Two simplified letters, 16% fewer calls

In English

Jan. 16

Written by Stéphanie Roy, an attorney specializing in simplification

This project is very important to me! First, because the team at the Police Ethics Commissioner’s Office is dedicated and dynamic, but also because this organization shows real vision. Together, we’ve reduced the number of phone calls by 16 percent. And this is just the beginning!

Problems Caused by the Complexity of the Commissioner's Documents

The Commissioner's office receives an average of 1,800 complaints per year against police officers and other law enforcement officers.

When the Commissioner, Marc-André Dowd, Esq., contacted the team atEn Clair, he explained to us that the people filing complaints were often vulnerable and sometimes faced literacy and mental health challenges.

However, the Commissioner’s letters, documents, and website were dense with information and lacked empathy, sometimes causing frustration and confusion among complainants. The formal, procedural tone of these materials also reinforced a sense of complexity. The Commissioner therefore decided to rethink his agency’s communications.

“I wanted our first written communication with the complainant to convey the impression of a more accessible and humane appeals process.”

— Marc-André Dowd, Esq., Police Ethics Commissioner

Simplify: A Solution That Was Long Overdue

Appointed as Commissioner in 2017, Marc-André Dowd, Esq., sought to turn these transparency issues into an opportunity to rethink the organization’s operating practices. He shared his two goals with us:

Simplify, restructure, and make the letters and communications sent to complainants more personable in order to better fulfill the Commissioner’s social mission and to improve the efficiency and productivity of a small team with limited resources.
Transform the organization’s organizational culture—which tends to be rather bureaucratic—to make it more flexible and responsive to the various target audiences it serves.

Obviously, the support of the Commissioner’s entire team was essential to implementing such a change.

“As I shared my vision with my team members, I quickly realized that they shared my goals. All we needed was a little help from the experts atEn Clair to make them a reality!”

— Marc-André Dowd, Esq., Police Ethics Commissioner

As its first project, the Commissioner’s team set out to simplify two letters and two informational documents sent to complainants as acknowledgments of receipt of their complaints.

Here is an example of the work we've done:

Before

After

Three factors guided our efforts to simplify the process.

1. We emphasized the primary communicative goal: “to prompt action ,” since the complainant must submit the missing information needed to process the complaint. Rather than revealing this information in the third paragraph, the subject line of the letter and the first subheading state that information must be submitted by a certain date.
In this way, the Commissioner ensures that the letter catches the attention of a busy citizen who will only skim the contents of the letter.
The options for submitting the missing information—online or on paper—are also highlighted, further encouraging action.

2. We added an important note right at the beginning: “Without this missing information, the complaint could be rejected.” The Commissioner aims to preempt the frustration that would result from a failed process.

3. We highlighted the secondary communicative objective: to inform the complainant of the possible decisions regarding their complaint. This information was originally part of a multi-page informational document attached to the letter. However, since the complaint has not yet been reviewed at the acknowledgment-of-receipt stage and could be rejected, we opted to include a summary of the three possible decisions within the letter itself. In this way, the Commissioner avoids overwhelming the citizen with information and receiving unnecessary questions about the information document itself.

Once the first two letters had been streamlined and presented to the Commissioner’s team, the work continued internally, supported by a few hours of coaching En Clair.

Successful Results

By revising just two letters and two informational documents, the number of phone calls and consultation requests from complainants dropped by 16.2 percent—even as the number of complaints increased!

“This figure is far from being just a statistic in our annual management report! It means that our workforce is more focused on making progress in handling the complaints we receive, rather than spending a lot of time explaining to complainants what our written communications mean.”

— Marc-André Dowd, Esq., Police Ethics Commissioner

The simplification effort has only just begun! But this first small simplification project allowed the Commissioner to quickly see the benefits of investing in a simplification effort and to motivate internal teams to continue their transformation efforts. This approach—which could be described as agile—is ideal for fostering organizational culture change.

The 5-Step Simplification Process

1. Provide basic training to internal teams

This customized training offered by En Clair first enabled the Commissioner’s team to develop a common language and an understanding of the principles of clear communication and design thinking. By the end of the training, the team felt better equipped to make collective editorial decisions based on established principles rather than personal preferences.

This training also helped them develop a critical eye for their own content—a crucial step in ensuring that team members embrace a new conceptual approach to content.

2. Map out the content

This step first allows us to take stock of the content and determine which content should be simplified as a priority. But above all, it helps us understand the different stages of the complainant’s user experience: from the complainant’s perspective, what information is needed and at what stage?

Internal teams must be an integral part of this process, since they are experts in their organization and understand the needs and frustrations expressed by their target audiences.

3. Identify the needs and frustrations of the target audience

The target audience is defined not only by its literacy level, but also by its level of knowledge of the subject matter and by its frame of mind when reading the document.

En Clair 's research has shown that the Commissioner's target audience can:

to be somewhat uneducated at times
to be emotional in response to the situation he experienced (angry, stressed, afraid)
to sometimes experience mental health challenges
not to trust the police ethics system and to doubt its impartiality

While the language needed to be simplified to avoid legal jargon, the tone and messaging also had to be rethought to take into account the emotional experience of the complainants. After all, humans are emotional beings first and rational beings second…

4. Rewrite 2 letters from the Commissioner

The goal at this stage was to produce simplified template documents for the Commissioner’s team.

So we rewrote a first draft of the first two letters sent to the complainants as acknowledgments of receipt (you’ve already seen an example of one of these simplified letters above), and then we finalized them during a content workshop with the Commissioner’s team.

We’ve taken into account the fact that today’s readers want to be able to skim a document and grasp the main points. Since our attention spans are short, few of us take the time to read an entire page line by line, especially if the key message is unclear or buried in the third paragraph.

5. Provide coaching to the internal team

This is the step that enables internal teams to become more self-reliant and to develop their skills in communication and information design.

“We still have a lot of major projects to tackle, such as revising the content on our website. But thanks to the support of the experts atEn Clair, my entire team is fully engaged, confident, and ready to wage war on unnecessary complexity!”

— Marc-André Dowd, Esq., Police Ethics Commissioner

Visual prototype

The Commissioner allowed us to develop a visual version of the letter (which the Commissioner does not use) to explore its impact on the letter’s tone. Does the visual element make the letter more human? Does it influence the Commissioner’s image?