{"id":34594,"date":"2023-07-24T14:30:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T13:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=34594"},"modified":"2023-07-24T14:30:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T13:30:51","slug":"how-dwp-digital-is-improving-access-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/how-dwp-digital-is-improving-access-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How DWP Digital is improving access to work"},"content":{"rendered":"

DWP Digital<\/span><\/a> have received overwhelmingly positive feedback around customer journey transformation on DWP\u2019s Access to Work grant service.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through digitising the service, customers are now able to complete a claim online in less than 10 minutes, speeding up the process for them being reimbursed for the help and support they need.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Senior Product Manager and Digital Lead, Malcolm Canvin, explains why it was important to complete this transformation journey and how the team achieved it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is Access to Work?<\/h3>\n

Access to Work<\/span><\/a> is a discretionary grant for people with a disability or health condition. It\u2019s a highly bespoke service which can provide support above and beyond the reasonable adjustments employers must make by law. The grant can pay for a range of things, such as specialist equipment or support workers, based on the needs of the individual.<\/span><\/p>\n

The grant forms a key part of the government strategy to support disabled people in work and close the employment gap \u2013 see <\/span>Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper<\/span><\/a> for more detail.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Why we needed a digital service<\/h3>\n

In general people like what Access to Work is and what it does. However, a key challenge, for many of our users, has been the way to claim the grant. When claiming for support, the service user or employer pays in advance for the goods or services and then claims the money back in arrears, an arrangement that works a bit like a pre-agreed expenses claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until recently our claim process involved filling in a paper form, getting that form countersigned by an employer with a physical signature and sending it to the department, alongside receipts or invoices, in the post. This was a time-consuming process, which was difficult for many of our users, and created delays to people being reimbursed. From our research with users, employers, and representative organisations, it was clear that the paper-based claim journey was one of the biggest pain points across the end-to-end service.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when we began work to transform the Access to Work service, improving the claims journey was our biggest priority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although many aspects of the issues were clear from the research and feedback we already had, as always, we began with a discovery phase to identify all the challenges. This helped us better define the problem space and understand what our users, and those who support them, would need from a transformed claims journey. It was clear from this work that our users needed a simple and accessible way to submit claims and that a digital solution may meet many of their needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Coming up with a solution<\/h3>\n

We tested a range of solutions throughout our initial phase and were able to iterate our chosen solution based on research and testing. It was clear that the service would need to do a range of things, not just enabling users to claim online, but also letting them track previously submitted claims and view how much of their grant was left. We also needed to design a way for employers to countersign these new online claims without the need for physical signatures. Once built we were able to invite a small number of real users to test the service as part of a private pilot and iterate it based on analytics and feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a successful pilot we launched the new online claims journey to all users on 21 June 2023 where it is now available to all Access to Work users from <\/span>our GOV.UK pages<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This new claim portal allows users to:<\/span><\/p>\n