Communicating and Influencing:
Civil Service examples by grade

In my role on a council tax support helpline, a change to the eligibility rules meant around 1,200 households would receive less support from April. The official letter was four pages long and full of jargon, and callers were confused and often upset.

I listened to 30 calls to understand the most common questions, then wrote a one-page plain English summary with three worked examples and a clear list of what people needed to do. I tested it with two colleagues and a customer panel member with a learning disability, and adapted the wording after their feedback.

I presented the summary to my manager and explained how it could reduce repeat calls. She agreed to send it as an insert with the letter and to add it to the call scripts. On calls, I stayed calm with upset callers, explained the change honestly, and made sure they knew what help was still available.

After the insert was introduced, repeat calls about the change fell by 35%, average call time dropped from 11 to 7 minutes, and complaints about the letter fell from 48 in the first month to 9 in the second.

As an HEO in an operations team, I believed that moving the weekly performance report from a 20-page PDF to a live dashboard would save time and help managers act sooner. Three senior managers were sceptical, worried about data accuracy and about losing the commentary they relied on.

Instead of arguing for the dashboard, I met each of them to understand their concerns and what they used the report for. I learned that the commentary was what they valued most, so I kept a short written summary alongside the dashboard.

I built a prototype, presented it at the managers’ meeting using their own data, and showed how the figures were checked against the source. I tailored the material to different preferences: a one-page guide for those who preferred reading and a five-minute recorded demo for others. I invited challenge and agreed to run both formats in parallel for a month so they could compare.

At the end of the trial, all three managers agreed to switch. Preparing the report now takes 2 hours a week instead of 9, a reduction of 7 hours, and managers act on performance issues an average of four days sooner. Two other directorates have since adopted the approach.

As a Grade 7 programme lead, I had to tell 40 partner organisations that funding for a community programme would be cut by 25% the following year after a spending review. Many were small charities, and several had been partners for over a decade.

I wanted the message to be honest and to protect trust. I briefed my director and agreed the key facts, then wrote to every partner before any public announcement so they did not hear it second-hand. I avoided language that implied the decision reflected their performance, and set out plainly what was changing, why, and what support was available.

I then held four regional sessions, presenting the reasons in plain terms and leaving most of the time for questions. I listened to the concerns raised, stayed impartial when partners disagreed with each other about how the reduced budget should be shared, and took their proposals to ministers. I agreed a revised allocation formula with the partners that protected the smallest organisations.

All 40 partners remained in the programme, none raised a formal complaint, and a partner survey rated my team’s communication at 4.3 out of 5, up from 3.6 the previous year. Ministers adopted two of the partners’ proposals.