Given that most schools are currently planning to, or have entered into, a new phase of education delivery through online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has your school contemplated how to deal with complaints that will be passed on solely by telephone or via a digital medium?

Is Your Complaints Handling Process Sufficient for Your Current Needs?

In our School Governance article, Social Media and Effective Complaints Management - Embracing Complaints to Improve and Move Forward it was noted that 3.2 billion people (46 per cent of the world’s population) use some form of social media every day. That was July 2019. By January 2020, this number had increased to 3.8 billion.

Although not yet available, in these times of social isolation, estimates of the increase in social media use must be extraordinary! For example, Twitter’s daily usage has jumped by 23 percent in the last three months.

Schools need to assume that complaints, if they are not captured and responded to in an expeditious and transparent manner, may in all probability and due to social isolation practices, end up being discussed on social media rather than in the school carpark or the local coffee shop. These social media chats may remain on the internet forever!

Before the current social isolation practices, schools would have dealt with a combination of personal face-to-face, email or over the phone complaints. Now that social isolation practices are in full swing and most students are learning remotely at home with their parents and carers there will be almost no personal face-to-face complaints.

In some circumstances personal face-to-face complaints are also likely to be resolved differently and more quickly than written or over the phone complaints as sometimes a face-to-face discussion where body language can be observed and people are sitting in the same room will have a quicker and more satisfactory outcome. If schools offer face-to-face video options, this may help to ameliorate this situation. That option, however, may not be currently available to parents and carers.

Strategic Risks

As we noted in our 2019 article, the strategic risks in the area of complaints include:

• failure to establish and effectively communicate the school's complaints policy and procedures and capture, monitor, record, respond to and analyse all complaints
• failure by the school to train staff in the complaints management process and the training is not standardised
• failure by the school to appoint a “complaints officer” who is empowered to either resolve complaints or be aware of, and have access to, the person who has the authority to do so
• failure by the school to keep the personal information of the complainant, and any people who are the subject of a complaint, confidential, and failure to restrict the use of personal information to the purposes of addressing the complaint and any follow up actions.

These strategic risks are as valid in the digital world as they are in the physical school environment.

Strategies and Recommendations to Mitigate Against These Risks

If schools are moving to a digital teaching environment with strict social distancing/isolation policies for staff and students, then there are some strategies that they could employ to ensure that they are mitigating against these risks.

Schools could handle complaints effectively and efficiently through:

• the establishment, implementation and maintenance of a complaints program that operates in an online environment
• the appointment of a Complaints Manager to oversee the program
• the appointment and training of senior staff to act as Complaints Officers who are available and trained to deal with all online and telephone complaints
• a clearly visible part of their public website (preferably with a search function) that provides information as to how to lodge a complaint and or feedback with the school
• online or video training for staff in all complaint handling procedures to ensure that staff who are public facing are skilled in triage management of complaints and know how to and to whom to direct the complainants
• ensuring that the complaints handling procedures are accessible to all parents/carers and other external parties
• ensuring that their complaints program has child-friendly procedures that are age appropriate
• having a system, with complaints handling guidelines, designed to capture complaints and track actions and outcomes
• the regular analysis of complaints received, and the implementation of rectification action where deficiencies in the online program and procedures are identified
• reports, based on the analysis of the complaints data, provided to the executive team and to the governing body.

In addition, schools need to ensure that:

• their complaints policy, where relevant, is available in different languages and formats (particularly for overseas students)
• there is flexibility in the methods of making a complaint. Provision should be made for verbal complaints, not just online complaints
• it should be easy to understand the system for making complaints.

Capturing Positive Feedback

However, just as it is essential, and a legal requirement in many jurisdictions, for a school to have a well-documented and functional complaints policy and procedures, it is arguably essential to have some means of capturing positive comments too.

In times of uncertainty and anxiety for parents and students, as we have during this COVID-19 pandemic, it is all too easy for schools to only deal with complaints. However, there are also many positive comments that schools are receiving regarding how they are continuing to educate their students, how they are rolling out online learning effectively, how teachers and executive staff are making themselves available for students and parents and how they are monitoring student and staff moral and extending their duty of care into the digital teaching environment.

