Social Work England
IT Service Desk Lead
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The Role
Social Work England are the specialist regulator for social work in England, focused on enabling positive change in social work. Every day, social workers support millions of people to improve their chances in life. We are taking a new approach to regulating social workers in their vital roles. We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate – to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people’s lives.
Our IT Service Desk Lead is responsible for the ownership, operation, and continuous improvement of the IT Service Desk and its associated processes, tooling, and user experience.
- Primary Responsibilities:
- Act as the primary owner of the Freshservice platform, ensuring incidents, service requests, and changes are handled efficiently, consistently, and in line with ITIL principles and agreed service levels.
- Identify opportunities to automate and streamline routine processes, improve self-service capability, and reduce avoidable demand on the team.
- Work closely with other teams in the organisation who use Freshdesk, helping to align processes and enable cross-functional workflows between Freshservice and Freshdesk where this improves service outcomes.
What you will do
- Own the service desk day-to-day, ensuring requests are logged, prioritised, progressed, and resolved with clear user communication, and taking action to address backlogs, repeat issues, and quality concerns.
- Manage our IT Operations officers, providing technical guidance, sharing knowledge, and supporting their development to build a capable and consistent team. Be the escalation point for the IT Operations team on queries and exceptions.
- Make decisions on ticket prioritisation, workload management, and when to escalate issues beyond first and second line support, ensuring decisions are consistent with agreed procedures and service levels.
- Act as primary contact, administrator and platform owner for Freshservice, maintaining the contract relationship along with configuration, workflow rules, automation triggers, SLA definitions, and reporting.
- Work with teams throughout the organisation that use Freshdesk to identify where integration with Freshservice can improve outcomes, and support the design of clean, traceable cross-functional workflows.
- Design and implement automations for routine processes including joiners, movers leavers (JML), access changes, and standard requests, reducing manual handling and improving consistency.
- Own the JML process end-to-end, using working knowledge of Microsoft 365, including Entra ID, Exchange Online, and Teams, to design and maintain automated workflows for account provisioning, access changes, device allocation, and licence management. Coordinate with stakeholders to ensure timely and consistent onboarding and offboarding. Ensure all JML activity is handled in line with data protection obligations, with any risks or concerns escalated to the Data Protection Officer or relevant stakeholder.
- Design, build and continuously enhance a knowledge base and self-service catalogue that drives down avoidable contact, improves first contact resolution, and enables a consistent user experience. Proactively identify recurring issues and improvement opportunities, delivering controlled changes that reduce repeat demand and improve the support experience.
- Establish governance, reporting, and feedback loops to measure effectiveness, influence service improvements, and communicate insights, trends, continuous improvement priorities and recommendations to leadership teams and key stakeholders.
- Maintain accurate asset records in Freshservice across the full device lifecycle, supporting reliable reporting on device status, age, and allocation.
- Contribute to IT Operations planning and documentation, including SOPs, workflows, and knowledge base content, helping build a trusted function that is, auditable, and scalable.
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Your Skills, Knowledge And Experience
- Experience working in a service desk or IT support role, with clear responsibility for managing tickets and support processes. Experience of managing a team is desirable.
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft 365, user devices, and everyday technology used in a modern hybrid working environment.
- Experience using a service management system to log, prioritise, track, and resolve incidents and service requests, with a focus on identifying improvements to make support more efficient and easier for users.
- Ability to make routine operational decisions independently, using judgement to balance user needs, risk, and service priorities.
- Strong organisation and time management skills, with the ability to manage competing demands and meet agreed service expectations.
- Strong communicator, both written and verbal, able to produce clear documentation, guidance, and user communications, and to support colleagues calmly and professionally at all levels.
- Experience supporting joiners, movers, and leavers activities, including access changes, equipment handling, and consistent onboarding support.
- Experience maintaining accurate records for IT equipment, supporting reliable tracking and management of the device lifecycle.
- Working knowledge of data protection principles and GDPR, with the ability to identify risks in IT processes and procedures and escalate appropriately to the Data Protection Officer or relevant stakeholders.
- A proactive, accountable, and collaborative working style, taking ownership of outcomes, building positive relationships across teams, and demonstrating inclusive and respectful behaviour.
- Experience supporting improvements to service desk processes, such as self-service guidance, automation, or better use of support tools.
- ITIL Foundation certification or equivalent practical knowledge.
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The Benefits
In Addition To Your Salary, We Also Offer
- Hybrid working
- 25 days annual leave, rising with service to 30 days per annum, plus bank holidays.
- The option to purchase up to an additional 5 days of annual leave per annum.
- A TIDE award-winning inclusive culture, with staff networks, social events and forums.
- A contributory NEST pension, life insurance, an employee recognition scheme and cycle to work scheme.
Details
- Job type: Permanent
- Working pattern: Full time. We offer flexible working subject to business need.
- Salary: £38,898 per year rising to £41,211 per year after successful completion of a 6-month probationary period.
- Location: Sheffield/Hybrid
Application
During the application process, you'll be asked to provide answers to three questions from the job description. These answers will be what your application is scored on, please answer in as much detail as possible using examples where necessary.
About Us
- Join us - Social Work England
- Our behaviours and values - Social Work England
- What our people say - Social Work England
Pre-Employment Checks
If you are successful at interview, we will carry out a series of routine pre-employment checks. These include verifying your references, confirming your right to work in the UK, and completing a Basic DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check.
These checks are conducted in partnership with our third-party provider, Amiqus, who will guide you through the process.
Please note that all offers of employment are subject to the satisfactory completion of these checks. If you have any questions or concerns please contact our recruitment team via recruitment@socialworkengland.org.uk and our team will be happy to help.
Contact
If you have any queries about the recruitment process, or would like to discuss the role, please contact recruitment@socialworkengland.org.uk.
How to apply
To apply, complete the application form by the closing date.
Interview
At interview we will seek to further understand your skills, knowledge, experience and motivation and test the key competencies of the role. If you are successful, we will undertake routine pre-employment checks.
Find out more about our application and interview process.
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