Location: Blended between office and home (England and Wales). Time in office negotiable
As the Head of Human-Centred Design, you will be the beating heart of our national advice department operating strategically to continually challenge and influence our organisational thinking, with a relentless focus on ensuring our advice and services are designed to meet user and advisor needs. This sector leading role holds responsibility for a broad and strategically significant portfolio, ensuring Citizens Advice remains at the forefront of human-centres design, encompassing:
* Strategic development of impactful, sustainable advice content, products and services for our clients, online users and diverse network of close to 20,000 colleagues and volunteers
* Leading and inspiring our content design, service design, product design and user research functions, creating a centre of excellence that defines and evolves the vision for these disciplines
* Influencing a research and design-led culture across Citizens Advice that contributes to a seamless customer journey on a variety of channels
* Driving the identification and implementation of cutting-edge client and member facing service innovations, harnessing technology and exploring opportunities to commercialise our offer
All of these will require close collaboration across our Citizens Advice system, both the national organisation and our members and the wider advice sector. Key partners will be the wider Client and Member Services directorate, Strategy, Income Policy and Data colleagues, funders, advice sector partners and local leaders.
You will be a strategic thinker, adept at connecting the evolving needs of our clients and members with the practicalities of advice delivery. This pivotal role demands a deep understanding of human-centred design methodologies and a relentless focus on ensuring that everything we deliver is intuitive, meets diverse user needs, and clearly communicates essential messages. You will champion a culture where design and research insights directly inform organisational strategy, drive continuous improvement, and ensure our products and services are truly responsive to the people we serve, ultimately achieving positive client outcomes.
Reporting to the Director of Advice within our newly formed Client and Member Services Directorate, you’ll play a pivotal part working with like minded leaders to change how we deliver sustainable advice to millions of clients and support thousands of incredible advisers for many years to come.
Please provide details in your cover letter to evidence the following essential criteria. Please make sure your cover letter provides evidence for the essential criteria succinctly.
* Strategic Leadership & Operational Management: Extensive experience of leading and managing multidisciplinary teams of human centre design practitioners to research, prototype, launch, measure, and scale products/services, including leading multiple complex projects simultaneously.
* Deep Domain Expertise: In-depth understanding of the concepts and best practice principles of human-centred design, user research, service design, product design, content design, and evaluation, and how they can be applied to complex user scenarios within large organisation.
* Stakeholder Management, Collaboration & Influence: Demonstrable experience of building and maintaining effective collaborative relationships with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, including senior leaders, operational teams, external partners, and regulatory bodies, with an ability to influence and negotiate.
* User Centred Delivery & Iteration: Proven track record of leading user research, content design, product design, service design, and evaluation for high-volume services and complex user journeys, working in multidisciplinary, agile teams, and using data and user research to iterate and improve content and services e.g. self service.
Citizens Advice offers confidential advice online, over the phone, and in person, for free. Through our national network of charities, we give people the knowledge and the confidence they need to find their way forward whoever they are, and whatever their problem.
Do you want to work for an organisation that makes a difference, every single day, to people from all walks of life? The people that turn to Citizens Advice need help overcoming an obstacle in their lives from debt to evictions to trouble at work and you can be key to them getting the support they need in the quickest, easiest, and most effective way.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is of strategic importance within the organisation and recognised as integral to all we do as a service.
Central to pursuing our EDI mission is building diverse and inclusive teams in which everyone has a sense of belonging. We believe inclusion is a social justice issue - a principle that underpins our all EDI work. To that end, we particularly welcome applications from people we would like to see better represented in our organisation and sector - people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and disabled people. We follow the social model of disability. We will offer an interview to disabled candidates who indicate they wish their application to be considered under our Disability Confident Interview Commitment where they meet our selection criteria in their application. Some of our roles attract a high volume of applications and in some circumstances where it is not practicable or appropriate, we may limit the number of interviews offered to disabled and non-disabled candidates. We will provide reasonable adjustments as needed.
We’re a flexible employer, so this role may suit anyone who’d prefer a flexible arrangement to help their work/life balance, many of our colleagues spend most of their time working remotely. Whilst we prefer a blended approach between a local office, if one is near you, and home we’re open to being flexible on location, occasionally a role may require you to be based in a certain location if that's the case it will be detailed in the advert or job description. This can be discussed in more detail during your interview.
The National Citizens Advice operates from offices in England and Wales, with 4 regional offices based in Cardiff, London, Birmingham and Leeds, therefore all successful applicants must be based within England or Wales.
Please be aware that Citizens Advice is not a sponsoring organisation. Therefore the successful applicant must already possess the right to work in the UK or be able to secure the right to work in the UK independently.
We have been awarded the top charity in Third sectors' employer index, where it's recognised that Citizens Advice is an organization that not only prioritizes the people we serve but also values the wellbeing of its employees.
Citizens Advice seeks to redeploy internal staff who are at risk or under notice of redundancy and will prioritise them in the recruitment process where necessary. If you have been confirmed as at risk or under notice of redundancy please ensure you indicate this in the at-risk box in your application.
Please note, in the event of a high number of applications, we reserve the right to close the application early.
This vacancy closes at 23.59 on the closing date.
For more information about the organisation, our values and benefits please see the following link - Information, values and benefits
Need help with your application, see our useful how to guides on the following page - Guidance notes for applicants