Question for PP managers - maintaining report quality

bambi

Hi
I am a PP manager, I wonder if the more experienced managers can shed some light on how you tackle an issue I am facing...
How do you ensure your reports are of the highest quality in terms of spelling, grammar, value for money for clients. We have a checking team, unfortunately errors still get through.
We are extremely busy and reading eachothers reports is not practical.
Do you struggle with attention to detail in your team?
Anyone successfully overcome this?

Thanks
p.s we need a group here for PP team leaders and managers! 😁

benjaminfabi

We are extremely busy and reading each others reports is not practical.
Do you struggle with attention to detail in your team?

I think you've identified your main problem. The first step to ensure quality is to accept that it cannot be achieved in an environment where the workload is too high for the number of people.

Fast Turnaround
Premium Quality
Low Cost (ie not enough staff)

Whoever sets your targets has to pick two of these three, they can't have them all.

In your checking team, do they identify the errors and kick back into your team to resolve? If so, can they make any minor amendments themselves and produce KPIs to measure the paraplanners against?

richallum

I've set up a Team leaders & managers category and moved this thread to it :-)

Caro

I agree with Ben, if there is pressure from high work loads or to get stuff out the door quickly you are going to struggle to maintain high levels of quality.

That aside, my questions would be, with your checking team, are they checking all reports, or a sampling? Are there themes with the errors? Are the same people making the same errors, which could be a training issue, or are there lots of different errors, which could be down to rushing.

Do the checking team write reports themselves, could that ease the pressure?

Often paraplanners reading other paraplanners reports can be a good training method to pick up tips and share ideas of how to put things, we do that quite often. I've worked in places where we have a buddy system for checking reports which worked quite well.

There were also good tips for proof reading at the Report Howwow, such as checking for one thing at a time for example. Obviously, that's probably not helpful if you have time constraints though.

As Ben said, you can't have all three of those points unfortunately!

bambi

Hello sorry for the delay I have been in sunny Lanzarote!
Thanks Richard for setting up the group
Benjamin, I set the targets and I am happy for these to not be met if I see an improvement in quality. I have removed targets for a few PPs unfortunately there is still no major improvement..... Not enough for me to say targets are the cause of errors.

The checking team may make amendments really depends, otherwise they kick it back to us.

Caro, no major theme, it seems to be lots of people making lots of errors! The more complex the case the more errors are picked up I like the buddy system, but then I think what's the point of a checking team.

Clare_Weight

Bambi, is it the environment? People are always afraid to be the first to admit it's too noisy to concentrate properly.

DanAtkinsonUK

I find people are more prone to make mistakes when they keep getting interrupted. It can be tricky to manage this without being unapproachable (not a desirable outcome). Use of headphones (for limited periods of time) can be a useful tool. Maybe see if you can check out how fractured their day is, @bambi?

Martin_Green

@bambi what type of errors are occurring?

Pedro

Just a thought, would actually removing layers of checking help instill a responsibility to get it right from the outset and remove the idea of a safety net?

I suppose this would perhaps make things worse before getting better, but extra layers add complexity and time.