www.wiltshire.gov.uk
Equality Impact Assessment - Customer Care/Access Strategy
1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?
The Customer Care /Access Strategy
2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?
To deliver high quality services to all customers who contact Wiltshire County Council. To resolve customer enquiries and service requests at the first point of contact or to ensure that they reach the appropriate officer or team at the first time of asking. This may be face to face, by telephone, email, web or letter. The service is designed to meet the needs of all customers wishing to access services.
3. In what ways might this policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?
The Customer Care service is essentially a support service for all functions of the County Council and all customers wishing to access services. The users of the service and staff that support it cover the full range of society. We must therefore ensure that needs of all users are considered on the basis of:
Whilst we can address these issues at first point of contact there is a broader issue about how they are dealt with when their enquiry is passed through to the service area within the county council.
- Racial/Ethnic groups
- Gender
- Disability
- Sexual Orientation
- Religion/Belief
- Age
- Customers with learning difficulties
Racial/Ethnic Groups
- Language barriers (call centre, reception, web)
- Access to translation services
- Staff understanding of cultural differences
Gender
- Face to face contacts and training for staff some people are uncomfortable talking to opposite or same sexes on certain subjects.
- Nature of job currently appears only to attract a female workforce or is it that that level of work in the whole council is female dominated or is it just to local government profile
Disability
Ability to support visual, hearing and mobility impaired people at the face to face contactpoint and through transactions over the web.
Ability to support visual, hearing and mobility impaired staff within the CCU
Sexual Orientation
A rounded understanding of the issues around this area (discretion).
Making sure that procedures are exactly the same for all people irrespective of sexual orientation.
Religion/Belief
- Hours of business
- Male to female communication.
- Staff having certain requirements at certain times of the day/month/year which mean they cannot fulfil job.
- May need facilities within the premises for certain religious observances.
- Understanding of what religious background people are coming form when giving advice to ensure it is appropriate for their background.
Action points
Have we got procedures in place to find out/know/ deal with this. (Probably not at the moment)
Ensure any religious needs are taken into account within the recruitment process so that any needs are known at the outset.
Age
Different people will want to contact you at different times of the day – giving people a choice of different access channels. Hours of business; type of service /access offered web, face to face, SMS etc; range of staff employees within the customer care environment and understanding the age profile.
Hours of work that you require staff to work; may exclude certain age groups; flexibility as a carer.
- Consultation needed to establish needs of all age groups to ensure appropriate access channels are in place; e.g. many elderly people may prefer face to face contact; the younger generation may prefer better web services or SMS.
Learning difficulties
People with learning difficulties have a requirement for different documentation and styles. If they are face to face they may also have different needs of requirements
- Ensuring documents and forms are in plain English use pictigraphs where aporpriate.
- Ensuring web services are in plain English and easy to find.
- More use of clear pictures and symbols to represent words.
4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?
CCU workforce have a mixed range of age groups; predominantly female; haven’t asked/analysed about the other aspects. The recruitment process picks up people with disabilities but we do not have a process in place to pick up the more subtle disability issues that staff may feel more uncomfortable talking about.
We are aware we employ people, of different sexual orientations so we do not believe it to be an issue but it is not something we have analysed across the Council’s contactpoints and it is not something we have consulted our customers about.
At this point in time we do not collect robust data on any of the main six areas that are the main groupings of for the equality assessment.
Across the reception service face to face access points and the CCU we have figures on volumes of contact and we can collate a gender split but currently do not do this.
We have done random sampling within CCU for customers and for staff regarding the quality and efficiency of the service but not on any of the main areas.
5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?
As a service, we have not undertaken any consultation with the public. This is something that we would need to pick up as an action. There has been some informal consultation with the Staff Disability Forum and this has picked up some issues of improving access in Customer Care, through the website and in Reception.
We have consulted the public on two occasions via People’s Voice asking people for these type of services what would be your preferred access channel and within the last 2 years there was a 10% shift towards web based access but this was far and away outweighed by the requirement for phone contact, whilst the increase in web requirement was matched by a drop in face to face in most areas.
