Child Maintenance Service - Work Group Leader in Dudley

As the UK government’s largest public service provider, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policies. The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) supports parents who are unable to reach a private financial agreement by ensuring—and when necessary, enforcing—their legal responsibility to contribute to their child’s living costs. Our mission is simple: to get money to children, because it makes a real difference in their lives.

While we’ve made significant progress in transforming our service, we remain ambitious about what more we can achieve for the families who rely on us. CMS is a dynamic and rewarding place to work. Step into any of our service centres and you’ll find passionate, dedicated professionals committed to supporting our customers. We are proud to foster an inclusive and diverse workforce where everyone can thrive. If you’re looking to make a difference, this could be the career for you.

This is a fantastic opportunity to start or grow a fulfilling career in the Civil Service. We offer a flexible work-life balance, along with opportunities for growth, challenge, and personal development. The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is offering exciting opportunities for motivated individuals to join us as Work Group Leaders. These are key leadership roles where you’ll have the chance to make a real difference in the lives of children and families across the UK.

Roles are being advertised for two areas of our business:

• Applications and Maintenance: You will have overall responsibility for leading, organising and performance managing around 80-90 people, including several small caseworker teams. These teams work within a Service Centre environment, their main task being serving customers by means of online services and telephony. They deliver a complex service to customers including collecting money. Each team is led by a Team Leader for whom you have direct line management responsibility.
• Enforcement: You will have line management responsibility for up to 14 Enforcement Case Managers. CMS Enforcement is a fundamental stage in the Payment Compliant process for securing compliance on our most difficult non-paying cases. This is a fast-paced and challenging environment.

Key tasks will include holding case conferences with direct reports on a regular basis to discuss best means of securing compliance using all tools available whilst balancing the needs of the customer. All roles are accountable for managing workloads, effectively managing resources, prioritising and addressing any risks to ensure performance targets and customer objectives are met. You will manage escalated complaints within timescales and provide feedback to support continual improvement. This may involve dealing directly with customers both verbally, over the phone, and in writing. As a people manager you will support wellbeing across the teams, manage attendance and conduct regular coaching reviews confidently addressing risks to performance.

We’re looking for passionate leaders who are committed to delivering outstanding customer service. You’ll need to be adaptable and resilient, capable of making sound decisions, and confident in driving and implementing change in a high-profile, fast-paced environment. Your leadership will be instrumental in achieving our core mission: ensuring that children receive the financial support they deserve.

Role Responsibilities:

• Operational leaders are accountable for creating an environment to support the flexible effective personalised delivery of customer services, quality and performance across their teams.
• They provide leadership and effective use of resource to ensure performance targets, quality and accuracy standards and customer objectives are met.
• Provide transformational leadership to the team and beyond - inspiring colleagues through difficult situations, transforming performance and building high performing teams.
• Key tasks will include the delivery of our people agenda which is balanced alongside strong performance management and our responsibilities regarding governance, risk, security and health and safety management requirements.
• You will build, manage, and maintain key relationships to ensure operational effectiveness.
• Responsible for the day-to-day smooth running of an operational line of business (ie Applications, Case Maintenance, Arrears, Enforcement).

IMPORTANT: During the initial 11 weeks of your employment, you will be required to participate in full-time, 100% office-based training.