I have been asked to speak on the Pat Kenny show on New Year’s Resolutions shortly, and in contemplating this, I thought what New Year’s Resolutions would be most useful for my colleagues in their efforts to “spring clean” their working practices?
It occurred to me that having good working protocols and processes is something which does not necessarily come naturally to the top of ones “to do” list, but is one which is utterly essential.
One protocol which clearly highlights this is the complaint procedure.
Expect a Complaint at some point if you work with human beings
Any person who works with people, whether this is in a therapeutic or non-therapeutic capacity knows that at some point you will receive a complaint. This is absolutely inevitable bearing in mind human error occurs at some point, despite everyone’s best efforts and intentions, and that planet earth is full of people with wildly different expectations. It’s therefore essential to be very clear about how any such situations are handled, with the best interests of everyone involved at heart.
Most complaints can be resolved very quickly and easily with sensible, safe and timely protocols and processes in line with health and safety at work legislation. The benefits are clear, to provide a better service to clients, to avoid compounding a situation ,to learn appropriately from any significant event for future practice, and to avoid spending massively disproportionate amount of time on something that can be resolved quickly and to avoid costly legislation, amongst numerous other benefits to everyone involved. Some complaints can be wholly reasonable, some unreasonable, some frivolous and in some extreme cases malicious. In all instances there needs to be a clear and consistent policy in place to safeguard all interests involved and to protect and support all parties.
I would strongly advise any colleagues out there who have not as yet considered the importance of such a policy , to support both themselves as practitioners in their abilities to provide an excellent service to their clients ,and their clients as individuals , to do so.
Basic common sense
The very first and most fundamental step that needs to be taken if a complaint is made is to immediately inform the person involved about what is happening!
This gives the person whom the complaint is about an opportunity to offer explanation and context for what is occurring. The party who received the complaint should not undergo or initiate any form of investigation before this has occurred or they could find themselves in all manner of problematic scenarios which in extreme cases could have legal or criminal repercussions.
In these situations it’s crucial to professionally gather information and to be mindful that “factual information” is what is important not a person’s impressions about what “they imagine could have taken place”. Professional reputations can be unwittingly called into question if proper processes are not adhered to and that can result in all manner of very problematic scenarios through lack of sensible thought and due process
The media have in recent times been held to account, I watched the press enquiry with great interest and I personally found it fascinating. This week ITV are running a documentary about Christopher Jeffries, which is an excellent example of this scenario. It would seem that the media became a bit over enthusiastic in their reporting and the guy’s reputation was ruined as a consequence. Jeffries recently commented
“But there’s one particularly striking difference to me. In the film, I have to be persuaded by various people to take action. Whereas, in fact, my very first words to the solicitor when he was driving me away from the police station were: somebody has got to be sued for this. That was absolutely my determination from the start.”
Paper trail all communication
If you are on the receiving end of a complaint make sure you properly paper trail all communications. Avoid discussions which are not documented or where you don’t have representation and/or proceedings are not properly documented. My personal experience is that some businesses are actually quite clueless in these situations! One of the benefits of working in the recruitment sector for fifteen years is that it taught me to pay attention to detail in all communications. Years of teaching PCW, NLP and Hypnosis have also taught me that often people have very fuzzy thinking which is fine unless it starts to impact on a person’s reputation in which case I 100% share Jeffries view.
Sometimes individual s have little choice other than to do this in order to protect their own professional reputations. In such cases the real tragedy is that collective time could be so better spent if there was better critical thinking and discrimination taking place so people engaged brain before jumping to erroneous conclusions.
References Complaints Procedure- http://www.ctha.com/codeofpractice/
Client Expectations – http://www.nickkemp.com/Nick_Kemp_debunking_the_magic_wand_myth.php