It’s been another crazy week for our small but perfectly formed team.

We’ve published the corporate plan, written new charging content, updated forms with the new charging information. And in some cases, we’ve completely re-designed forms, making it easier for the user to apply for a permit.

We will talk more about some of these things when they go live over the next few weeks. But it’s got us thinking about the sheer volume of work we do in one week.

Mini break…downs

This month isn’t unique, the team is always under pressure with a series of mini breakdowns and power cries getting us through the week.

We get between 30 to 50 content requests a week. We’re reacting to content requests and at the same time working on big projects (like permissions, forestry, grants, Flood Risk Activity Permits, pre-application advice). James and Lucinda are also smashing their way through the service design course.

Why are we doing the big projects if we have so much other work to do?

We know that lots of the content on our site just doesn’t work. People can’t find what they’re looking for and are often forced to contact us, wasting their time and ours. We want to offer a more self-service approach, giving users a chance to carry out their task online.

Managing the noise

Having so much work on the go at once we must find a way to manage the noise. We use a very handy tool in Microsoft Teams, called the content board. We go through the board twice a week and work out who will do what and when, depending on deadlines.

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Andrew, Kim, Sophie, and Lucinda pick up most of the publishing work.

Sam, Shaun, Laura, and Phil pick up the content design requests.

Heledd and James pick up everything else. These two do loads of stuff that we don’t understand.

Mental health

We are a close and lovely little team, and we like a good party to help keep us sane. Heledd (our manager) is awesome! She’s so caring, kind, always there to listen and offers great advice. We think she’s ace.

But we can’t deny that the pressure gets to us from time to time. When this happens, we check-in on each other to offer support. We encourage each other to do simple things like go for a walk, have a tea break, or have a rant. This won’t always fix things though, so we always must manage our workload, challenge (the sometimes unrealistic) deadlines, or just say no sometimes.

If anyone else out there feels the same, there is some useful information from the charity Mind.

The corporate plan is now live

This week was a big week in the Natural Resources Wales calendar, with our launch of the new corporate plan.

In our new corporate plan for 2030, ‘Nature and People Thriving Together’, we set out how we can make a difference for the environment in Wales. The new corporate plan explains how we will work together with others to ensure the future of our planet is protected and how nature can be restored.

We launched the corporate plan video to highlight the important work we do day in, day out – check it out, you may even notice some familiar faces!

The corporate plan had many elements to it, these required careful consideration around how they were displayed on the website. We had to make sure the content flowed for the user and was natural and logical. We used i-boxes to link content together across each of the different web pages, and broke up large bodies of text with imagery, to engage readers right to the end.

One valuable step in this process was feeding back information with others working in different teams to get the corporate plan live. Lynette from the communications team, Garmon from the translation team, and Heledd and Sophie from the digital team all worked collaboratively to share and action feedback on the web-content. This collaborative way of working resulted in a smoother and more efficient process. The content went live on-time for the Chair’s Office to launch the new corporate plan.

Accessibility audit

All Public Sector Bodies must make sure their websites are accessible to everyone.

This week we received an email to say the cabinet office had audited our website, mild panic then set in. The cabinet office had sent us a list of things that were not accessible on the website.

We must act fast as we only have seven days to confirm that we have received the audit report. We then have 12 weeks to fix the problems they have found. We also must make sure our accessibility statement is up to date.

On top of all those tasks, we also have to carry out an accessibility audit of our website to find out if anything else needs fixing. Anything else we find that needs fixing we add to our accessibility statement. We must also put a plan in place to fix these things later.

Sadly, things don’t end there. The cabinet office checks our website again to make sure we have fixed the problems they identified. They also re-check our accessibility statement to make sure it’s up to date.

If they find out, we have not fixed those problems they will tell the Equality and Human Rights Commission who will take further action.

We will continue to work with our excellent IT team, and we are confident we will be able to fix the problems identified by the audit within the 12 week deadline.

It’s always our aim to make sure we have a website that is accessible and inclusive for everyone.

New peatlands grant

Around the waste work, Sam’s been doing what she can to get new content from the grant team ready for a new peatlands grant opening up on 31 March. There’s still work to do on grant content. Some of it is a little repetitive and, as we know, saying one thing multiple times doesn’t ensure people will act on it. Being simple, clear and direct - and giving users what they need when they need it - will work much better.

Sam’s going to miss working with SMEs Pip and Steve on the ‘applying for waste permitting’ content and forms - both awesome and lovely people.

Other stuff we’ve been doing…

  • Andrew attended a really interesting course at the Centre for Digital Public Services lunch and learn session called ‘Open to everyone: ensuring your service is inclusive and accessible to all’ - further galvanising our approach to user based design and inclusivity for anyone who visits the our website to carry out a task
  • Andrew received more water discharge forms back from translation and added the Welsh to our online forms ready for the Strategic Review of Charging deadline
  • Andrew also created a new form for Water Discharge - Notification to dispose of waste sheep dip to land
  • Sophie and Laura created Umbraco training manuals to support new starters with using the software
  • Sophie and Kim have also been updating i-boxes across the website
  • Sophie has been updating flooding resources and leaflets in the Intranet to ensure staff have access to the latest information.
  • Heledd joined the first Centre of Digital Public Services Advisory panel meeting for 2023. The panel has a mix of people with different skills and experience - from Wales, UK and Scottish government, as well as people who work in the third sector. The topic this time was around what are the minimum viable skills needed for a digital team.
  • Heledd met with a member of the Welsh Government Central Web team to discuss ways we can continue to work closer, to help our teams, and users.
  • Welsh Government added a link to our Natural Resources Wales website proposition to the GOV.WALES proposition. We think this is pretty cool!