HEO Working Together Behaviour Statements

HEO application guidance

Build a focused Working Together statement around the exact criteria, your personal judgement and a result that proves the effect of your actions.

What is Working Together?

Working Together is about building relationships that help people and teams achieve a shared result.

At HEO level, a strong example should show that you can create joined-up working, share resources and information, value different perspectives, support wellbeing and address unacceptable behaviour. The scale should be a defined service, project, team or workstream where your own judgement is visible, while recognising the authority of senior leaders and specialist colleagues.

The assessor should be able to trace the official criteria through your actions. Mentioning the behaviour or repeating the wording does not prove it.

What are the HEO Working Together criteria?

Official HEO/SEO Success Profiles criteria

Your evidence should make every criterion visible through something you personally understood, decided, communicated, changed or achieved.

Criterion 1
“encourage joined up team work within your own team and across other groups”
Explain the shared outcome and the practical mechanism that connected teams or groups.
Criterion 2
“establish professional relationships with a range of stakeholders”
Show how you built trust with stakeholders over time, not only during one meeting.
Criterion 3
“collaborate with these to share information, resources and support”
Show what information was appropriate to share and how you checked understanding.
Criterion 4
“invest time to develop a common focus and genuine positive team spirit where colleagues feel valued and respect one another”
Show how you aligned people around a shared purpose and helped colleagues feel valued.
Criterion 5
“put in place support for the wellbeing of individuals within the team, including consideration of your own needs”
Explain the practical support, workload choice or adjustment that protected sustainable delivery.
Criterion 6
“make it clear to all team members that bullying, harassment and discrimination are unacceptable”
Show that expectations were explicit and that unacceptable behaviour was addressed.
Criterion 7
“actively seek and consider input of people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives”
Describe whose perspectives you actively sought and how they influenced the result.

How to structure a 250-word statement

Use Situation, Task, Action and Result as an editing structure. Do not write the labels into the application unless the vacancy asks for them. Keep the setup short and make the action section carry the Working Together evidence.

Situation

Set the context quickly. Name the service, project, risk or change and why it mattered.

Task

Make your responsibility and decision authority clear. Avoid hiding behind the team.

Action

Use most of the word count here. Show how you create joined-up working, share resources and information, value different perspectives, support wellbeing and address unacceptable behaviour.

Result

Prove the outcome with credible measures, service impact, reduced risk, learning or sustained change.

Members can unlock the complete HEO Working Together scoring method below, followed by three full statements close to 250 words, detailed explanations of why they work and a final criterion check.

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