Reducing stress: an organization-centered approach.

People in all walks of life experience, and must find ways to cope with, some degree of stress. However, in the past 25 years, researchers and criminal justice officials have identified stress factors unique to, or more pronounced among, law enforcement officers. Today, law enforcement is widely considered to be among the most stressful occupations, associated with high rates of divorce, alcoholism, suicide, and other emotional and health problems.(1)

Despite the growing understanding of stress factors within the law enforcement profession and enhanced treatment for stress-related problems, many officers feel that law enforcement is more stressful now than ever before. This sentiment can be traced to several factors, including the rise in violent crime during the 1980s and early 1990s; perceived increases in negative publicity, public scrutiny, and lawsuits; fiscal uncertainty; fear of airborne and bloodborne diseases, such as AIDS and tuberculosis; rising racial tensions; and the transition from reactive to problem-oriented policing.

Sources of stress for individual law enforcement officers can be placed into five general categories: issues in the officer's personal life, the pressures of law enforcement work, the attitude of the general public toward police work and officers, the operation of the criminal justice system, and the law enforcement organization itself. Many people perceive the danger and tension of law enforcement work--as dramatized in books, movies, and television shows--to be the most serious sources of stress for officers. In fact, the most common sources of police officer stress involve the policies and procedures of law enforcement agencies themselves.(2)

This article examines the often-neglected effects that organizational stress has on agencies and officers. It then discusses why managers should change stress-inducing policies. Finally, it presents steps that several agencies have taken to reduce organizational stress and thus enhance the productivity and job satisfaction of officers.

TREATING THE SYMPTOM, NOT THE CAUSE

As part of a large-scale study conducted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of programs devoted to reducing police officer stress, researchers interviewed nearly 100 stress-management program directors, law enforcement administrators, mental health providers, union and association officials, officers and their families, and civilians.(3) The respondents agreed that the negative effects of stress on individual officers typically harm agencies as well as officers. As observed by the respondents, the cumulative effects of stress among officers in a department can lead to:

* Impaired officer performance and reduced productivity

* Reduced morale

* Public relations problems

* Labor-management friction

* Civil suits stemming from stress-related shortcomings in personnel performance

* Tardiness and absenteeism 

* Increased turnover due to leaves of absence and early retirements because of stress-related problems and disabilities, and

* The added expenses of training and hiring new recruits, as well as paying overtime, when the agency is left short-staffed as a result of turnover.

Most police stress programs and consulting mental health practitioners focus primarily, if not exclusively, on preventing and treating stress among individual officers. However, the "person-centered" approach currently employed by most departments fails to address the underlying organizational problems that form the basis of much of the stress experienced by officers.

It stands to reason, then, as one expert in the field suggested, that "...an organization-centered approach ... identifying the problems the officers have with their work, supervisors, and pay, and making appropriate changes--may may well have a greater influence on improving morale."(4) According to the head of the Michigan State Police Behavioral Science Section, the emphasis placed by psychologists and police administrators on person-centered programs has overshadowed the importance of addressing organizational sources of stress.(5)

Unfortunately, stress program staffs and independent practitioners often lack the time to work with management to eliminate the sources of organizational stress. Moreover, few clinicians feel qualified to suggest organizational changes to law enforcement administrators.

At the same time, police administrators might not accept what they perceive to be the intrusion of a mental health professional into department operations. Administrators also may believe that they do not have the time or resources to make the desired changes, or they simply might not agree that organizational changes will reduce officer stress.

Yet, a growing number of agencies have found that even modest modifications in organizational structure can lead to enhanced morale and productivity among line officers. Although some administrators might institute organizational changes simply because they believe it is the right thing to do, there are a host of reasons that should compel reluctant administrators to consider such changes.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE BENEFITS

Enhance the Department's Image

Bad press, public criticism, and legislative scrutiny can be sources of stress for both law enforcement administrators and line officers. Organizational changes that reduce officer stress can improve the department's image simultaneously. Negative publicity resulting from 8 officer suicides in 5 years--3 of them in 1994--prompted the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Police Department to create the agency's first stress manager position in 1995. Among other duties, the stress manager examines departmental policies and procedures and recommends ways to make them less stressful.(6)

A newly appointed police chief in a West Coast law enforcement agency decided to remedy years of bad press caused by what many community members considered to be the department's overly paramilitary image. The chief hired an organizational consultant and eventually won new community support by implementing several recommended changes designed to make the department less autocratic.

