How police services can put trust at the centre of their wellness journey

Wellness within police organizations is a topic that affects every police service and member across Canada. In March 2022, we held a roundtable discussion with senior members of a major Canadian police service to discuss their experiences and lessons learned in the wake of the deaths by suicide of multiple members of the service over the past decade. In attendance were an intimate group of police and provincial leaders who came together from across the country to listen and share ideas. This collaboration yielded several important themes, including discussions on the important role of leadership in making real and lasting change, that we’ll continue to explore in depth throughout the year.

Bridging the disconnect between leadership and membership perceptions

Throughout the service’s wellness journey, it became clear that the perceptions of leaders and the membership were occasionally misaligned. While the leadership felt their programs were strong, there was a degree of mistrust in the organizational supports/programs as well as a disconnect in the relevance of the programming and training provided to frontline members.

This mistrust stemmed from multiple factors, including the perception that leadership unilaterally and selecting peer support or program facilitators. This led some members to believe these facilitators were either acting as an arm of the organization or not truly acting in the officers’ best interests. Although this impression may have been inaccurate, the perceived connection led to this sentiment and carried the primary weight.

Another source of mistrust came from the general sentiment that the leadership-appointed individuals carrying out the programs could be better equipped and skilled in deploying the support required. Officers took this to mean there was insufficient resourcing and prioritization of these initiatives at the leadership level; in essence, "lip service" or "checking a box" —further eroding trust in the organization and these programs.

These misaligned perceptions were recognized by the police service and led to significant investments in clinicians and mental health professionals to guide its wellness programs. This helped to establish credibility and validate the support in the eyes of the membership. The police service’s timely response to these findings and tangible actions were key to beginning the process of rebuilding trust and credibility in the organization and getting officers the proper support they required.

These themes emerged against the backdrop of a general and longstanding sense of mistrust between leadership and members that existed even before the tragedy of several members taking their lives within a relatively short period of time. Members felt the organization’s leaders lacked empathy and were insufficiently engaged. These impressions, particularly in the aftermath of major incidents, became a key part of this disconnect between what management was trying to do and how officers perceived those efforts. This general mistrust spoke to the bigger issues of wellness within the organization.

A path toward wellness begins with trust

These themes highlight how the path toward wellness—both on an individual and organizational level—begins with trust. Members must trust that their supervisors, leadership and peers are genuinely working with their physical and psychological wellness in mind. Without that base, even the best programs and services may fail due to a lack of engagement, uptake and immersion from the membership. The perception that wellness initiatives are rolled out without duly considering the role of trust may be an important introspection point for organizations as a whole.

Consider the widespread introduction of employee assistance plans, wellness coordinators and workplace health and safety guidelines by police services across the country. Despite these efforts, both individual officers and entire organizations continue to face health and wellness struggles. What may be missing from the conversation, as highlighted above, is the connection between the leadership, the department and the organizational operating environment. It goes beyond mistrust among members of the motivation and ability of leaders to have officers’ wellness at the forefront. There’s also a lack of acknowledgement that the workplace environment created by many police services is a major source of stress. Departmental policies, a lack of resources, conflict with peers and a perception of management as unsupportive or ineffective may increase officers’ stress levels. In many cases, intervention is actually needed in the workplace—not necessarily only at the individual member level.

Several research studies have found that the organizational climate and workload of a police service are major contributors to officer stress^1,2. This has led some observers to contend that the police organization is actually a greater source of stress than police operations³. This acknowledgement further supports the argument that wellness programs and services are likely to have a limited reach when deployed without significant consideration of members’ experiences and perceptions.

This raises another critical part of the conversation: the wellness of senior leadership. It’s important to also consider the mental health of those contending with mistrust, misalignment of services and the trauma of a membership in crisis. Those who are themselves unwell are unable to effectively support others or reduce sources of stress stemming from within the organization. Wellness must permeate all levels of the organization and be woven into a police service’s DNA.

Making wellness part of everything you do

The police services that joined us for this roundtable recognized that wellness must be more than an offering of support or introduction of a critical incident program. It needs to be a part of everything you do as an organization: actions, words, mentorship, policies, and financially. Other police services are also coming to this realization, especially as the impact of long-term sickness and PTSD significantly impacts shift patterns, overtime and the costs of running a service. Part of the process of embedding wellness into the fabric of an organization are the words chosen by the leadership and the subtle messages given to the membership on a day-to-day basis. The culture of wellness must colour the wording in forms and policies, and language used in both everyday interactions and corporate communications. Police services can see powerful results when they embed wellness into the lens through which they view their mandate and live those values. It’s not enough to provide programs that go unused and support networks that fail to create meaningful connections, or for leaders to espouse wellness without demonstrating it in their own choices. Nor is it sufficient to simply respond to incidents. To make a lasting change, wellness needs to be purposely and proactively embedded in everything you do as an organization, from top to bottom.

As one of our participants put it, at the end of the day, wellness initiatives are not the equivalent of a “cleanup crew.” Wellness should be purposeful, proactive and supportive, not just a response to incidents.

_{1 P.A. Collins and A.C.C. Gibbs, “Stress in police officers: a study of the origins, prevalence and severity of stress-related symptoms within a county police force,” Occupational Medicine 53, No. 4 (2003): 256-64.}

_{2 K.D. Hassell and S.G. Brandl, “An examination of the workplace experiences of police patrol officers: the role of race, sex, and sexual orientation,” Police Quarterly 12, No. 4 (2009): 408-30.}

_{3 J.M. Shane, “Organizational stressors and police performance,” Journal of Criminal Justice 38, No. 4 (2010): 807-18.}