What You Will End Up With
A feedback and complaints mechanism is an organized system that gives people a safe, easy-to-use and dependable route to share feedback, raise a complaint and get an answer or a remedy. It is worth the effort because complaints also work as alerts to misconduct or shortcomings, and a working complaints system is a cornerstone for any organization that applies the CHS.
When you finish this guide you will have channels the community helped choose, a handling process with roles and timeframes, and a record system that keeps complaints confidential. The mechanism rests on four characteristics that are not up for negotiation: confidential, accessible, transparent and safe.
Before You Start
Trust in a complaints system is reinforced when people who complain get feedback, and that takes preparation. Settle these points first.
- Management commitment. Without it, the organization cannot follow up on the feedback and complaints it receives.
- A small first scope. If your team is new to this, pilot the mechanism in one project or one geographic area and plan to extend it to every project later.
- Barriers by group. Think through what stops people complaining: physical access and disability, cultural norms, fear of retribution, and the marginalization of groups such as youth or people who cannot read.
- A budget line. Plan money for staff training, for keeping entry points such as a hotline running where you use one, and for facilities. Build it into planning, not on top of it. Decide who the focal point is and how much of their time this takes.
Steps
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Commit, brief and appoint. Secure management commitment, brief staff, and appoint a focal point or a small team to run the mechanism.
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Consult the community first. Raise awareness, then ask people how they would like to report. Do not design the system and consult afterward, because it will be seen as top-down. In some societies complaining or giving negative feedback does not come naturally, so do not push participatory methods against social norms.
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Agree the channels. One agency's guide asks you to settle on at least two with the community, and to check how easily women, children and minority groups can use each one. Offer both written and verbal reporting, including anonymous reporting, and include in-person reporting to a focal point or trained community members. The same guide asks that at least one channel sit outside the program implementation team, so people have a formal route to the organization that does not pass through it.
Example: A small health organization agrees on a suggestion box at the clinic and a phone line answered by a focal point at head office. The box is handy for people who visit anyway. The phone line lets someone raise a problem about the program team without going through that team. Two channels, one of them independent.
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Design the handling process. It should cover reception, recording and categorization in a database, acknowledgement, resolution or investigation, response to the complainant, appeal, and recording and reporting. Give each stage an owner and a timeframe. Decide at intake who judges whether a complaint is routine or sensitive. In that guide's model, sensitive complaints, such as abuse, misconduct, corruption or sexual exploitation, go down an investigation route before any response reaches the complainant. Check what your own policies and funder require.
Keep a simple log with one row per complaint. These columns are a suggestion, so adapt them:
Date Channel Category Status Response date Appeal Date received How it arrived Routine or sensitive, and type Open, in investigation or closed Date the answer went out Whether the person appealed Set timeframes by category:
Category Acknowledge Respond Routine service complaint [Fill in] [Fill in] Sensitive complaint [Fill in] After the investigation route is complete Fill in the actual periods with your team and the community.
Confirm receipt, in writing or by speaking to the person, and tell them when to expect an answer. Sample acknowledgement: "We received your concern on [date]. We are looking into it and will contact you by [date]." Sample response: "About the concern you raised on [date]: [action taken or result]. You have the right to appeal this response."
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Set safety and confidentiality rules. Decide who may see records and how they are stored. See the section below.
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Tell communities and prepare frontline staff. Explain that the mechanism exists, how to reach it, and by when people can expect an answer. Frontline staff and volunteers who may receive complaints must know to acknowledge and forward them, without starting an inquiry and without dismissing them.
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Review regularly and close the loop. Analyze the complaints database and produce a report, then use it to improve programs. The agency guide behind this step asks for a report every month. Trust grows when complainants get feedback. Where an investigation happens, the investigating agency must tell the complainant the outcome in a safe and timely way, and complainants should be told plainly that they can appeal.
Keeping Complaint Records Confidential
People stop complaining if they fear intimidation or retaliation, so safety is built into how you store and share records.
- Lock written complaints away. Every written complaint goes into secure storage.
- Sign access agreements. Anyone with access to sensitive complaint information signs confidentiality arrangements.
- Say when confidentiality cannot be assured. In some cases it cannot. Tell complainants up front.
- Plan against retaliation. Consider risks to all parties, including physical protection.
- Site suggestion boxes carefully. A poorly located box, or one that is not emptied discreetly, can put complainants at risk. One pilot found that opening boxes publicly was fine, but staff should not wear branded clothing or label boxes with sexual abuse messaging, because that links the box to the issue.
Common Mistakes
Relying on one channel. A single suggestion box shuts out people who cannot read, and a poorly located box can put complainants at risk. Offer several channels and check each against the barriers people face.
Promising confidentiality or anonymity you cannot guarantee. Communities often prefer an anonymous option, but anonymous complaints limit how far you can process and investigate them. Be honest about the limits.
Collecting complaints but not answering them. Trust in the system is reinforced when the complainant receives feedback. Tell people by when they can expect an answer, and make sure it goes out, including the outcome of any investigation.