New starters - Home Office User-Centred Design ManualCommunity

New starters

When new starters join the UCD community, they are onboarded by the UCD Operations (UCD Ops) team. They receive an induction Trello board which contains the essential things they need to know as a designer or researcher at the Home Office. They also receive information about mandatory training, which includes the UCD induction.

The UCD induction session is about UCD at the Home Office, our best practice standards and what resources are available to help colleagues meet those standards. All new joiners in Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) at the Home Office are expected to complete it as part of their mandatory training.

This induction is aimed primarily at those starting as user researchers, service designers, content designers and interaction designers.

Contractors

Contractors make up part of the workforce in our UCD teams. It is important to ensure contractors feel part of the UCD community and adhere to the same ways of working as civil servants.

The list below is a guide for contractors. It gives them an overview of best practice standards and what resources are available to help them meet those standards.

Expected behaviours for contractors

  • our core hours are 10am to 4pm: if you are not working or contactable during these hours, let your project team know
  • work in the open: save your work in shared workspaces such as SharePoint so that it can be accessed during and after your time with us
  • maintain open lines of communication using approved channels like Slack and MS Teams
  • attend meetings you have accepted - if you cannot attend a meeting, let attendees know
  • let your team know what you are doing during the working day - keep your status on Slack and email up to date
  • before you commit to any non-project work, get clearance from your team and inform one of the principals and delivery manager
  • ensure your tooling is set up so you can collaborate fully with the teams such as Slack, MS Teams and Confluence
  • only use approved tools - check with a principal or UCD Ops if you are unsure (see page 19 of the Role standard for designers document)
  • clear annual leave with your delivery manager, project team and principal and add time off to a shared team calendar
  • user researchers must complete ethics training and communicate with the ethics board when conducting high risk research

If there are any issues preventing contractors from doing any of these things, they can contact their UCD principals.