Save Money

Some departments have documented substantial cost savings resulting from organizational changes. The Mercedez, Texas, Police Department fields 25 sworn officers and serves a city of 14,000 residents. In 1986, the department reorganized to provide an employee development program that included establishing high professional standards, a reward system to promote superior performance, foot patrol assignments, and an increase in the annual in-service training requirement. In the 24 months following these changes, the department's turnover rate fell from 38 percent to 7 percent. Administrators estimate that the reduced turnover has saved the department at least $53,000.(7)

Police administrators understand all too well the costs associated with replacing officers who take early retirement or go on disability. The department not only must pay benefits to departing officers, but it also must pay to recruit, test, hire, train, and equip new officers. In smaller agencies, sudden turnover can result in serious staff shortages that require paying other officers overtime.

Improve Department Morale and Efficiency

Reducing organizational sources of stress should lead naturally to better morale, improved productivity, and, therefore, enhanced overall department efficiency. Even a well-publicized statement from the department's administration recognizing the stress officers experience and expressing support for measures to reduce sources of stress demonstrates management concern about officer well-being. Such pronouncements also help promote the good will necessary to implement change.

IMPLEMENTED CHANGES

Administrators in agencies across the country have implemented significant organizational changes as a way of reducing officer stress. The changes generally affect supervisory style, field training officer programs, critical incident counseling, command support after critical incidents, shift work, and job assignments.

Supervisory Style

One police department has undertaken a comprehensive effort to reduce organizationally generated stress among its 100 sworn officers.(8) A series of stress-related disability retirements prompted the Palo Alto, California, Police Department to commission a study in 1979 to identify sources of stress and suggest options for reducing or eliminating them. The report concluded that the formal and informal organizational structures in the department inhibited effective communication and created strained relationships among ranks, divisions, and individuals.

As a result, the department hired a management consultant and a mental health clinician to design and implement an 18-month trial program to alleviate organizational stress. Through team building and other methods, the consultant taught department members how to communicate, listen, and solve problems in an orderly, effective manner.

The program proved so successful that it has been continued ever since. It follows a 14-point written plan that serves as a basis for administrators to reduce organizational stress.

First, administrators must identify sources of organizational stress and consult with work units and individual managers to resolve them. For example, the management consultant for the Palo Alto Police Department trained all sergeants in how to prepare for and conduct a performance appraisal and discussed the importance of providing employees with behavior-based feedback in a constructive manner.

In addition, administrators should monitor management decisions with regard to their stress impact, search for implementation methods that minimize the stressful impact, and advise management staff. For example, when the Palo Alto Police Department began to use computer-aided crime analysis to direct patrol and investigative resources toward apprehending career criminals, the consultant designed ways for the department's sworn and civilian personnel to influence and shape the change process.

It is also important to instruct field training officers, supervisors, and managers in communication, problem solving, conflict resolution, and supervisory skills that can minimize stress for employees. At the chief's request, the consultant hired by Palo Alto surveyed each manager on how the chief may have been creating undue stress for them, reported the results to the chief, and recommended changes based on the findings.

Another important step in reducing organizational stress involves training individual managers on stress-inducing practices and events within their units. This training typically results from a manager's request for specific training in problem solving. On occasion, it can be delivered in response to a large number of complaints from line officers, which suggests a management problem.

FTO Programs

A number of departments in California have used a private counselor to train their field training officers (FTOs) in the most productive ways to interact with trainees. The counselor explains to the FTOs how people react when they are criticized and presents the best approaches for offering constructive criticism to recruits who perform poorly. The counselor also tests the FTOs on their supervisory style and presents them with the results so they can see which areas they need to improve. Field training officers who have received the instruction gain a new awareness of the tremendous impact that an FTO program has on the organizational health of a law enforcement agency.

The counselor also advises police executives that they can enhance their departments' FTO programs by designating only officers who volunteer for the program to become training officers. Officers selected to serve as FTOs who have no interest in the assignment often feel that they are being punished. By accepting only volunteers and providing them with supervisory training, departments recognize the tremendous role field training officers play in acculturating new officers. For better or worse, many rookies emulate their FTOs and later use the same helpful or harmful training techniques when they train new officers.

