Questions for panel speakers:
What change they thought there would be in Quality Assurance in the advice sector post Covid-19?
Sarah McNeice Quality and Transformation Manager at the Money and Pension Service:
“Post COVID from a quality perspective – continue to work with organisations to understand the challenges on the ground and ensure that various quality initiatives are co-designed and co-produced to meet the client needs and support advisers on the frontline. Working collaboratively to ensure advisers are equipped with the right training and tools enabling them to do their job effectively.”
Rachel Irvine Performance Manager at National Citizens Advice:
“QA will be more important than ever following periods of instability or rapid change. We need to be confident that we’re evaluating the right things to enable risk management, good practice and continuous improvement. I don’t think it’s clear enough to providers how the quality standards relate to clients and we need to shout about that – the voice of the client needs to be better represented. Over the period, providers have had to double down on ‘must haves’, so some ‘nice to haves’ have had to be put aside. We need to remember that the mental health of providers is a ‘must have’. I’d like to see more focus on behaviours, (“living the standard” as Matt put it), culture and wellbeing. I also think we should continue to do more of what we’re doing today – sharing experience, coming together to talk about the right balance of consistency, proportionality and rigour in what we evaluate.”
Matthew Howgate Organisational Development & Compliance Consultant:
“Having everyone in the room makes quality management easier. With everyone at home in their PJ’s (or worse) and with unfettered Netflix access, quality management is more challenging. The biggest change must, IMHO, be to think about embedding a quality culture rather than imposing quality systems (not that the two are inconsistent).”
Other points made by speakers
Dal Warburton, National Network Lead at AdviceUK:
“I think one theme that is coming through for me is the need to balance assurance of quality with being able to do the right things for the communities we advise.”
Lindsey Poole, Director of Advice Services Alliance:
“One thing I worry about is that funders often drive how we think about quality- how do we ensure that our knowledge is recognised and that we don’t fall into automated responses simply to please funders?”