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 member of staff knows their role in promoting a learning culture. Organisations demonstrate how they use learning to improve services.
- Senior staff make sure every employee knows how they can create and deliver a just and learning culture for handling complaints. All staff can demonstrate how they contribute to this culture through practical examples.
- Senior staff make sure appropriate structures are in place to deliver fair and robust complaint investigations.
- Senior staff make sure staff 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 staff 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 report.
- Organisations take appropriate measures to capture feedback about the complaints process from those who make complaints and from the staff directly involved. They use this to demonstrate how the organisation has performed towards meeting the Complaint Standards and what users expect to see, as set out in My Expectations.
- Staff are trained to identify those complaints where mistakes have been made that may have resulted in significant impact. Staff ensure these mistakes are reviewed through the organisation’s Duty of Candour processes.
- Organisations routinely share learning from complaints with other organisations (both locally and nationally) to build on insight and best practice.
- Organisations who outsource the provision of NHS services to a contractor or private provider have meaningful strategic oversight of how these services are performing. They know how these organisations handle complaints and how they meet the expectations set out in the Standards.