Critical Incident Counseling

The Michigan State Police Behavioral Science Section trains both experienced and new sergeants every year in techniques to manage critical incident stress among officers. The section director designed the training to help sergeants respond in a manner that avoids creating additional stress for officers and reduces the inevitable stress that officers experience from the actual incidents.

During the training, the section director brings in a trooper who has experienced a critical incident and has received counseling through the program. The trooper gives a personal account of what first-line supervisors should--and should not- do when addressing the needs of troopers who require post-incident counseling. The sergeants learn what to expect from an officer who has experienced a critical incident, and the section director explains the warning signs that should alert sergeants that counseling is necessary.

The director of the Behavioral Science Section and another counselor also conduct 2-hour seminars for the agency's executive and command staffs. During this training, the counselors focus on helping managers recognize how their own work styles can impact subordinates. The counselors then suggest ways that managers can motivate their personnel to be more productive.

Command Support After Critical Incidents

The chief executive officer and other commanders of a law enforcement agency should make it a matter of policy to pay hospital visits to every officer shot or involved in a serious accident. This easily implemented policy can have a profound effect not only on the injured officers but also on the department as a whole. According to a veteran police counselor, "The impact of a shooting on the officers involved depends more on the attitude of the department toward the officers than on the incident itself."

The commissioner of the Buffalo, New York, Police Department, personally visits every police officer shot while on duty. If he cannot do so, he makes sure that his deputy or another command-level officer goes to provide support.

Command-level staff also can offer assurance and support to family members--including helping with paperwork, finding baby-sitters, providing telephone numbers for follow-up assistance, and simply spending time with them. Word of the command staff's concern typically spreads through the department grapevine to every officer on the force, instantly improving morale and alleviating stress.

Shift Schedules

Like many law enforcement agencies, the Michigan State Police used to rotate shifts every 7 days, causing considerable stress for many troopers and their families. As a result, the troopers association received a constant flow of grievances from members complaining of fatigue, eating disorders, and other problems. In an effort to encourage the department to change to a less stressful work schedule, the association asked the department's Behavioral Science Section for any available research that documented the harmful effects of rotating shifts on employee productivity.

The department allowed troopers to determine the frequency of their shift rotation and gave them the option of changing their rotation schedule at least annually. When additional research suggested that all rotating shift work might pose health and safety risks, the command staff included permanent shifts as an option. Today, staff members at each work site choose shifts by majority vote. Many have adopted fixed-shift schedules.

The troopers association succeeded in negotiating the changes, in part, due to the compelling evidence showing the negative effects of shift work on officer productivity. But the department's Behavioral Science Section also helped convince commanders by providing research findings. The president of the troopers association credits the successful resolution of this potentially divisive issue with the fact that the association did not enter into negotiations with the goal of simply winning concessions from the administration. Instead, the association demonstrated to commanders that the department would benefit from healthier, more productive employees. In other words, by changing the work schedule, the department, as well as the troopers, won.

Job Assignments

The psychologist for the San Antonio, California, Police Department worked with administrators to improve the agency's ability to match officers' capabilities to the needs of their jobs. In convincing administrators of the importance of such an effort, the psychologist argued that stress management should go beyond counseling, that careful selection of job candidates can reduce the stress that arises from a mismatch between the candidate and the job requirements.

The psychologist argued that by performing a "person-job fit analysis" before hiring and placing officers, the department could reduce the need for subsequent mental health treatment for officers ill-equipped to handle the job for which they were hired. Likewise, this preventive approach to mental health would help prospective officers avoid the deep feelings of frustration, disappointment, and self-blame that occur when individuals attempt to perform a job for which they are unsuited.

To determine which skills are necessary for a patrol officer, the psychologist conducted a functional job analysis of the position. He asked a number of officers to identify the skills required to perform their jobs effectively. The department now uses the skills outlined in the job analysis to select officers for patrol.

The psychologist eventually conducted a functional job analysis of every position in the agency. The department now bases hiring and promotions not only on civil service exams but also on matching individuals' current skill levels with the job requirements for which they are applying. The psychologist also revised the training academy's curriculum to include more blocks on problem solving, critical thinking, and other skills related to preventing and managing stress. The changes in the curriculum involve identifying areas where recruits need expanded training to improve their future on-the-job performance and thereby reduce their levels of stress.

