Feedback and complaints

UAL’s Careers and Employability service supports you as students (and recent graduates) to take the next steps into creative careers and make a living doing what you love. Our aim is to help you understand and use employment opportunities and create a positive work future.

We offer online information, one-to-one sessions, workshops and events, and specific programmes, which cover a wide spectrum of work skills and knowledge.

We work hard to ensure that our resources, staff, external practitioners, and speakers all follow best practice. But sometimes our offer may not meet the participants expectations.

Offering your feedback

We would love to hear about your experience of our services! If you have enjoyed or benefitted from any of our activities or resources, please let us know. Maybe you have some great ideas for how we could make them even better? Please use our feedback form to tell us all about this.

Submitting a complaint

Careers and Employability is serious about listening to complaints. If you feel something was not quite right, we value the opportunity for your feedback. We aim, where possible, to put things right for you. And we are committed to improving our service.

To enable you to have your say, we will:

Provide a fair and clear Complaints Policy and Procedure, which is easy for you to use
Publicise the existence of our Complaints Policy and Procedure so you know how to make a complaint
Ensure all our staff, and the professionals we engage, know what to do if you make a complaint
Investigate your complaint fairly, kindly, and in a timely way, valuing your lived experience
Wherever possible, resolve the issue and ensure that relationships are repaired
Gather information which helps us to improve what we do, going forwards

Definition of a complaint about Careers and Employability

A complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not, about any aspect of our service.

Where complaints may come from

UAL student or undergraduate who is using any aspect of the Careers and Employability service (resources and/or activities).
A person representing a student or graduate, with their written permission.
Any external professional we have engaged to support our work (e.g., speakers, mentors, workshop facilitators, employers, those holding one-to-one student sessions).
Any member of UAL staff (or UAL contractors).

How you can submit a complaint

Verbal complaints: you can raise an issue verbally with any of the Careers and Employability team. We will try to resolve your complaint, to your satisfaction. If you have given us your contact details to respond, we will send you an email to confirm that action has been taken.
Written Complaints: if you prefer, or if you are not satisfied with the verbal complaint approach, you can submit your complaint in writing.

This must be done using our online Complaints form.

Confidentiality

All the information you submit in your complaint will be handled sensitively. We will share information with only those who need to know. We will follow relevant (GDPR) data protection requirements, regarding the sharing and storing of your information.

Responsibility

Overall responsibility for this policy and its implementation lies with the Careers and Employability Complaints Review Panel.

Professional Mentoring programme - it is the responsibility of all Mentors to understand both the Code of ethics for professional mentors and the Complaints Procedure below.

Any mentee who raises a complaint about the mentoring programme, will be given the Code of ethics for professional mentors and the Complaints Policy and Procedure.

Further information can be obtained from: professionalmentoring@arts.ac.uk
Creative Opportunities service – the responsibilities are laid out in the Legal considerations section of the website.

This policy is reviewed regularly and updated.

Last reviewed: May 2023
Next review: May 2024

Complaints Procedure for UAL Careers and Employability

You may wish to submit a complaint if:

any member of Careers and Employability staff (or people we engage to support you) behaves in a way you feel is not right,
your mentor does not comply with the Code of ethics for professional mentors,
any of our resources (online, handouts or in presentations) give you cause for concern,
any of the facilities we use are below your expectations,
you feel any other aspect of our service is not right.

A complaint may be made by a:

UAL student or undergraduate who is using any aspect of the Careers and Employability service (resources and activities),
a person representing a student or graduate, with their written permission,
any external professional we have engaged to support our work (e.g., speakers, mentors, workshop facilitators, employers, those holding one-to-one student sessions),
any member of UAL staff.

Complaints must be made within 90 days of the incident.

Where possible, we encourage you to discuss your concerns with the most appropriate staff member in the first instance. This is to see if it can be resolved informally by that part of our team (e.g. Career Practitioners, Graduate Support, Creative Opportunities, Mentoring Team, Intellectual Property, not just a shop, etc).
If you are unsure who to approach, ask any member of our team for a confidential chat, and they will help you to talk to the right person.
We may need to contact you afterwards, to request more detail about your complaint. You may choose not to give us your contact details, but, in some cases, this might mean we are unable to investigate your complaint any further.
Following your verbal complaint, the person who received it will try to resolve your complaint, to your satisfaction. If you have given us your contact details, we will send you an email to confirm that action that has been taken.

