UCR Operational Team Leader

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); Preston; On-site; GBP 35,000 - 48,000; Full time

Job summary

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in Preston is seeking a UCR Team Leader to guide and develop a Frontline Universal Credit Review team, ensuring high standards of service and accuracy for claimants.

You will line manage agents, monitor performance, coach staff, and prioritise work to meet service goals, while collaborating with internal stakeholders to resolve issues and drive continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Coaching and line managing a team of UCR agents.
• Overseeing workload and prioritising tasks across the team.
• Coordinating with stakeholders to resolve escalations and complex queries.
• Conducting Tier 1 quality assurance within the team to ensure accuracy of reviews.
• Ensuring agents properly record outcomes on departmental systems.

Job description

As part of the DWP Operational Delivery, Universal Credit Review (UCR) Team you will be at the heart of DWP's front line operations helping to change people's lives in our communities from a customer base of over 20 million people.

DWP is responsible for helping people move into employment, supporting pensioners and protecting some of the most vulnerable in our society. We help people lift themselves out of poverty and to stay out of poverty, through work, saving and support. This is a hugely important public service, and our challenge is bigger than ever.

These are key roles that require flexibility and versatility, to help us deliver excellent customer service, make sound decisions, implement change and lead others.

This job would be ideal for people who have a passion for public service and are able to encourage and influence others to deliver quality outcomes to help claimants become financially independent.

UCR Operational Team Leaders are responsible for coaching, leading and building a team in a DWP location helping to design and deliver critical activities to ensure customers receive the right entitlement to benefit.

You will be responsible for the line management of a UCR team. UCR teams review the entitlement and circumstances of claims to ensure that claimants are receiving the correct level of entitlement. This work contributes to the Department's commitment to reduce fraud and error within the social security system.

As a leader you will lead colleagues to ensure the team delivers excellent customer service. You will monitor performance and conduct Tier 1 quality assurance within your team coaching agents to deliver.

You will be responsible for:

• Ensuring UCR agents are UC confident, understand the aims of UCR and are capable to deliver the review process to a diverse claimant base.
• Effectively manage relationships to ensure delivery of UCR as part of the One Service ethos.
• Maintain oversight of UCR agent's personal workloads and be responsible for prioritising work across the team as part of the team-based approach.
• Deal effectively with escalations and complex queries from UCR Agents, either directly or by escalating to stakeholders for resolution
• Coach agents to analyse data and conduct robust interviews with claimants.
• Ensure Agents record outcomes on departmental systems, and complete actions to satisfy corrective activities.

Working collaboratively, effectively, flexibly and proactively contribute towards the development of the role.

You must be able to line manage and coach a team of agents using multiple communication methods, specifically face to face and virtually via teams telephone calls.