How to use the Self-Audit

Reviewing your organisation’s approach to complaints

Valuing complaints

A good complaints system considers how complaints are received and valued, and how they’re responded to and resolved. Equally important is how the organisation captures and learns from the experience.

A useful approach to reviewing your complaints handling is to first consider whether you value the opportunity complaints provide to improve the quality of your service. If your organisation already has a culture where staff and people using your services are actively encouraged to learn and develop from their experiences then this will not be a problem.

If complaints are not valued by the organisation then it is important to explore why. Handling complaints may not be seen as real work, as a nuisance or a problem that people wish would just go away. If this is the case then it is important to look at why. Sometimes it can be useful to reflect on your expectations of quality service and your own experience of complaining in order to understand why there may be a difficulty in valuing complaints.

Where there is fundamental recognition of the value of complaints to the service’s capacity to improve the quality of its service then your organisation will have a culture where it is OK to complain.

How people perceive the quality of the service you provide will be a very individual experience, informed by their own expectations.

For example, a person using your service may place particular emphasis on workers arriving on time to support them and, whilst the quality of the support provided is also important, if it does not happen in a timely way then they may not consider this to be a quality service.

Given that what quality looks like can be different for each person using your service, it is particularly important to take a person centred approach to reviewing the quality of your service through its approach to complaints.

Approaching this task

There are five key steps to reviewing your current complaints resolution process:

Step 1: Map what is happening now

It is important to gain an understanding of what is currently happening from various perspectives.

In order to develop a complete picture of your current approach to complaints handling it is important to involve all stakeholders in the review process. This includes people with a disability, families, staff, executive leadership group and board of management. Each of these groups may offer you a different perspective on how well your current system is operating.

One approach is to organise a group event, where you invite stakeholders to explore their current understanding of and experiences with the complaints system, identification of strengths and suggestions for improvement. It is important to get the views of those who have and those who have not made a complaint, as this will offer different perspectives. It is useful to break the group up into smaller groups, which may be similar stakeholders, e.g. staff, or mixed groups.

You can also hold individual meetings, either as part of an existing meeting structure or specially convened meetings of particular groups to consider the same issues separately. Once this information has been analysed and summarised then it should be conveyed back to those you consulted with to make sure the different views have been properly understood.

Other approaches include surveys or hosting more informal gatherings for people with a disability and families where they can express their view in a more informal environment. It may also be useful to compare your approach to complaints with a similar organisation.

Step 2: Work out what is missing

Having identified what your approach will be to the review process, you will then need to decide on the questions to ask. A useful starting point is to consider what is and is not working in your current approach to complaints handling. It can also be helpful to consider what is and is not working in the service more generally, as this may have potential implications for complaints handling. If your organisation has not had many complaints you may want to look at your relationship with the people using your services and how you resolve conflict.

For example, if one of the things that is working in the organisation is its ability to respond in a timely way to people requiring assistance, it would be useful to know if complaints are being responded to in an equally timely way. If they are, great; if not what, can be learnt from the service delivery, that can be applied to handling complaints?

Once you have had the broader discussion about what is working and not working, then it is useful to consider:

1. What have we tried?

2. What have we learned?

3. What are we pleased about?

4. What are we concerned about?

+1. What will we do next?

This set of questions can be applied equally to what is and what is not working.

Step 3: Agree on the priority areas for work

To assist in determining priorities it can be helpful to use the following matrix. Ask the group to consider what their initial priorities are. Then map these onto the matrix and look for ones that are high impact/low effort. Make sure there is an agreement on the priorities, based on a clear understanding of the resource and other considerations that may impact on the decisions.

Action Priority Matrix

Making the most of your opportunities (also, the Impact Feasibility Matrix).

The Action Priority Matrix is a simple diagramming technique that helps you choose which activities to prioritise (and which ones you should drop) if you want to make the most of your time and opportunities.

It’s useful because most of us have many more activities on our ‘wish lists’ – whether these are bright ideas to pursue, exciting opportunities or interesting possibilities – than we have time available. By choosing activities intelligently, you can make the most of your time and opportunities. However by choosing badly, you can quickly bog yourself down in low yield, time consuming projects that close down opportunities and stop you moving forwards.

How to Use the Tool:

Step 4: Develop action plans for the agreed priority areas

These plans should be short to medium term, with an emphasis on those priorities that have been designated high impact/low effort and are likely to offer immediate outcomes.

Step 5: Evaluate the outcomes to inform future plans

In developing the plans it is important to identify how you will evaluate the impact of these changes. For example, if you want to improve the timeliness with which complaints are responded to you should set specific targets and timeframes. Similarly, if you want to assess the extent to which you are capturing both verbal and written complaints then you establish a system to track this. If you want to see whether more service improvements can result from complaints you will need to track this.