Written complaints

If you prefer to make a written complaint, you must use our online Complaints Form
We ask for the names of everyone concerned with the complaint. Where you don’t know names, or it’s a group, please say this and give as much detail as possible.
If your complaint is about a Mentor, they must still be a member of our Mentor Pool when the complaint is being made (i.e., they must be logged as ‘Active’ on the programme’s matching system).
On submission of the online Complaints Form, you will receive an automatic response, acknowledging that your form has been received. You will also receive an email, saying the same.

Complaints that do not meet the criteria previously mentioned cannot be considered.

We will review your complaint and send you a response within 30 days.

How your Written Complaint will be reviewed

Your Complaints Form. will be passed to the Careers and Employability Complaints Review Panel¹ within 21 days of our receipt.
If anyone involved in reviewing a complaint has a conflict of interest, they will openly declare it to the Panel Chair and remove themselves from the process.
You will be informed of the Complaint Review Panel’s decision to investigate your complaint, within 30 days.
If your complaint does not fit with the criteria outlined above, it may be rejected by the Complaints Review Panel. You will be told in writing about why this complaint cannot be reviewed, within 30 days.
If your complaint is going to be investigated, the Complaints Review Panel may need to gather further information, and/or they may decide to take further actions.
UAL is not responsible for any expenses incurred by you, during the Complaints process.
When the Complaint Review Panel have looked at your complaint, you will be contacted in writing to let you know. We may not be able to share with you all the further actions to be taken, as these may be confidential. But you will be told that your complaint has been taken seriously, and that actions are being taken.

Appealing a decision

Appeals may be submitted by anyone who is named in your complaint (or who witnessed the incident).
Should you wish to appeal a decision of our Complaints Review Panel, it must be received in writing. You must submit full details of why you are appealing the decision, within 30 days of notification of the original decision.
Appeals will only be considered when new evidence or information, of a significant nature, becomes available. It must be information which potentially could have changed the original decision made by the Complaints Review Panel.
Appeals may also be considered where the sanction is deemed unfairly harsh, in relation to the event.
In the case of a valid appeal, a Complaints Appeal Committee²will be set up, and the Chair will arrange a hearing date within 30 working days of the appeal.
Both the complainant and any other people involved in the appeal may bring in:
supporting evidence (i.e. correspondence, witness statements etc.) from any other relevant person to be considered as part of the complaint
a witness / advocate to be present. All paperwork and the name of witnesses / advocate must be submitted a minimum of 7 days before the hearing date.
UAL is not responsible for any expenses incurred by either party, or any supporting parties, during the appeals process.
The Chair of the Complaints Appeal Committee will decide whether any legal or HR advice need to be sought from the relevant UAL departments.
If any of the invited individuals fail to attend the hearing, the Chair has the right to proceed with the appeal hearing in their absence, terminate the hearing, or reschedule the meeting within 30 days from the original hearing.
Following the hearing, the Complaints Appeal Committee will decide within 21 days.
All parties will be informed of the Appeal decision, within 21 days of it being reached. This could be that the appeal is upheld, turned down, or there is insufficient evidence.
We may not be able to inform you about all the further actions to be taken, as these may be confidential. But you will be told whether your Appeal has been upheld, and whether further actions are being taken.

Notes

A Complaints Review Panel will be convened for each complaint, consisting of at least 2 UAL staff members and a Chair. The membership will be decided by the Head of Careers and Employability.
A Complaints Appeal Committee will be convened for each Appeal Hearing, consisting of at least 2 members of UAL staff and a Chair. An independent member may also be recruited to the Appeal Committee. The membership will be decided by the Head of Careers and Employability.

Professional misconduct by a mentor

Misconduct applies where a Professional Mentor is deemed to have failed to adhere to the Code of Ethics for Professional Mentors.

Serious Professional Misconduct applies where a Professional Mentor has behaved in such a way that it is deemed that suspension and/or termination of their membership of UAL’s Professional Mentoring programme must be applied.

In such a case, the Mentor will be asked to remove from all their professional profiles, any links or references to UAL’s Professional Mentoring programme. Further legal action may be taken if the Mentor does not comply.