Contact: Trevor Stabb ext 5185

1: Background

1.1 The County Council's Complaints Policy requires departments to report to the appropriate Policy Review Committee on their monitoring and response to complaints and compliments.

1.2 This report details compliments recorded and complaints investigated within all Personnel & Training Department units and covers the period 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004.

1.3 The Personnel and Training Department provides a diverse range of services, through it's Central and Customer based units, to all County Council Departments.

1.4 Contact with the general public is primarily related to recruitment, which accounts for approximately 25% of P&T working time.

1 Recording, investigating and monitoring complaints/feedback

1.1 The Personnel & Training department operates a process, as part of its continuous improvement programme, for resolving issues arising with any part of its service delivery or conduct of its staff.

1.2 Each unit records complaints and compliments, where these are received in writing,

1.3 The information is centrally collated, by the Quality and Performance Manager.

1.4 Individual Heads of Personnel are responsible for conducting investigations into complaints, making the appropriate response to the complainant, within the agreed timescale, and for ensuring corrective actions arising are effective.

Where necessary, independent investigation is conducted by the Quality and Performance Manager.

1.5 All units maintain frequent contact with their Customer departments, both by face to face meetings and the use of customer survey questionnaires, to review the quality of work carried out.

1.6 Education Personnel Services additionally use a feedback form with their main customers, Hampshire Schools.

1.7

3. Compliments.

3.1 Compliments, both relating to overall service and to the actions of individual staff have been received across the entire department.

3.2 Whilst the majority of these have been received through formal customer feedback, there are a number of compliments which have been received by virtue of a letter or e-mail regarding a specific activity or person.

3.3 We received some 80 Formal compliments, relating to P&T Service Performance, from across the department and typical comments were:

_ I cannot speak highly enough of the sensitive and informative way, with what could have been a distressing situation, this was dealt with.

_ I wouldn't contemplate going through such a process without your services

_ Thank you for your continued support of our school, I very much value the guidance you have been able to provide for us.

_ I know I always get wonderful help, guidance and assistance from everyone in Personnel.

_ May I thank you, most sincerely for the stimulating and thoughtful training workshop you delivered yesterday.

_ This is a very neat summary from Maggie.

_ Excellent results over the last 12 months.

_ Personnel staff are well organised, supportive and informative.

_ My wife and I were particularly impressed with personnel's professionalism and care with which they undertook the work.

_ Excellent support in a tricky situation.

_ Just to say that your vacancies screen is the best around.

_ The EPS Service Level Agreement is the best of them all, I have had my money's worth several times over.

These compliments have been made by a wide range of people: - Head Teachers, Admin Staff, Managers, other Employees and External people.

4. Complaints

4.1 Complaints relating to the service from Personnel and Training department can arise both "Internally" and from the public where we have direct contact.

Frequently, these "Complaints" represent adverse, but constructive, written comments which are welcome as they help to maintain Continuous Improvement in the department.

Other comments, about service delivery, which are verbally received are not recorded, but do form part of the Continuous Improvement culture within Personnel.

During the year 2003 - 2004 the department has recorded 9 internal "complaints" and 1 "external" complaint a decrease on the previous year.

The complaints received were primarily process related and when compared to the number of personnel transaction taking place, account for a very small percentage of them.

After investigation and evaluation of the process, corrective actions have been implemented to prevent re-occurrence or where appropriate, additional staff training given.

Such "complaints" included:

X Unsympathetic treatment (Investigated and complaint unfounded),

X Delay in sending out forms (letter of apology sent and a follow up meeting arranged to discuss the details "face to face"),

X Misdirected post containing confidential details and e-mails which occurred due to a similarity of names ( matter investigated and action implemented to amend internal processes to minimise the potential for similar occurrences).

4.2 The "external complaint" arose from a person who alleged he had been subject to disability discrimination as part of a recruitment opportunity.

This was subject to a Data Protection, Subject Access Request, and a potential tribunal case. However, the situation has been settled without the need to revert to a tribunal case.

4.3 None of the complaints resulted in escalation beyond stage 2 of the Corporate Complaints process and no complaint related to race issues.

5. Conclusion

5.1 The department has in place systems to agree internal customer expectations (Service Level Agreements) and to record and investigate customer complaints and compliments (Customer feedback systems)

These are being reviewed as part of the departmental restructuring to ensure the effectiveness of these processes, in light of the new HR structure.

Our policy is to use any complaint as the opportunity to learn and to improve our processes.

Compliment also are important in learning as if we know what we have done well and how we did it, the excellent service can be repeated in future.

5.2 Complaints have been dealt with in accordance with our performance targets of an acknowledgement within 5v working days and a full reply within 20.

6. Recommendations

6.1 This second report is noted.

6.2 The complaints handling process within Human Resources is reviewed and amended as necessary to meet the changing departmental structure and its requirements.

6.3 That the PRC continues to receive an annual report on compliments and complaints within Human Resources.