Legal Ombudsman Reviews

Awful place to work, mainly due to the operation management team. This place has no regards for their employees and piles pressure upon pressure until they break you. Ops management team. Organisation pandering to the board without understanding their own work force. Using flexible working arrangements to blackmail employees if targets aren’t met. No regard for reasonable adjustments employees may have. Half the workforce end up on stress related sick leave- the organisation do nothing about this Probation period is atrocious- targets are not outlined, goal posts change day by day without any discussions. Management make changes every week without concern for their people management They are completely target driven and take nothing into account when you can not meet them I.e annual leave, sickness or matters outside of your control. They sell you a dream and lull you into a false sense of security once you apply. Staff retention is very low in this place and employees are constantly leaving due to the issues here and the organisation not caring about its employees, however the employees are replaceable here and there is constant turn over of staff.

This is an organisation in trouble. I have worked at the Legal Ombudsman for many years and have watched as it has been slowly but effectively run into the ground through mis-management, reactionary decision-making, self-delusion and ill-treatment of the staff that do the heavy-lifting and day-to-day work (investigators and Ombudsmen). The Organisation has set itself up to fail by attempting to adhere to targets which senior management at this stage must know cannot be met without incurring serious detriment to staff wellbeing and mental health. Levels of depression and anxiety amongst staff (those brave and comfortable enough to talk about it) are unlike anything I have ever seen before in a similar organisation. The Organisation has in the past paid lip-service to such concerns and "Mental Health Champions" are available (members of staff with the generosity of spirit and empathy to volunteer for such a role), but this does nothing to address what the core of the problem is: the relentless pursuit of unachievable targets, to the detriment of everything else. The over-arching philosophy of the management team appears to be that they would rather burn-out 'performing' investigators and Ombudsmen then replace them with new starters, as opposed to addressing the actual problems causing the exodus of experienced staff and new staff leaving once the reality of the situation hits them. Those members of staff which do manage to meet targets are without exception working well over and above the allocated hours, late nights and weekends. It is not unusual to find employees "logged on" at 10 or 11 at night. This is just to meet the targets set and essentially keep themselves afloat, as the pace of work is utterly relentless. These additional hours are usually not recorded by those staff members themselves either and if they are being recorded, it should have been ringing alarm bells with the HR department and leadership teams. It does not. In short, the targets sought by the management are not reflective or considerate of the *actual* work that is being undertaken by staff in an attempt to meet them. Staff are told that if they are having to resort to such long hours to meet the targets, "they are not working effectively." Should you not meet targets, your home working is restricted. It is said that this is to give "additional support" - however in reality it is a punative measure, designed to 'encourage' meeting those unrealistic targets. Management fail to see that this drives and encourages unhealthy behaviours in staff. The reality is that the majority of staff are not meeting target. Those that continually do not meet target are effectively "managed out of the business" through "capability plans" and made to feel that the problem is with them as an employee. In addition to this, staff are expected to deal with micro-management from Team Leaders (and blessed are you should you be allocated a Team Leader that is understanding and professional), sudden changes in process which are ill-communicated, administrative reporting to Team Leaders (despite a "for-purpose" new case management system, the case management system has been to date unable to pull the data required for accurate reporting so it has fallen on investigators and Ombudsmen to complete onerous data spreadsheets), duplication of work in some respects and inconsistencies in approaches from Ombudsmen. Investigators are expected to adhere to very set methods of investigation and are overseen and supervised by Level 1 Ombudsmen, who will check and "approve" an investigators' approach or findings. One some sense this collaboration can provide an investigator with piece of mind that they are on the right track, but whether you are paired with a sensible and approachable Level 1 Ombudsman is the "luck of the draw" unfortunately and inter-personal conflicts are common as a result. Such instances are poorly managed as the drive and impetus of the management team is to simply "get those case closures." All of the above just relates to the daily administrative grind and the toxic atmosphere. If you are applying for the role of either an investigator or an Ombudsman, you will also need to be aware that the core work itself (investigating customer service complaints and dealing with upset parties for sometimes months at a time) whilst interesting and varied, can be at times quite stressful and negative. Be prepared to deal with angry, upset, mentally unwell, crying and abusive members of the public and the legal profession. Be prepared to be expected to sift through oftentimes massive amounts of paper work and documentation, much of which is irrelevant. The pace of this work is relentless owing to the massive backlog of work - once you close a case you are immediately expected to take another one (or however many) to backfill the work and progress the cases in line with management-created progression milestones. Constantly. There is no breathing room or time to re-group yourself. This has created a conveyor-belt atmosphere: investigators close cases, immediately take replacements on and are fully expected to hit unrealistic targets in progressing those cases. Needless to say, the quality and incisiveness of investigations can suffer across the board as investigators chase case closures and the Organisation suffers reputational damage as a result. There used to be a decent sense of comradery, community and friendship in this organisation. It used to feel like you were valued as an employee. In select cliques amongst management, this is still true. Staff functions and nights out were enjoyed. However, for a number of years now the staff morale has been so rock-bottom and good-will in such short supply that such functions are few and far between and efforts by the well-intentioned to revive that are exercises in papering over the cracks. It now feels as though staff are simply cogs in the machine, replaceable when they break and disposable when they don't fit the relentless grind of the pursuit of elusive targets.