Introduction from Rupert McNeil
I am thrilled that the Civil Service Job Share Finder has won the ENEI 'Impact through Innovation' Award. This is the third innovation themed award win for the site since it was launched in 2015!
COVID-19 has raised the profile of flexible working across the Civil Service, with many of us working from home and juggling work and life responsibilities in a way that we have never had to before. The UK Civil Service is committed to supporting flexible working as we recognise the great benefits it can bring to our workforce. It can help to reduce the Gender Pay Gap by supporting senior female colleagues to job share whilst maintaining and progressing their careers, or support colleagues with caring responsibilities who may wish to work flexibly to better balance their different commitments.
Awards like this rightly commemorate the great progress we are making in this space. Brian, Julie and the team have worked exceptionally hard on this product, and it’s a great example of the type of work HR professionals are undertaking every day to make the Civil Service the most inclusive employer in the UK.
Civil Service Job Share Finder wins Impact Through Innovation Award at the ENEI Awards 2020
Brian Stanislas
On the 8 July the ENEI Awards 2020 winners and highly commended award recipients were announced on social media.
The ENEI Awards 2020 recognise the commitment of organisations in achieving diverse and inclusive workplaces and celebrate the teams and individuals who are really making a difference.
The organisations making this year’s shortlist include employers operating the length and breadth of the UK and globally, employing from 20 to 425,000 people.
I am very happy to say that the Civil Service Job Share Finder has won the ENEI ‘Impact through Innovation’ award!
The Civil Service Job Share Finder is an online job-share database that helps civil servants find and manage information so that they can make compatible job-share matches with other civil servants. Civil Service HR was also recognised for its work in promoting job sharing across the Civil Service.
The Civil Service Job Share Finder team is part of the Digital, Data and Technology team within Government Shared Services (GSS) in the Cabinet Office.
I must admit that I was most satisfied with our win as the last time we were shortlisted in this competition in 2017 we achieved an ENEI highly commended award. So it was quite a nice feeling to be a winner after all the years of working up to it!
Continuing and emergent innovations ...
Before the coronavirus epidemic the Civil Service Job Share Finder team had initiated a ‘Getting Our Message Out Across All Regions’ strategy of attending live events to promote job sharing and our website, run Q&A surgeries and networking events in locations across the U.K. in collaboration with CS Local. Our primary objective being to enhance our impact beyond London and the South East region.
Unfortunately the impact of COVID-19 on our workplace soon put a stop to that.
As coronavirus driven working arrangements come to an end, but with many of us still working from home, we wanted to see if we could use a digital solution to recommence our colleague engagement aspirations.
To facilitate this we are creating a new section on our website where we will host live streams, webinars, user surgeries and videos. Our intention is to be able to replicate (and potentially improve!) what we would have normally done in an ordinary live event while at the same time making it more interactive using the advantages of digital communications.
The biggest driver for us wanting to do this is the ability to reach out to as many people as possible who want and need Flexible Working support & guidance during these unnerving times.
We anticipate having a prototype of this new section live in the early part of August. We are calling the new page ‘By The Water Cooler’ as a homage to all those ad hoc talking by the water cooler moments we used to have when we were back in our offices!
If you would like to to know more about this work or would like to to get involved with the development of this new page please contact the Civil Service Job Share Finder team at: enquiries.csjobsharefinder@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Working collaboratively across teams has also helped me to benefit from ‘diversity of thought’ as a Product Manager and to co-create other emergent innovations. Two significant cross team collaboration examples with colleagues from the Government Recruitment Service (GRS) are:
The Civil Service Careers Website
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- Collaborating with the GRS Careers Website Stakeholder Engagement & Project Lead Andrew Cullinane to produce the very well received ‘How to Apply’ page and the up and coming ‘Job Opportunities Locations Map’ feature and;
The ‘Golden Thread’ (Government Recruitment Information Database)
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- Collaborating with the GRS Lead Solutions Architect & Data Analyst Peter Cunningham to develop recruitment campaign analytics dashboards reporting real time (and historical) data insight relating to protected characteristic groups (e.g. BAME and disability), flexible working, location and campaign effectiveness. This work is in it’s ‘emergent’ phase … more on this coming soon!
‘And finally ...’
If, after reading this blog post, you decide to look for your ideal job share partner or just want further information about job sharing, sign up to the Civil Service Job Share Finder and see where it takes you.
You can find Flexible Working and Working From Home / Remote Working resources by visiting the Civil Service Job Share Finder Resource Library.
If you would like to get involved in Cross Government Flexible Working Network activities, email enquiries.csjobsharefinder@cabinetoffice.gov.uk, or follow CGFWN on Twitter at @CrossGovFlexWkNetwork.
And you can also learn about what it’s like to work in the Civil Service by visiting the Civil Service Careers Website.