Something that has taken a few hours this week has been an issue raised by our apprentice engineer in connection with her College course.

In essence she has felt that her series of assignment “distinctions” has been broken by her tutor failing to teach enough for her to achieve a distinction in the latest one. Apparently this was also the perception of a group of the students and she is disappointed at the impact on her average for the year.

If this was the only issue I probably would have shrugged it off and encouraged her to do the same. But the tutor concerned also appears to have demonstrated an unsatisfactory attitude and manner towards all of the students by way of unsuitable language and bullying manner throughout the year.

Bullying is a difficult issue from everyone’s point of view but there are policies for dealing with it. I prefer to address the specific and demonstrable matters of the words used and let the College decide on whether to categorise it as bullying according to their procedures.

Naturally our apprentice had raised the matters with the Course Coordinator and also the Department Head who had suggested that she should encourage me to contact the Coordinator to initiate a complaint because otherwise nothing would be done. Nobody suggested that she should make a formal complaint via a published procedure.

I duly summarised the complaint in a message to the Coordinator requesting a meeting with the College Principal. I was not surprised that the response ignored my request but sought to arrange a meeting with the Coordinator at the Company at the first opportunity. What did surprise me was that within hours of my arranging the meeting the Coordinator was instructed to cancel it and I was requested to attend the College for another meeting with someone from HR. There was no explanation or apology for this extra demand on my time. Fearing that this could result in some sort of “stitch-up” to the disadvantage of the Apprentice or simply to sweep the complaint away I began my preparation for the meeting by researching the College, its staff, its procedures and the most recent Ofsted report. In the company of our HR specialist I also interviewed the Apprentice at length to ensure that I am adequately briefed on the issues in question and that I have a signed formal complaint in my possession when I attend. The document for this complaint, called Feedback form, was impossible to obtain on line without a student login.

One thing in our favour for this research is that Colleges are required to make public a great deal of information: minutes of Governors’ meetings and sub committees, policies and procedures, and Ofsted publishes all its reports. However, in trying to access policies and procedures on bullying I found that the web links didn’t connect and so I requested assistance from the “help” page.  This was promptly answered by the PA to the Principal. After a following communication concerning the continuing failure of weblinks the PA astutely asked if there was a problem that she could help with. I explained that as I was visiting HR next week I would be pleased to speak with the Principal for a few minutes.

So now I feel more equal to the task of representing my employee’s case. I have an opinion on the quality of the College’s Policies, Procedures, governance and staff as concerns this case and I can understand why Ofsted did not grade the College higher than 2 (Good).

What will happen on Monday remains to be seen. Maybe I will even get to speak with the Chief Executive of this £33million turnover organisation with 1000 apprentice students whose tutors appear to treat with contempt and disdain.

Anyone reading this might reasonably ask “why?”

In interviewing the Apprentice I asked “what are you looking for from this?”

Her reply: “I’d like to make him care – but I don’t think it’s possible” … “the guy does know his stuff but he did not teach this one properly” – “If I was not employed I would not have stayed the course” …because of him.

In preparing for the meeting I asked myself – “Why am I doing this?”

Because:

• I committed to support my employee in expressing her complaint.
• I believe that the behaviour as described is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
• I believe that the College management system should deal with this matter and not ignore it.

And “What outcome would I like to engender?”

• An apology to our Apprentice from the Principal for both service failures.
• An apology to the Principal from the Tutor for behaviour that has damaged the reputation of the College.
• The College management system deals with the behaviour in accordance with its mission and procedures.

I think it’s all a matter of integrity.

So how did the interview at the College go?

Well, all our preparation was worthwhile and our visit to the College was uneventful, apart from the absence of a visitors’ carpark. There is not even a carpark for staff! Everyone must use the nearby public “pay and display” which is all very egalitarian but fairly low on the customer service scale.

The interviewers were not as proposed but they did seem to be genuinely collecting the facts and appeared to take note of everything that we said. They will visit us to interview our Apprentice next week on her return from holiday. Work in progress!

Many aspects of this story relate to the delivery of quality customer service which connect with some generic issues that I am thinking about in “Quality of service is embedded in how things are done”.

I was not present at the interview with our apprentice on our premises but I understand that the process was thorough and conducted well. Our apprentice showed herself to be very mature and not vindictive.

Due to holidays the College will probably be unable to complete their procedures for a few more weeks. We will wait patiently.