CONCLUSION

Everyone experiences stress. As any stress counselor would explain, a certain degree of stress is essential to a healthy, productive life. However, when stress impairs an individual's ability to function properly, the sources of that stress must be eliminated or reduced.

Likewise, organizations work with a certain degree of naturally occurring stress, generated by the pressures of performing the tasks for which the people in the organization are responsible. However, when an organization's policies and procedures themselves become overwhelming sources of stress, those policies and procedures should be reviewed and changed.

With pressures on law enforcement agencies to perform increasingly complex functions with minimized funding levels, police administrators must examine ways to enable officers to perform their responsibilities as efficiently as possible. The steps that a number of law enforcement agencies have taken to reduce organizational sources of stress illustrate that departments can change their policies and procedures in ways that enhance--and certainly do not compromise--their public safety missions. Given the pressures experienced by today's police officers, law enforcement administrators should address the problem of organizational stress by identifying recurring grievances among officers and working to change the policies that cause them.

Endnotes

(1) R.M. Ayres, Preventing Law Enforcement Stress: The Organization's Role (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1990), 1; C.A. Gruber, "The Relationship of Stress to the Practice of Police Work," The Police Chief; February 1980, 16-17; "A Comparative Look at Stress and Strain in Policemen," in Job Stress and the Police Officer, ed. W.H. Kroes and J.J. Hurrell (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1975), 60; C.D. Spielberger, The Police Stress Survey: Sources of Stress in Law Enforcement, Monograph Series Three (Tampa, Florida: Human Resources Institute, 1981), 43.

(2) Ibid., Ayres; Ibid., W.H. Kroes and J.J. Hurrell; see also J.J. Hurrell, Jr., "Some Organizational Stressors in Police Work and Means for Their Amelioration," in Psychological Services for Law Enforcement, ed. J.T. Reese and H.A. Goldstein (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1986).

(3) The principal interviews took place in San Bernardino, California; Erie County, New York; Washington, DC; and throughout the state of Michigan (June-August 1995). Additional telephone interviews were conducted with similar individuals from San Antonio, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Metro-Dade, Florida; Rochester, New York; and Coventry, Rhode Island (June-August 1995). This research project was supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Contract OJP-94-C-007. See Peter Finn and Julie Esselman Tomz, Developing a Law Enforcement Stress Program for Officers and Their Families (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997).

(4) Supra note 1, Ayres, 9.

(5) G. Kaufman, "Law Enforcement Organizational Health Consultation," (paper presented at the Consultation with Police: Problems and Consideration Symposium, American Psychological Association 93rd Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, August 23-27, 1985).

(6) "Tired? Stressed? Burned Out? Panel Seeks Answers for Philadelphia Police Officers, Law Enforcement News 22, 1995, 1, 10.

(7) J.L. Pape, "Employee Development Programs," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, September 1990, 20-25.

(8) E.F. Kirschman, "Organizational Development," in Police Managerial Use of Psychology and Psychologists, ed. H.W. More and P.C. Unsinger (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1987), 85-106; S.E. Walima, "Organizational Health in Law Enforcement," in Psychological Services for Law Enforcement, ed. J.T. Reese and H.A. Goldstein, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of investigation, 1986), 205-214.

RELATED ARTICLE: Suggestions for Implementing Organizational Change

Constants provide the following suggestions for implementing any major effort to change organizational polities and procedures in law enforcement agencies.

* The administration should involve a sizable cross-section of the agency's personnel in identifying organizational issues that require attention, designing a prototype program, and hiring program staff

* The chief should endorse and provide support to any initiative

* Commanders should plan for an 18-month or longer trial period

* Commanders should rely on the core start-up group for support and feedback during the initial stages of the program

* Administrators should guarantee program success to all agency levels and work units

* Counselors or outside consultants should expect and encourage the agency and its personnel to take risks and accept some discomfort in the service of growth and positive change.

Adapted from S.E. Walima and E.F. Kirschman, "Health Resource Coordinators: Organizational Consultation Services," the Police Chief, October 1988, 78-81.

Mr. Finn is senior research assistant at Abt Associates Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a special officer with the Belmont, Massachusetts, Police Department.