Do You Know What Your Officers Need?

Do you know what your employees need? What changes do you think you will have to make in your workplace to meet the needs of the next generation of police officers?

What Prospective Employees Want

• To work with people who treat me with respect.
• Interesting work.
• Recognition for good work.
• A chance to develop my skills.
• To work for people who listen if you have ideas on how to do your job better.
• A chance to think for myself.
• To work for efficient bosses.
• A job that is not too easy.
• Seeing the end results of my work.
• Feel well-informed about what is going on.
• How would your organization rate on each of the above ten categories?
• Which of these needs do you think are the most important?
• What could your police department do to make changes to current practices that would more effectively meet your officer’s needs?

We have just discussed some general values that employees hold. But, of course, it is essential to the success of any organization that the values of the workers fit with and support the overall values of the organization and the society in which they work.

• What do you think happens when individual and organizational (professional) values don’t fit?

If People and the Values They Hold Are Your Most Important Resource, Then . . .

• The best and the brightest police candidates will gravitate toward departments that foster personal growth.
  • How is your department providing this?
  • Where is this NOT happening?
• The leader’s new role — coach, teacher, mentor.
  • Is this true for you or not?
  • Give some examples.
• The best officers want ownership — psychic and literal — in a department; the best police agencies are providing it.
  • How is your department providing this?
  • Where is this NOT happening?
• We are moving from authoritarian management to a networking, people-oriented style of leadership
  • Is this happening in your organization?
  • Provide some examples.
• Excellent service and meeting customer needs will be paramount in a modern police department
  • How is service quality determined in your organization?
  • How do you measure it?
  • Is there a gap between how your “customers” define good service and how you define it.

For more: The Quality Leadership Workbook, Couper and Lobitz, 2017.

This post was originally published on January 7, 2018 at Improving Police.