Our people and capability
The people at PHSO are dedicated and passionate about improving public services. Continuing to attract, retain and develop an engaged and high-performing workforce is central to the delivery of this strategy.
During the next year, we will bring on board approximately 80 new caseworkers and senior caseworkers as part of our plan to respond to increases in demand for our service.
Our training and development plans will have greater focus to meet the changing needs of our service, creating the skills for current and future needs. We will make sure our learning activity programme is clear about how it links to delivery and organisational success.
We will continue to listen to our employees and act to further develop our culture. Our existing values and behaviours framework was developed in 2017 and now is the time to look at these again to make sure they reflect and support the direction and culture we need in the coming years. Over the next year, we will be revising our values and behaviours framework to meet this need.
Digital and data
Our ambition is to be a leading Ombudsman in digital transformation and our planned technology improvements will be at the heart of delivering our strategy.
Over the next year, we will accelerate progress on digital transformation to increase our efficiency and provide a better user experience for people and organisations.
We have secured the investment that we need for next year and have the plans in place to turn our digital ambition into a reality.
As a separate strand, improvements to data collection and sharing will help improve what we can offer our partners, as well as informing us about where to focus our efforts for maximum effectiveness.
Communication
We must be completely independent and focused on fairness in our work. It is important that people and organisations understand what we do, how we do it and how we reach decisions.
Our values of independence, fairness and transparency guide our communications and engagement. We will continue to use our voice when failures happen and highlight the change needed through practical policy recommendations supported by a robust evidence base.
Working with stakeholders
Partnership working will be the focus of the change to our approach. Our relationship with the health service, and its key stakeholders and regulators, is important if we are to share the learning from our casework, of both good practice and what needs to be improved. Equally as important for its effect on people is our work with government departments and agencies. By working together we can help improve service delivery and rebuild trust in public services.
We will build lasting relationships with key stakeholders in the advisory sector as well as closer working with Parliament and MPs, particularly the vital relationship we hold with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. We will also work in partnership across the wider public sector and interested groups to improve public services.