Changing and Improving Grade 7 Example Statement (500 Words)

SI headed a customer resolutions function covering three regional teams handling 9,000 complaints a year across a national service. Each region triaged complaints differently, so serious cases waited too long while easy ones were fast-tracked, and senior leaders had no reliable picture of risk across the organisation. A review by our internal audit team had flagged the inconsistency as a significant weakness that needed fixing within the year.

TThe operations director tasked me with creating one consistent triage model across all three regions. It had to protect vulnerable customers, speed up the most serious cases, and give the executive data it could trust, all without extra budget or new headcount.

AI began by reviewing 200 closed complaints from across the three regions and found risk was being judged on gut feel rather than consistent criteria. I brought team leaders from all three regions together to design a shared severity matrix, and we tested it against real cases until they agreed it worked. I challenged the director's initial preference for a single centralised team, showing with workload data that regional triage using shared standards would be faster and cheaper; she accepted the evidence and changed the brief. I introduced a 48-hour target for high-severity cases and a daily risk huddle in each region, so urgent issues surfaced the same day rather than at month-end reporting. I negotiated for two existing posts to be redeployed to support the change, rather than requesting new staff in a tight financial year. I commissioned a simple dashboard so regional performance was visible weekly, and I presented the early results myself at the executive risk committee. Two regional managers initially resisted, seeing the model as criticism of their teams, so I visited both, involved them in refining the matrix, and made sure early wins were shared publicly under their names. I arranged training for all 45 staff and ran it alongside normal work in small groups, so the backlog did not grow during the transition. I also set up a monthly peer-review call where regions checked each other's triage decisions, which kept standards consistent without creating a heavy audit burden. Throughout, I was careful to praise the regions for improvements they suggested, because I wanted the model to feel owned by them rather than imposed by me. After three months I led a formal review, kept what worked, and removed a duplicate sign-off step that the data showed was adding delay without reducing risk.

RHigh-severity complaints resolved within target rose from 54% to 89% within six months, overall handling time fell by 30%, and the model was adopted by two other directorates. The executive cited the dashboard as its main source of complaint-risk assurance, and the approach saved an estimated £95,000 a year in duplicated management time. Internal audit closed its recommendation at the follow-up review that autumn, and the team leaders who co-designed the matrix went on to lead improvement work in their own regions.