Sources of Information
- Figures from people’s voice survey on website Oct 2005.
- SOCITM web trends survey information so that we know how satisfied people are with information on the website.
- Staff survey within CCU and Reception.
- Schools admission data 20% web based take up for schools applications demonstrating it is working and popular.
- Satisfaction rates/stats for Customer Care; Contact Point and HR sickness surveys.
6. If you have found that the policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?
It is difficult to justify this at the moment. There aren’t a lot of complaints or feedback to draw on. We do recognise that the way we are approaching this now is not entirely acceptable to some user groups e.g. teachers, people who do not feel comfortable using the phone and the web, but we feel we can justify this on the grounds of value for money, affordability, efficiency and quality of service. There may well be dips in terms of service performance when you initially transfer ways of accessing the service to CCU but we would expect the performance figures then to go up within an acceptable period of time.
7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?
Further consultation and research is required. Into the impact into the different type of profiles and the effect this had on the way they access services or the way that staff work. This would be one of our actions.
8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?
The easiest way to do this would be to survey a selection of our customers. We could consider doing this over the telephone, by sending out short questionnaires with forms and letters we send out. We can also draw on feedback coming in from complaints or letters of thanks. We will continue to use the SOCITM monthly reporting on customer satisfaction. We aim to pick up every 10th caller to the CCU and ask satisfaction questions. Regular satisfaction surveys at face to face contactpoints and extending that to other access points such as reception and other reception points which will be easier to do once the county policy of property rationalisation is in place. Staff satisfaction surveys will continue within CCU and reception plus contactpoints.
Assessing impact of change on staff in relation to IT and that staff have the appropriate skills and confidence to use the IT packages to fulfil the new requirements for working practices.
We need a process in place to monitor the impact in service outcomes as a result of changes in the way that the service is accessed.
9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications.
- All Customer Care staff to receive appropriate equality and diversity training.
- Consultation – benchmarking with other authorities; research any national or local consultation that has already taken place.
- Clarity & procedures for staff on where to get help; Translation service; Braille etc.
- All staff to be familiar with type talk (training)
- Sensory awareness training (Lyn Deas?)
- Clear signage in reception (using symbols) – prompting customers to ask for assistance, if they have any special requirements.
- Tie in to the access strategy (look at Web improvements; SMS; Contact point development etc.)
- Review reception procedures for mobility impaired – ensure they are robust. Do we have enough pagers?
- Ensure sufficient resource to help customers complete forms.
- Hearing loop in reception (is it working?)
- Review pagers for the Deaf. Do we have enough?
- Training for assisting customers who are in a wheelchair (lifting and folding the chair)
- More clarity and promotion for customers and staff about help available for people with a disability; review customer care web page; more promotion at shows; support the disability awareness day.
- Documents available in large print or Braille on request.
- Clearer procedures for visitors who are mobility impaired; e.g. evacuation; use of pagers etc.
- Sufficient support for the Deaf or hard of hearing
- Provide training for a Customer Care Officer to learn sign language
- Ensuring the web is fully compliant to enable access for persons with a disability.
- Ensure that (face to face) access points are accessible
- Consultation needed to establish needs of all age groups to ensure appropriate access channels are in place; e.g. many elderly people may prefer face to face contact; the younger generation may prefer better web services or SMS.
- Ensure any religious needs are taken into account within the recruitment process so that any needs are known at the outset.
10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen.
The web or in paper form on request. Perhaps a promotional exercise could be considered (e.g. shows) or details could go in the Mag.
A corporate space on the web site for Equality Impact assessments where we would expect this to be published.?
11. Name of person completing form
Head of Customer Relations
Date assessment completed:
1 November 2006
Senior manager approval:
Assistant Director - Corporate Services
Date
27 September 2007
Contact Details
By Post
Equality & Diversity Team
Development Services
Wiltshire County Council
County Hall
Bythesea Road
Trowbridge
Wiltshire
BA14 8JN
By Email
By Telephone
01225 713510
By Hand
County Hall, Trowbridge
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm
