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Working Together HEO Example Answers (Civil Service)

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Working Together at HEO fails politely. Candidates describe a collaboration that genuinely went well — regular meetings, good rapport, information shared, everyone professional — and receive a 3 with no idea why, because nothing in the answer was theirs. The HEO descriptors want a relationship with an owner: establish professional relationships with a range of stakeholders, collaborate to share information, resources and support, wellbeing support put in place. Establish, collaborate, put in place — verbs with a subject. The scoring question isn't whether the partnership worked; it's whether the panel can trace what worked back to decisions you made. And the highest-value HEO version of this behaviour is a relationship owned end-to-end: one you built, maintained through a wobble, and turned into something both sides measurably rely on.

What HEO panels score on this behaviour

A relationship you established, not inherited. The strongest openings start with distance: a partner your team had never properly worked with, a counterpart relationship that existed only as an email address. Building from warm is fine; building from cold or frosty is evidence.

Reciprocity with real resources. The descriptors say share information, resources and support — the mark is an actual exchange: what you gave, what you asked for, what flowed back. One-directional service isn't partnership.

The wobble, worked through. Every real partnership hits a moment — a dropped ball, a misalignment, a trust dip. How you handled it is where the relationship evidence concentrates. Answers without a wobble are usually answers without depth.

Wellbeing as an act. Explicit at HEO and almost never claimed: pressure noticed on either side of the relationship and something proportionate done about it.

Questions this appears as

  • "Tell me about a time you built a relationship with another team or organisation."
  • "Describe a partnership you developed and maintained."
  • "Tell me about working through difficulties in a working relationship."
  • "How have you supported the wellbeing of people you work with?"

Probes to expect: "What did you specifically do to build it?", "What did your team get from the relationship — and what did they get?", "What happened when something went wrong?"

Fail vs pass at HEO: the same partnership

FailVersion 1 — pleasant collaboration, scores around 3/7

"In my role I worked closely with a national charity that our customers were often referred to for additional support. I was the main point of contact between our team and theirs, and I put a lot of effort into making the relationship work well. We held regular catch-up calls, I always responded promptly to their queries, and I made sure our team understood what the charity could and couldn't help with. Over time we built up a really good rapport — they knew they could pick up the phone to me, and I felt the same. When issues came up, we resolved them quickly and professionally because of the trust we'd built. The partnership worked smoothly throughout my time in the role, our customers benefited from the joined-up support, and the charity's team told my manager I was one of the easiest people they'd worked with."

Warm, professional, and score it: "put a lot of effort in", "built up a really good rapport", "resolved issues quickly" — a full answer without one attributable act. What did the effort consist of? Which issue, resolved how? What did either side materially give the other? The referrals presumably flowed before this candidate and after them; the relationship's content is availability and pleasantness — baseline professional conduct narrated as achievement. The closing evidence is being easy to work with, which no descriptor scores. A 3, delivered charmingly.

PassVersion 2 — the same charity, around 6/7

"My team referred customers to a national charity for additional support, but when I took over as contact the relationship was really just a referral form — we sent people, heard nothing back, and I couldn't have told you whether our referrals were any good. I decided to make it an actual partnership, and started by asking a question nobody had: what happens to our referrals at your end? The answer was uncomfortable — the charity's coordinator told me, candidly once she trusted the question, that around a third of our referrals were unsuitable for their service, each one costing her team an assessment and the customer a dead end at a bad moment in their lives. That gave me something concrete to build on. I worked with her to produce a one-page suitability checklist in her team's language, then briefed our caseworkers on it myself — including the honest bit, that we'd been creating work and disappointment downstream. In return I asked for something: quarterly feedback on referral outcomes, which she agreed to because the checklist was saving her assessments. That exchange changed both sides' behaviour — our unsuitable referrals dropped to under 10% within two quarters, and the outcome data gave our caseworkers something they'd never had: evidence of what happened after they pressed send, which two of them told me changed how seriously they treated the referral conversation. The wobble came mid-year: her responses slowed and a referral sat unacknowledged for three weeks. Instead of chasing harder, I asked directly if something had changed — their funding cycle had cut a post and she was covering two roles. So I flexed our side: we agreed a monthly batch process instead of ad-hoc referrals for that quarter, which cost our customers a little speed but kept the pathway open, and I made sure my team knew why response times had changed so nobody briefed against the partnership. The relationship survived her hardest quarter, the checklist and the quarterly feedback loop are still running under my successor, and the charity now pilots new referral pathways with our team first — their choice, not ours."

The annotation:

  1. Established from cold. "Really just a referral form" is the before-state — the gap the descriptor's establish verb needs. Version 1's relationship has no before.
  2. A question that built trust and surfaced the real problem. "What happens to our referrals at your end?" produces the uncomfortable third — perspective-taking that changed the work, not decorated it.
  3. Reciprocity with named resources. Checklist and caseworker briefing given; quarterly outcome data asked for and received. Both sides' behaviour changes — that's share information, resources and support as an exchange.
  4. The wobble handled as relationship work. Asking what changed instead of chasing, then flexing the process for her hardest quarter — including managing his own team's perception of it. This paragraph alone carries more Working Together evidence than all of Version 1.
  5. Wellbeing, claimed concretely. The counterpart covering two roles, and a proportionate adjustment made — the descriptor almost nobody scores, landed inside the story's turning point.
  6. Durability as the result. Under 10% unsuitable referrals, mechanisms surviving the candidate's departure, and the charity choosing this team for pilots — a partnership measured, not asserted.

Calibrating either side of HEO

At EO, developing contacts beyond your team, showing genuine interest and asking for help is the bar — a smaller-scale version of the checklist story scores well. At SEO, the partnership needs stakes and span: multiple stakeholders, resources negotiated at team level, wellbeing structures rather than moments — the SEO calibration covers it. Behaviour-wide guidance is in the Working Together pillar.

HEO-specific mistakes on this behaviour

  1. Rapport as the deliverable. Being liked is lovely and unscoreable. Name the acts.
  2. A relationship with no before-state. If it was fine when you arrived and fine when you left, your contribution is invisible.
  3. Service, not exchange. Responding promptly to their queries is one-way. What did you ask for? What came back?
  4. No wobble. Frictionless partnership stories read as shallow ones. The dip you worked through is where the marks live.
  5. The wellbeing descriptor, unclaimed. If the story contains someone under pressure and you did something, say it specifically — it's explicit HEO descriptor language.
  6. Ending on being easy to work with. End on what the partnership now produces and what survived you.

If Working Together is on your advert, check whether your answer contains attributable acts or well-narrated weather — the AI coach scores it against the real HEO descriptors and tells you which. Three sessions free; the HEO Complete Guide calibrates all nine behaviours to the grade.

Common questions

Practise before the real thing

Reading how panels score is step one. The candidates who pass are the ones who practised saying their answers out loud — and got scored feedback against the official Civil Service Behaviours framework before interview day.

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