Pros
There is a lot of room for personal growth within the DWP, and if you have an encouraging manager, this can be quite easy to do. There is a varied amount of roles available once you’ve been there for a while, and internal vacancies are quite easy to find if you’re looking to progress “horizontally”. It can be more challenging if you’re looking to progress to higher levels, but there are a number of ways in which you may be able to do this, including some employee programmes aimed at progression. Colleagues are often supportive, and team culture can be strong. This does vary per role, but I’ve never had an issue personally. There is an employee benefits programme and a trade union. The job roles are varied and can offer different challenges. Some roles are home-working, but not many.
Cons
I was told I’d have to complete an accreditation at level 3 and level 4, despite having undertaken various qualifications within my education — I hadn’t long left A-Level when I began working in the department. This didn’t really come to fruition, and after various provider changes, this was never completed and I have worked in the department for a number of years. I understand the requirement for those who’ve not obtained certain qualifications, or those who’ve worked in the department for some time. However, at the time it didn’t seem worthwhile for me and ended up causing a lot of grief in terms of needing to restart or redo various things due to the accreditation provider and my “assessor”, rather than any fault of my own. There can be a culture where people only seem to progress if they know or are related to other people in the department. There are also various times when a manager has never undertaken the job role that the team they manage does - meaning they can sometimes lack understanding, and have needlessly high expectations. The environment obviously varies per role or per team, but some morale can be negative and the culture poor. This can also be dependant on team leader. My personal experience has been that they are not understanding of people with young families (not reviewing old contracts or working arrangements of longer-serving employees who no-longer have young children, and not catering to recent parents’ needs or commitments). They are also not progressive in terms of employee health, and often if you have a health problem, permanent or not, there is a lack of understanding or compassion. There is minimal support in that regard, and this can be extremely tedious. It can also be used against you, as team leaders often decide that it reflects negatively on their ability to manage an effective team. Communication is often poor or convoluted. Training isn’t very comprehensive, and relies too much on the organisation of team leaders who often “forget” to implement some things. There are a lot of pressures to ensure ‘targets’ are being met in all roles at this level, however, most roles are advertised as not being target-focussed.