The Police is a tough job, so why isn't employee engagement more researched and invested in?

By Alex Manchester, Editor, The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

There's quite a thought provoking news article on the Hub this week regarding engagement levels in the New Zealand Police.

Following an extensive, three-year Commission of Enquiry, there have been numerous recommendations for improvement including "improved internal communication" "improved, structured training" and the carrying out of an extensive engagement survey, for which they employed the help of Gallup at a cost of NZ$187,500.

From 5,000 respondents the results ranged from mixed to pretty bad, with half as many engaged employees and twice as many actively disengaged employees as the general working population of New Zealand. This put the NZP in the bottom quartile for Gallup clients surveyed worldwide.

Areas that Police officers were positive about included camaraderie, respect for colleagues, variety of the job, and the satisfaction of catching criminals.

Negatives included terrible leadership, workload, not receiving recognition for good work, lack of resources, poor future outlook of the organization itself and public perception of the job.

For this story I also managed to speak with a former officer who left the NZP several years ago having experienced much of the above.

"They've got a real culture problem and there's very little desire to think freely or try new solutions. There's also a real problem with the way senior officers are rewarded for cutting costs. If they can save money by using 4 people to do the job of 8 they're given huge bonuses, while individual hard work isn't rewarded at all. It doesn't take long for people to get fed up with working like that."

The former officer said the engagement survey was a good step, but should have been done before. "I left several years ago and since then most of the people I worked with have left too. Those that remain say it's a case of same old, same old."

I have had several experiences of friends and family being in the police force (or "service" as it's now been politically corrected to in the UK) and none of them have reported an easy life. There's also been more than one instance of a broken marriage from quite a small sample size. It's long, hard, unsociable hours, traumatic in many respects, and you socialise and share experiences with your colleagues more than anyone - at-home partners included. And then there's endless, endless paperwork which is terminally frustrating.

In organizations and jobs such as this the overall job satisfaction pros have to outweigh the day-to-day cons by some margin. You can imagine all the positives mentioned being pretty strong elements of an officer's psyche. Yet, being rewarded and having faith in your leadership to direct you (and the organization) must be more important here than anywhere else bar the armed forces.

You know what, though? This Gallup survey is reportedly the first ever specific, organization-wide employee engagement survey done by any police service in the world.

That's amazing, and not in a good way.

Comments

[Alex Manchester]

Additionally to publishing this post today and the story yesterday, there's some interesting and balanced local discussion on it over at the NZ Herald blog.

[Matt O'Neill]

This is a very interesting post.

My father was a police officer for 28 years. He retired about 10 years ago.

Although I didn't notice it, my mum said he became alot more relaxed in himself on retirement. Maybe that's a natural step, but I wonder if the job is just stressful?

M

[Alex Manchester]

Thanks for the personal insight, Matt.

I'd say there are many elements that could make it a far more stressful job than most so I'm intrested to hear your further thoughts on this.

Not only are you dealing with the public, it's often in highly tense, emotional situations, you're putting yourself in the line of fire physically (even in countries where the police don't have guns as standard the physical abuse can be substantial), the sights you see, the bad news you have to deliver, the real life effects that events have on people...

As per the NZ Herald blog comments, the flip side is the abuse of power and police megalomania (traffic police seem to be suffer from this the most!), and the comment that there are other professions that suffer similar stress (ambulance drivers, nurses, doctors etc.). But from an observer's perspective, none quite match the perfect storm that police officers seem to have to deal with.

I've long been intrigued about the notion that public organizations are less "business-like" than private organizations. Here in Australia it's not quite as black and white. Communications in public agencies and departments seem to be comparably dynamic to businesses. But in this respect, it does seem amazing that this more business-like approach would be invaluable in public organizations such as the Police.

[Matt O'Neill]

Actually, there's very little I could add Alex.

My dad never talked about his work and rarely answered my questions about it. I think he compartmentalised the two and that was it.

Funnily enough, I used to learn most about him as a police man from people he dealt with in the job. One example that always makes me chuckle. On quiet nights, he'd drive to the local zoo, drink coffee with the guards, and watch the lions. LOL.

M

[Alex Manchester]

That's one way to relax I guess!