Response to Action 001 – Organisational Learning

The Professional Standards Department is committed to promoting a culture of organisational learning to prevent
reoccurrence of concerns that can have a negative impact on public confidence and trust.

Learning opportunities are identified through a variety of sources:

PIRC Investigations following incidents of Death or Serious injury following Police Contact or whilst in Police Custody, or criminality involving officers or members of police staff.
Reports shared by COPFS
PIRC Complaint Handling Reviews (CHR)
During the complaint handling process.
During Misconduct process.

Whilst the vast majority of incidents relate to individual learning, there are opportunities to share wider
learning relating to policy, practice or process across relevant parts of the organisation. Page 9 of the main
report now provides more information relating to this aspect, and pages 10/11 now provide comprehensive
information relating to organisational efforts to promote the Standards of Professional Behaviour and promote a
culture or learning, prevention and continuous improvement.

Capturing Organisational Learning

During the 2022/23 year PSD have introduced the 4Action software platform as a means of improving the tracking,
recording and action management of independent investigations by the PIRC, to ensure learning and improvement is
identified, allocated to appropriate owners to address and is then reviewed to test success.

4Action has improved governance in this area and ensures learning is co-ordinated as effectively and efficiently
as possible. However this new method of capturing and tracking learning will take a longer period of time to fully
understand and measure impact, and also establish if this platform alone is sufficient in managing the wide range
of learning identified during Complaint Handling and Conduct processes.

In addition to the above methods, more formalised meeting structures with key partners have been implemented which
aim to improve communication, governance and oversight of external investigations to identify challenges, resolve
issues and enrich learning through positive engagement and feedback. Similar to this structure, following any
notable incident Police Scotland takes a proactive approach, reviewing our response and progressing any instances
of individual or organisational learning.

Examples of wider learning identified

An emerging theme was identified in the application of the Non-investigation provision following Non-Criminal
Complaints about the police report. To address this concern and improve awareness and understanding of this
process, PSD will collaborate with PIRC to co-ordinate complaint handling training address these concerns.

In an effort to change the culture from one of negative learning which highlights instances where Police Scotland
have under-performed, to one of positive learning identifying good practice. It is hoped that by reinforcing
positive learning, this alongside other methods will improve complaint handling standards and practice.

Organisational Learning through prevention and awareness

Through identifying repeated instances of behaviours/actions which fall below Police Scotland’s Standards of
Professional Behaviour, PSD have led on developing the Standards campaigns. This is a yearlong campaign with a
focus on raising awareness of individual responsibility to act in line with each of the 10 standards. Content has
been developed using organisational learning identified from complaint and conduct data. In addition, PSD have
also developed a quarterly newsletter, which again raises emerging themes captured during complaint/conduct
enquiries. Recent example of this includes prevention and learning addressing repeated cases of Inappropriate
Behaviour/Messages shared on social media applications.