National Headquarters
Level 12
80 The Terrace
PO Box 2133
Wellington
New Zealand
Phone +64 4 496 3600
27 May 2022
Mark McDonald
By email: [FYI request #19225 email]
Dear Mark
Information Request – Questions re Shaw Report
I refer to your official information request dated 28 April 2022 asking for information about Fire
and Emergency New Zealand’s implementation of the recommendations contained in The Positive
Workplace Culture Review Report completed by Coral Shaw.
Your request has been assessed in accordance with the provisions of the Official Information Act
1982 (OIA). Fire and Emergency’s response to each of your questions is set out below:
1. Do you actually record complaints etc now?
Following acceptance of the 33 recommendations in the Coral Shaw Report, Fire and Emergency
established the Behaviour and Conduct Office as an important step in providing a self-contained,
impartial business unit for people to confidentially discuss and report instances of any type of
unwanted interpersonal conduct, including bullying and harassment. The Behaviour and Conduct
Office records all complaints and enquiries received about instances of bullying or harassment.
2. I see in Recommendation 19, it is recommended that: … FENZ develops and implements a system
of capturing and recording all issues, complaints, grievances and/or disputes regarding bullying
and harassment… How do you implement Recommendation 19 in practice?
The Behaviour and Conduct Office provides a single 0800 number and e-mail available for anyone
wishing to make contact. All enquiries received by the Behaviour and Conduct Office are logged in
its complaint register and assigned a unique case ID. All case information (e.g. notes, documents,
reports) is recorded and securely held using that Case ID. Once a case outcome is determined, it is
recorded in the complaints register against the Case ID.
The Behaviour and Conduct Office is working to improve the range and scope of information they
record as part of their complaint management processes. The Behaviour and Conduct Office has
used, and will continue to use, OIA requests as a source of information about how we can improve
the Behaviour and Conduct Office’s data and analytics capabilities. The difficulties we have
experienced in looking to collate information in response to your requests have been noted and
will be considered by the Behaviour and Conduct Office, in particular whether there is information
that could be better recorded within the Behaviour and Conduct Office.
3. I note that the Recommendation clearly refers to more than written complaints and includes
issues regardless of whether they were reported to HR or not, or reported at all in fact. Please
specifically detail how FENZ captures the following issues in its statistics:
-
issues it is aware of, where no person has made a formal complaint
-
issues that are reported informally or formally to chiefs.
It is important that anyone experiencing bullying or harassment is able to discuss their concerns in
a confidential manner with the person they feel safest approaching. This may include having
informal discussions using the education and guidance information provided to our people about
how to deal with bullying, harassment and unwanted interpersonal conduct. We are unable to
record statistics for informal discussions that have not been notified to the Behaviour and Conduct
Office as either an enquiry or a complaint.
In some cases, mandatory reporting at the informal stage may discourage people from speaking
up or raising a concern to seek help. We provide our people with information and guidance, and
always encourage them to seek impartial advice about their own situation by contacting the
Behaviour and Conduct Office confidentially.
4. The Report states: “On request, People and Capability provided the review with information
about issues raised or categorised specifically as bullying or harassment since 1 July 2017.
However, this information had to be especially sourced and collated to meet the request."
Your answer to my last OIA (that you have to search through a large quantify of Information for my
extremely basic request) shows that you are apparently still choosing (4 years later) to specially
source and collate stats when people make OIA requests. Why is this the case? Why don't you have
this crucial information (that you should be using to inform and monitor your disputes handling) to
hand?
As noted in our response to question 2, the Behaviour and Conduct Office maintains a register of
all complaints received and records of specific case information. In the context of responding to
OIA requests, the Behaviour and Conduct Office does not always hold the specific information
requested or categorise complaints in the way that is requested. The information requested may
be held elsewhere, for example, in individual personnel files rather than in complaints records. In
these instances, more extensive and case-by-case searching would be required to research and
collate a full and accurate response.
As advised in our response to question 2, the Behaviour and Conduct Office is working to improve
the range and scope of information they record as part of their complaint management processes.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is availab
le at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
Yours sincerely
Raewyn Bleakley
Deputy Chief Executive, Office of the Chief Executive
encl
