Help Desk - Squad Lead

About the team 

Thousands of Mencap colleagues rely on technology to support people with a learning disability. When something goes wrong, our Helpdesk is who they call. 

The Helpdesk Squad is a team of Service Coordinators, Analysts, Senior Analysts and an Incident Manager, plus our Identity and Access specialist. They are the friendly, knowledgeable voice of Digital, Data & Technology (DDaT) across Mencap. We're looking for someone to lead them.

About the role 

This is a people leadership role. Your main job is to help your team become the best they can be, and to give them a purpose they can get behind. 

You'll support, coach and develop your team. You'll back them through busy and challenging times, and you'll champion their work to the rest of Mencap. You'll build a team where people feel trusted, grow in confidence and take pride in helping colleagues. 

You won't be running the queue day to day. Our Service Coordinators do that, and our Senior Analysts handle the trickiest technical issues. Your focus is on the team and the service as a whole. 

What you'll do 

• • Lead, support and develop the Help Desk team, including their wellbeing, training and career growth
  • Set clear expectations for how we treat colleagues, how we communicate and how we record our work
  •  Look at how the service is doing, using data and colleague feedback to see where we can improve and where people need support
  •  Spot recurring problems and work with engineering and delivery teams to fix them at source, so colleagues aren't hit by the same issue twice
  • Make sure the team has good procedures and knowledge to work from, and is ready for new systems and changes before they go live
  •  Build good working relationships with engineering, application and delivery teams
  • Work with the Head of Technology Operations to keep services stable and resolve issues quickly 
  • Use good service management practice (such as ITIL) to keep things consistent, without losing sight of the people behind every ticket
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What you'll bring 

• Experience leading a technology support or service desk team
• A track record of developing people, with examples of team members you've helped to grow

•  A belief that good performance comes from people who feel supported and understand why their work matters
• Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to have honest and kind conversations
• Experience using service data to understand how things are going and improve them, not just to hit targets
•  A good understanding of service management, including incident management, service requests and service levels
•  The ability to explain technical issues clearly to people who aren't technical
• Experience working with other teams to solve problems and support change
• Good organisational skills and a calm approach when things are busy 

• A commitment to Mencap's values and our mission to improve the lives of people with a learning disability

You don't need to tick every box. If you care about people and want to lead a team that makes a real difference, we'd love to hear from you. This role will be advertised till 15th October -Initial screening calls will take place w/c 19th October, and Interviews will take place from the 26th October.