Complaints, incidents and feedback

Diakonia’s policy for complaints and response includes the option of sending a complaint to Diakonia online.

Diakonia is committed to working in an open and responsible way, fostering the trust and respect of all its stakeholders.

Diakonia strives to achieve the highest quality in its development and humanitarian programmes and seeks to work with affected communities and populations in the best possible way.

To ensure the continuous improvement of our work, we are interested in what our stakeholders have to say whether in the form of a comment, compliment or complaint.

Diakonia provides a system that gives individuals and groups the opportunity to report complaints to Diakonia in a secure way, and to receive a response.

Diakonia shall handle complaints regarding confidentiality in a timely manner. The system also enables Diakonia employees to report staff related incidents.

The system for complaints and incident handling is referred to as a Complaints and Response Mechanism and is available to all Diakonia’s stakeholders, particularly its partners working with communities and rights holders to whom Diakonia is accountable.

Diakonia shall handle complaints and incidents with respect to confidentiality in a timely manner. The facts and nature of the complaint or incident, the identity of people involved, and the investigation records are confidential. Only a limited number of people shall know about it.

A complaint should be lodged as soon as possible after the complainant becomes aware of the concern.

Serious complaints and incidents will be investigated with highest possible confidentiality. Diakonia strives to solve serious complaints and incidents as soon as possible. Operational complaints and incidents Diakonia strive to solve within 30 days.

If the complaint or incident is classified as a complaint on operational issues, it will be forwarded to relevant director, who decides upon the process for handling the complaint or incident.

A formal response will be given to the complainant for further clarification or feedback.

Based on the complaint or incident there might be some lessons learned to draw from the case. The responsible director will make sure that relevant person within Diakonia receives the recommendations for improvements.

If the complaint or incident is classified as a complaint on serious issues, it will be forwarded to relevant director, who decides upon the process for handling the complaint or incident.

The director has the responsibility to identify and respond to any immediate risk for the persons involved and make sure that confidentiality is always highly secured.

Based on the information in the complaint or incident the director will decide if there is enough information to be able to start and investigation. If yes, the director will appoint two investigators who will conduct the investigation and, in the end, draw up conclusions and recommendations. If no, the complainant will be informed that there is not enough information to be able to proceed with an investigation.

The responsible director will decide on actions to take. The responsible director will inform the complainant about the outcome and decision.

If the complainant is not satisfied with the outcome, she/he may appeal the outcome within 30 days upon receipt of the decision.

Diakonia will summarize the organisational learning from complaints handling in annual reports without revealing any information about the details of complaints, and of course leaving out any information about the complainant.

The annual reports will focus on learning points and how Diakonia aims at improving our way of working.