Investigate: Before my visit I found out this about the company

HMRC is an amalgamation of Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. HMRC stands for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. At integration, they employed 100,000 people and had 900 offices. They are undergoing a downsizing campaign, with the aim of reducing the workforce by 25% within 5 years. They also wish to reduce the number of offices. This is to centralise the work, which should help to reduce the amount of money spent. This will help HMRC become more efficient. They also wish to up-skill the remaining staff and deploy staff as much as possible to the front line. Already HMRC are down to 85,000 staff and 700 offices after 2 years. This campaign is causing de-motivation and a lot of people are leaving through choice as they are unhappy with the changes and feel they have little job security.

The aims of HMRC are to:
• Ensure society’s financial wellbeing
• Deliver the staff and efficiency saving they have announced

HMRC are hoping to achieve a change in people’s perception of them. They are becoming customer focused, with emphasis on how they can help people rather than how they can penalise people. They also wish to focus on the high risk groups of people that pose a threat to the aims of the HMRC.

There are a wide range of jobs available in HMRC, such as working in the Contact Centre, Compliance, Debt Management, Tax Inspection and the Customs force.

Observe: While at the company I job shadowed an Employee. This is what happened:

• Employee Name:
• Job Role:

Job Shadow and Employee, make notes on how you can take this back to others.

I Job Shadowed a Contact Centre Advisor in the Contact Centre at Peterlee. The role involved answering queries about family tax credits. I feel that the best way to take this information back to others is to focus on:
• The skills required to do the job effectively
• The qualifications required to do the job
• The nature of the job
• The atmosphere of the Contact Centre

Interview: I talked with a member of staff to find out more about their role. This is what I found out:

• Employee Name:
• Job Role:
• Pathway from school to their current position:
  I interviewed a Team Leader at the Contact Centre. He had taken his GCSE’s and after that went straight to work for HMRC. He started out as an Administration Assistant, and has worked his way up from there. There are lots of opportunities for progression within HMRC and the Civil Service in general. He has been there for 10 years and firmly believes that this is a career for life. He fully intends to stay at HMRC and climb the management ladder through internal professional development.
• Where do they see themselves in the future:
  

Participate: I took part in a work related activity. This is what happened:

• Description of task:
  Due to the confidential nature of the work, we were not able to be set a hands-on task.
• Notes:
  

Imagine: From the perspective of a student the advice I would give is:

The main advice I can give for students is to be professional and mature at all times. This means being respectful, interested, smartly dressed and attentive at all times. It is a fully functioning business that they will be visiting and working with. This means that high levels of professional standards need to be maintained at all times so that HMRC will want to work with our students again. It also gives students the opportunity to meet potential employers and possibly gain work experience or a permanent position after school out of it.

I think that HMRC can provide excellent support for the ICT Specialised Diploma. A lot of their work requires typical ICT skills, such as word processing, spreadsheets and email. However, they also have multiple databases, which are integral to the workings of the business. I think these could provide a valuable learning experience for students, and that strong links could be made between the HMRC and schools.

Summarise: The things I have found beneficial from the day(s) in the work environment are:

I have worked in industry before and so it was not much of an eye-opener in terms of how businesses work, but it has been extremely beneficial in terms of seeing the ICT facilities used. The main benefit has been the opportunity to network with professionals that are keen and willing to help with schools and see the value in business and education working together.