns before launch.

Within four months, average resolution time fell to 17 days and the backlog was cleared. Quality checks found errors in fewer than 3% of triaged cases, and customer satisfaction with complaint handling rose from 54% to 71%.

I led a Grade 7 team of 14 delivering a licensing service that still relied on paper applications. Processing cost £38 per application, and the service handled 60,000 applications a year.

I identified an opportunity to move most applications online and set up a small multidisciplinary team to design it. I encouraged ideas from front-line staff, the digital team and users themselves, and made it clear that challenging the plan was welcome. Two of the best changes came from a caseworker who pointed out that older applicants often needed to upload documents from a phone.

I set out the benefits, costs and risks for the senior team, including the risk that some users would be excluded. I kept a supported paper route, tested the service with users with access needs, and introduced it in stages. When early data showed people dropping out at the payment page, I paused the next stage for two weeks and fixed it before continuing. I briefed staff regularly on how their roles would change and arranged training for all of them.

Within a year, 82% of applications were made online, the cost per application fell to £11, saving around £1.6m a year, and user satisfaction rose from 68% to 85%.