We really value our interactions with people who use our service. Being able to communicate effectively and respectfully is fundamental to how we serve the public.
We work hard to make our service open and accessible. We want people to be, and to feel, heard and understood. We also understand that emotions and complaints go hand in hand.
Sometimes people’s behaviour goes beyond what we can accept because it affects our ability to do our work or our colleagues’ wellbeing. When this happens, we will take action by following this policy.
This policy helps us make sure we have a safe and respectful environment for people who work for us, work with us, or use our service.
What the policy covers
This policy explains how we will manage unacceptable behaviour that does not meet our mutual respect requirements. It applies to:
- all interactions between external parties (including people who bring complaints to us and organisations we investigate) and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)
- comments made to or about our colleagues in other places, including online.
Mutually respectful behaviours
Our service charter explains the behaviours we expect. These behaviours are based on mutual respect and our values. Our mutual respect requirements include:
- respect and dignity: treating everyone with respect and dignity
- empathy: understanding and recognising the feelings and perspectives of others
- equality: making sure everyone is treated fairly, without discrimination.
We will not accept behaviour that does not uphold mutual respect, negatively affects our colleagues’ wellbeing or affects our ability to do our work.
Our zero-tolerance approach
We have a zero-tolerance approach to any threats of harm or harassment towards our colleagues.
If this behaviour happens, we are likely to stop all direct contact without warning. It will be escalated to a manager and will likely be reported to the police.
Our unacceptable behaviour process: ask, warn, manage
For most unacceptable behaviour, we will apply the following three-stage approach.
- Ask
We will ask if there is a specific issue causing distress and see whether we need to make any reasonable adjustments to our service.
- Warn
All colleagues can give a warning about unacceptable behaviour.
- Manage
All colleagues can apply a formal action or restriction to manage unacceptable behaviour.
We will keep a record on the person’s (or organisation’s) file on our case management system including:
- details about the incident
- the stage in our unacceptable behaviour process
- the end date of any warning or restriction.
You can view our full Respectful behaviour policy as a pdf (386KB) or Easy Read (2.2MB).