Welcome

Welcome to ‘Valuing Complaints’ and thank you for taking time to familiarise yourself with our website. We are experts in Complaints Handling, Complaints Management and the good governance of complaints handling performance. As the architects of the Model Complaints Handling Procedures in place across the public sector in Scotland, and with many years of Ombudsman service, we are well placed to provide advice, guidance and support in relation to any aspect of complaints handling or performance management.

Please take time to review the site and if you have any queries, or would like to discuss any complaints related issue, please contact us; we’d love to hear from you.

The Challenges Facing the Public Sector

Now more than ever public bodies across the United Kingdom are facing increasingly difficult economic and operational challenges. The impacts and effects of rapidly increasing costs of living, significantly reduced public service budgets and increased demands from service users can disproportionately escalate the volumes and costs of managing complaints and have a detrimental effect on staff wellbeing.

Research shows that the cost to organisations in handling complaints that escalate through the complaints process can be tenfold the cost of complaints that are resolved earlier in the process.  Research also shows that staff who are the subject of a complaint, and those who handle and manage complaints generally describe a negative experience of complaints, often attributing this to a lack of employer and/or management support. Organisational aspirations to be a ‘learning organisation’ are often at odds with their staff’s real life experience causing a complaints culture mismatch and lost opportunities to learn and improve.

Caring for Staff

We know that staff who experience complaints negatively can become more defensive in their subsequent interactions with the public, potentially giving rise to more complaints being received. Low staff engagement levels with customers are linked with higher complaint levels and perceived poor staff attitude is often a major contributory factor in complaints.

Understandably, staff can sometimes struggle to differentiate between managing challenging behaviours and the need to provide services by making reasonable adjustments. Equally, we know that a very small number of complainants can, and often do absorb a disproportionate amount of staff and organisational resources and so have a significantly adverse impact on staff attitudes to complaints. Organisations must therefore actively support their staff in handling complaints. It is not enough to have an Unacceptable Actions Policy if it is not properly used and applied.

The Value of Complaints

Handled well, however, complaints can be invaluable to service providers, their staff and the public they serve.  Complaints provide the service user with a form of redress (where something has gone wrong), often with direct input to the continuous improvement of services. For the staff providing these services, complaints provide a first-hand account of a service from the experience and perspective of the user. Complaints can often highlight problems in service delivery that may otherwise go undetected, and so provide an opportunity for learning and improvement.  Organisations that actively support their staff through complaints processes and engage staff in positive and purposeful activities, including support mechanisms and strategies to cope with challenging behaviour help to ensure an overall culture that truly values complaints.

Process, Training and Staff Wellbeing

For the positive benefits of complaints to be harnessed, it is important that the right procedures are in place to receive, investigate and resolve complaints. For the procedures to be effective, leaders of public services must create a culture where complaints are truly valued, staff are supported and properly trained to deal with complaints simply, consistently, quickly and close to the point of service delivery and appropriate support mechanisms are in place to ensure staff wellbeing.