Monday
On my first day of work experience in the council, I was introduced to Kate Fenton in digital services; where I would be working the majority of the week. After our introduction, I was taught what makes a website accessible for all kinds of users as well as being taught how the team made their web pages for the council. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to edit one myself. I then spent the rest of the afternoon helping update webpages and deleting old links with the CMS.
Tuesday
I spent the entire day with the Customer contact team and was taught the logistical side of the council. I was shown how schedules for all employees are made and how important it is to know your team to boost work proficiency. After that, I saw how each day were planned due to the history of calls on that specific day to make sure all calls can be covered. I then got to listen in on several calls of a wide scope of Blue badges, school admissions and parking.
Wednesday
I spent a lot of my time meeting the Digital service team and got taught by a couple of them on what areas that they specifically cover. Natasha Thomas showed me how the inbox works and how they sort out different requests from both the public and the people working in the council. I also joined in on a teams meeting with a few other people where they overlooked and debated some issues on the websites. I also began to create some customer journeys with different scenarios Nickki Hughes created for me. My goal was to see how accessible some of these webpages are. I did a few of them which will be assessed to see if the website can be improved through a member of the publics perspective.
Thursday
I started my morning by deleting some old election PDFs from the system before joining a Teams meeting where the digital service teams where the digital service team spoke about what they have been working on throughout the week. I then met another member of the team named Aimee Sarson who showed me a new website that tracks any mistakes that software can pick up in the Cheshire east websites. Natasha also showed me another website she uses called Halo, which shows any requests from within the council and how she manages them. It was quite exciting being shown the inside workings of the council! I completed a few more customer journeys and had a chance to look at some of Cheshire’s other websites such as Cheshire west + Chester. I was then shown how the council can change their google businesses and Bing panels and how website entries are made by Steve Bennet and Mark Tranter.
Friday
I spent most of the morning changing spelling mistakes on websites and deleting old Media articles on the website. Me and Kate then had the opportunity to go to the opening of one of the family hubs which we had helped with by changing the websites to accommodate the new locations. We toured around the building and spoke to some of the other coordinators that made it possible; it was a fun activity to do to end the week.
Summary
Overall, this has been an incredible experience I would definitely recommend, everyone I spoke to treated me as their equal and was genuinely very kind to me. Personally, it helped me realise the differences and similarities between work and school and broke down any misconceptions about work I had previously. It has been a very rewarding week and I will always be grateful that I got the opportunity to work in such a lovely environment.
Page last reviewed: 05 January 2024
Thank you for your feedback.