School governing bodies need to hear about both the complaints and the positive feedback. Affirmations that parents and students appreciate the extra efforts that schools are putting in during this pandemic time are basically a ‘shot in the arm’ for staff and executive morale.

According to the Indeed Career Guide, in their article ‘The Importance of Positive Feedback and How to Deliver it to Others’:

Feedback is a tool used to reinforce positive behaviour and support behavioural changes in the workplace. While it is beneficial to give and receive healthy criticism about areas for improvement, using positive feedback is equally necessary.

The cue from this quote is that positive feedback will reinforce the positive behaviours of the staff and it will “support behavioural changes in the workplace”.

What Types of Complaints Could Your School Expect?

In a number of anecdotal discussions with teachers and principals, the following are real issues that have been raised by parents/guardians in schools in recent weeks. Note that not all of them are “complaints”:

• We don’t have good quality internet at home. What will the school do to assist me with this?
• Why am I expected to sit with my child during their daily learning time? Isn’t that the job of the teacher?
• My child is in Year 4 and they have received work that does not extend them as was happening in class. Why is the school not providing extension work for more able students?
• What if I don’t understand what my child is asking me? Will the teacher be available to answer their questions?
• Why is the school still charging full fees for my child when my child is only spending four hours per day doing online learning, instead of the usual six to seven hours per day?
• I sent my child’s teacher an email query on Monday and they have not responded after three days. Why have I not received a response?

There are many more queries and concerns that are being raised. Schools need to decide which ones are complaints, and then deal with those via their usual process, and which ones are vocalised frustrations- but they also need to be dealt with.

In the CompliSpace White Paper, Complaints Handling in Non-Government Schools, it notes that the Australian Standard defines a “complaint” as an – “expression of dissatisfaction made to or about an organisation, related to its products, services, staff or the handling of a complaint, where a response or resolution is explicitly or implicitly expected”.

According to the New South Wales Ombudsman, the term “complaint” is used to refer collectively to any enquiry, comment, complaint or dispute raised by a person expressing dissatisfaction regarding a particular circumstance, or situation, related to a school’s services or operations. Complainants can include students, parents/carers, former students, parents/carers of former students, members of the wider school community, strategic partners, regulators, and can even extend to competitors and members of the public generally.

The process of capturing a complaint that is delivered online or verbally may not be as easy as it first seems. This really comes down to ensuring that all staff understand what a complaint is. If the definition from the Australian Standard is adopted, complaints will need to be managed in accordance with the school’s complaints handling procedures.

It can be difficult to establish when constructive feedback becomes a complaint. If there is doubt as to whether a complaint is being made, a school needs to assess if the feedback highlights a gap or deficiency in their service, operations and or procedures. If the answer is “Yes” then the feedback should be logged as a complaint, even though on its face value, it may be considered more generally as constructive feedback.

For example, if a parent “complains” that their child did not get an “A” on an online task, this is not in itself a complaint as the incident does not suggest that the school could improve its service delivery or operations. On the other hand, if the matter raised relates to an alleged bias in assessment criteria this would be classified as a complaint as the allegation of bias would need to be investigated, and, if substantiated, would reflect an area where the school could improve its operations.

Summary

Schools should be encouraging complaints and handling them in a constructive way as they can be excellent ‘lead’ and ‘lag’ indicators of risk and compliance issues.

In the COVID-19 environment, people are using social media and online technologies far more regularly. Complaints shared online will be shared rapidly and could result in reputational damage at a time when schools may struggle to retain students due to financial pressures on parents.

A complaint not heard, or a complaint badly handled, is more than likely to result in a dissatisfied parent, negative ‘word of mouth’ and negative social media commentary. Bear in mind that:

• complaints are usually emotional issues - often involving anger
• many people who lodge a complaint will tell others about the issue
• in general, people will give you a second chance if you handle their complaint successfully
• encouraging open feedback that includes complaints from key stakeholders including parents, former students or members of the wider school community can offer opportunities to improve your service levels and operations.
• complaints are a common indicator of low customer satisfaction, but their absence does not necessarily imply high customer satisfaction.
• you need to teach staff how to handle complaints effectively - especially ‘front-line’ staff such as your receptionist and class teachers.

Simply put, poorly-handled complaints will result in a loss of control of key conversations within your school and with this loss of control comes an increase in possible reputational damage.