Experienced Police Leaving the Force in Numbers

Bleeding Blue – Article on LinkedIn

Source: Daily Telegraph – 7/10/22 – “Experienced NSW Police Leaving the Force in Record Numbers.”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bleeding-blue-richard-mcdonald-solicitor-ba-psych-llb/?trackingId=yRF6b3AMTW%2Bo%2FpM9Q0qs8g%3D%3D

I read in the Daily Telegraph recently that the NSW Police Force is having issues (again) with attrition where police are leaving in droves.

The question is, not only why they are leaving, but why they can’t replace them?

First, you can’t just replace experience with a new recruit. That is obvious. It takes years to train a police officer and generate a return on investment. When I was a police officer, the commonly held belief was 7 years.

Second, in late 2021/2022 the NSW Government and New South Wales Police Force under the then Commissioner Michael Fuller introduced the Optional Disengagement Scheme (ODS) which provided serving police officers with at least 10 years of service the option of resigning with a generous ‘handshake’.

The rationale was to give those eligible police officers the dignity of separating from the ‘job’ instead of going down the medical discharge route or other forms of disengagement.

I was one of the 280 or so officers who opted for the ODS in 2022.

In my case, I left to realise my goal of starting my own law firm.

The ‘global labour shortage’ is a phrase that has been repeatedly expressed to explain the challenge of why the Police Force can’t address the attrition issue in the ranks.

I have an alternate view regarding the issue.

Attrition has been a critical issue for the Police Force for decades despite the claim by Government and the Police Force that there is no attraction or retention problem.

Well, I guess the question begs, that if everything is fine and there has been no chronic shortage, why then does every government, since the time I attested in 1999 make the same claim at the end of each election cycle while currently claiming to deliver the ‘biggest increase in police numbers across the State in more than 30 years…”

In my opinion, there will be no such bigger increase in the delivery of police numbers.

Why? Because of leadership culture.

In my 23 years in the job, it has not made any difference on what side of politics the claims are made.

The numbers that are currently being fervently recruited are merely to maintain the status quo resultant of a culture of endemic attrition.

Why is there an attrition problem?

The Police Force is innately militaristic, hierarchal, and governed by a concurrence-seeking and GroupThink culture (Janis, 1991) (Patton, 2016).

While a “Command and Control” rank-based hierarchal leadership system is critical when there is an immediate crisis, such as a Lindt Café siege or other critical incidents, it has little relevance in a modern corporate policing environment. Nevertheless, the Organisation proudly espouses and claims these corporate virtues despite being fundamentally committed to a directive style of leadership.

The reality of a hierarchal directive-styled culture is the debilitation of the workforce causing disengagement and reduced performance. The disenfranchisement is manifested in escalated employee turnover and attrition, an increase in psychological injury, and medical discharge costs.

It is therefore no surprise that the above indicators have doubled in three years to $381m and Workers’ Compensation Claims have risen 50 percent in the 5 years since 2014.

It is also not coincidental that since the Royal Commission in 1995 the Police Force has experienced a steady and consistent turnover and a creeping increase in attrition due to its approach to managing culture and practicing leadership (Dixon, 2001).

The long-standing band-aid remedy has been to fill the bucket from the top with fresh recruits to compensate for the gushing of skill and experience from the bottom, knowing there were plenty in reserve wanting to join.

It is the proverbial Titanic that engages in a delicate balancing act that just manages, every election cycle, to prevent itself from capsizing by pumping probationary constables through the Academy.

The expectation that aspiring police students will simply continue to funnel in endlessly is poor succession planning which is now evidenced by “only 221 recruits in the training process and 55 in the eligibility pool – where there used to be 2000…Even if the government makes good on its election promise of 1500 new recruits, that would still leave a yawning gap of 403 short.”

The Police Force is now being compelled to face an increasingly competitive labour market post-COVID, a shift in attitudes toward work/life balance, and inevitable generational and attitudinal change toward work.

Increasingly our society speculates about the issue of ‘lifestyle’ as a balancing function of work. As a Gen-X’er (is that even a word?) we were a little more relaxed than the Baby Boomers about employment, but we saw 17% mortgage rates and what our parents had to go through to keep a roof over our heads. So, our generation, experiencing the struggle to pay a mortgage for many years made us appreciate the value of long-term stable employment.

The current generation has never experienced a deep recession. That is not to say our generation was better, more resilient, or sensible. We were just different and they have grown up with a separate set of values and expectations. The Police Force cannot expect the same loyalty from the current generation or to put up with the inflexibility or fickleness of the Organisation’s demand to fall into line or leave.

Generation Y and the Millenials are more ‘risk’ prepared to seek life elsewhere given they are unlikely to commit to long-term debt, increasingly unattainable property aspiration, and the costs of living.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast – Peter Drucker

It is well-settled that the culture of an organisation is critical to future-proofing and succession planning.

The ultimate goal is to motivate to drive performance, satisfaction, fulfillment, and in turn, retain employees to uptake the core values of the organisation. Leaders are the soldiers of workplace culture that impart those values. People do not just quit companies or leaders, they quit organisational cultures. (Engel, 2018).

The attrition culture of the New South Wales Police Force needs reforming, but it can be difficult to create long-term cultural change when the leaders who are tasked to effect that reform, are institutionally invested in the current structure despite knowing the toxic side effects those structures have on motivation and trust.

How can an embedded toxic work culture be disrupted?

The Organisation must recruit leaders who thrive in a culture where they can make empowering decisions that engage in a democratic and consultative leadership style rather than one that seeks to punish dissent because of challenges to leadership decisions. (Dixon, 2001).

The culture must evolve from the grassroots and be allowed to permeate up through the Organisation, not down. This ‘evolution’ may take another generation as the incumbent leadership culture atrophies and leaves through retirement and natural attrition.

In my opinion, the biggest challenge for the Police Force is the coveting of power and position. These Machiavellian traits are ingrained into the social identity of the Organisation. It is a structure that fundamentally promotes empire-building by centralising power in the hands of the few in the upper echelons. As such, there is no incentive for leaders to engage in any meaningful reform at the grassroots level.

So, while the blame game seeks to distract through external factors, the leadership continues to be incentivised to fail to address and reflect upon their own historical leadership dysfunction that has perpetuated and persisted for decades.