Hi
We’re not on Academy, but we do have a QA team. Your problem is a difficult and age old one, not only to new starters but to existing staff. As you say, you don’t want to knock the confidence of your new starters, but they do need to do the job correctly and be shown when they make mistakes, similarly, you don’t want to be knocking everyone’s morale by being deemed as too petty – but then we don’t make the rules!
It has been the subject of much debate. We have taken the stance (not that this has universal agreement) to stick to the Stat128 model – i.e. if its a penny out, then its wrong. But we can drill down to state what the error was and report on this quite easily.
Our system only allows us to mark an error as Financial error or Best Practice error. It would be best if there was a seperate category – just because an error hasn’t cost the claimant (or whatever we’re suppsoed to be calling them) anything, doesn’t mean its not a major error. Similarly, where it is deemed a financial error, that can be open to interpretation.
We have also adopted a feed-back method. With new staff we give them feedback on all their inputs, or get their senior officers to do it. We also give everyone else feedback, but on their errors (we send a ‘claim correct document’ for the correct claims – which isn’t without its critics). This is quite time consuming, but worth the effort. Rather than just sending the dreaded “checking document”.
One of the most difficult parts of my job running the QA team has been to keep the ‘us and them’ syndrome of the checked to the checkers to a minimum. Its an ongoing and constant struggle.
No one likes to be told they’re doing something wrong, but if regular face to face contact is maintained and they get feedback and a reason why what they did was wrong (often they agree anyway!) people seem to be much more accepting of things – if not entirley happy.
In short… there’s no easy way.
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