Purely hypothetical thinking, if you were receiving a daily service in your private home which is being paid for. The service decides to change the time recording system from a paper based to a “telephone-clock” system. Some of the reasons for the change are to cut down on fraud, improving payroll processing, Health & Safety legal mitigation and to empower the customers more.

Here are some hypothetical questions to ponder:
• Should the staff of the service be accessing your telephone to log their working time at your place, even if the calls are to a free call number?

• Before implementing such a system should the service formally request permission for their staff to use your telephone to clock in and out? What policies and procedures, if any, would need to be in place before hand?

•To ensure staff are clocking in and out at your place the system requires the staff to use your phone. What happens if you don’t have a landline phone, should the staff be using your personal mobile phone?

• How would you feel? You asked the service, what would happen if you are on the phone when the staff needs it to clock in or out and the response was, in cases like this they can use the paper system, but if it happens too frequently questions will be asked. Would you feel empowered?

• Say you receive a letter from the service informing you have been selected to be part of the trial of the new system. On contacting the service asking if you have a choice in participating in the trial you were basically told you didn’t have one. You had to participate. How would you feel?

• Would you be responsible for ensuring the staff clocks in and out?

• Best practice would say during times of changes, keep your staff and customers fully informed and provide both parties plenty of opportunities to give feedback. However, if this isn’t happening how would you feel as a customer or as one of the staff working for the service?

• If the service was run by a group of annually elected customers of the service and the customers are people with disabilities, would this mean the service can operate without actively seeking customer feedback as is required by other similar Government funded services?

Your hypothetical thoughts?