Promoting a learning culture
Effective complaint handling promotes a culture that is open and accountable when things go wrong. Senior leaders create an environment where everyone is supported and empowered to act on learning, rather than feeling blamed. Organisations use learning to improve their services and make sure every colleague knows their role in promoting a fair and learning culture. Organisations demonstrate how they use learning to improve services.
- Senior leaders make sure every colleague knows how they can create and deliver a fair and learning culture for handling complaints. Colleagues and senior leaders demonstrate how they contribute to this culture through practical examples.
- Senior leaders make sure appropriate structures are in place to deliver fair and robust complaint investigations.
- Senior leaders make sure colleagues are supported and trained in all aspects of dealing with complaints, from identifying a complaint to issuing a response, so that they meet the expectations set out in the Complaint Standards. This should include how to manage challenging conversations and behaviour.
- Appropriate governance structures are in place so that senior leaders regularly review information that arises from complaints and are held accountable for using the learning to improve services. There are clear processes in place to show how organisations do this, and this information is included in their annual reports.
- Organisations put appropriate measures in place to capture feedback about the complaints process from service users who make complaints and from colleagues directly involved. They use this to demonstrate how the organisation has performed towards meeting the Complaint Standards.
- Parent departments have meaningful strategic oversight of how their related organisations are performing. They know how these organisations handle complaints and how they meet the expectations set out in the Standards.