Continuous education and training for all staff will support the development of skills in the management of complaints. This will enable staff to identify when a complaint has been made and what process should be followed to resolve it at the most efficient level. The key objectives of this training are to:
- Raise staff awareness of the Your Service Your Say, the Management of Service User Feedback for Comments , Compliments and Complaints Policy 2017, with an emphasis on local resolution.
- Inform staff of their role and responsibilities in receiving feedback and in the complaints management process.
- Provide staff with the skills to communicate effectively with Complainants
- Provide staff with the skills to manage complaints including verbal and written complaints and unreasonable complaints.
- Increase staff confidence in complaints handling
Content of Training for Staff
All staff will receive an introduction to complaints management as part of their induction training. This will outline the responsibilities of staff at all levels within the organisation on how to deal with feedback at the first point of contact where at all possible and how to escalate a complaint if it is not within their remit to resolve the issue on hand.
Complaints management awareness training will be delivered to groups of staff who have not attended induction training for some considerable time and have not had an opportunity to receive complaints management training.
More extensive training will be available to relevant staff, such as Complaints Officers and Review Officers as per the training programme mapped out below.
These various training suites will encompass the following:
- Customer Service skills
- Advocacy advice
- Understanding Complainant behaviour
- Recognising and dealing with unreasonable behaviour
- Understanding the various stages of the feedback management process
- Privacy and confidentiality
- Rights, roles and responsibilities
- Investigation Skills
- Documentation & Data Collection
- Report writing
- Monitoring and Evaluation tools
- Learning/quality improvement
- Recommendations
Training Programmes
Education and training in complaints handling will be provided to all HSE staff to enable them to effectively implement the complaints management processes.
Resources for managing feedback include:
- All new staff will be provided with induction training on the management of feedback – this is a half hour session which covers an overview of the feedback process and the complaints management system and creates awareness on how to handle feedback including complaints. (Provided by Consumer Affairs)
- All staff should attend Awareness training (usually of 1-2 hours duration). (Provided by Consumer Affairs)
- All designated Complaints Officers will be provided with a full one-day extensive training course on all aspects of feedback and complaints management as outlined above in the in-depth feedback training. (Provided by Consumer Affairs)
- Training will be provided to Review Officers on Stage 3 of the Complaints Management Process. (Provided by the National Complaints Governance and Learning Team)
- Complaints Management System. The Complaints Management System is a unified, standardised, national database developed in partnership with the State Claims Agency that captures real time feedback data. (Provided by the National Complaints Governance and Learning Team)
- eLearning The eLearning tool is an interactive on-line complaint handling tool hosted through the HSEland portal.
To avail of any of the training programmes please refer to your line manager. The eLearning programme is available online to all staff on HSELand
Complaints are everybody’s responsibility
