The challenge of “change culture” to drive efficiency in policing

The current political and policing landscape dictates that budgetary cuts are necessary. With it comes a number of efficiency measures to ensure quality, consistency and in a number of cases brings about opportunities for collaboration, alliance and partnership working. This is becoming more common place to pool resources, share thinking and knowledge to deliver joint change and transformation.

This would seem a logical approach to reduce costs yet provide the same level of service to protect our communities. There are some key components that are under valued in my opinion specifically around “change culture” and understanding the people impacts. The police have much tradition and some set ways of getting things done. To work within policing and understand the unique environment is important, to appreciate the policing cultural challenges and intricacies of each force is vital. There are 43 UK police forces and with it bringing 43 different ways of working, ingrained methods with its own custom and practice.

This then presents its own difficulties when aligning services and knitting together 2 or more policing cultures to deliver the required change and transformation. It is relatively straight forward to look across functions and group by commonality to deliver efficiency. The cultural differences between forces may be less well considered and when aligning some critical functions it should be a pre requisite to understand the people elements and impacts of such change. In my view, it is vital to impact assess each element in turn, as what may seem a minor change for one force could have major impact on another.

Let’s not forget the people impact on your teams that any such change would bring. There is an opportunity to involve everybody on the journey from end to end, articulate the drivers for change, explain what will be different and gain momentum. It can have the opposing effect, as you run the risk of making people feel disposable, de valued and de motivated towards change.

This would make any change management more difficult and may provide an up hill battle for any future transformational activity, as you have lost the trust and confidence. Something the police service as a whole works so hard to maintain across all communities it serves.

People Change Projects.