30 things in 30 days

How it works

To progress the HMIC recommendations around the capability and capacity of investigators, a series of focus groups were held with detectives across the force to understand the current issues relating to recruitment, retention and wellbeing.  The results of these focus groups were presented to chief officers and a series of recommendations were made to improve conditions. As part of this, a request was made to run an innovation gathering exercise that replicated a force wide programme (100 Things 100 Days) at a more targeted level.  

The idea was to make 30 improvements in 30 days that would directly impact investigator colleagues. We contacted all our detectives to promote the challenge and asked that they submit ideas for things they would like to see changed and that would have a big impact on their wellbeing or workload.  Within 30 days, we received over 50 ideas from detectives across the force, ranging from requests to develop a local knowledge hub through to process improvements for file submissions to CPS. These ideas were then presented to our gold investigator resilience group for deliberation and action.

Over 30 ideas were eventually implemented to improve wellbeing including better reward and recognition, support for the NIE and dedicated wellbeing time. To collate ideas, we utilised an existing innovation gathering platform, 'simply do', that had been created following the force wide programme. We have however utilised simple email inboxes or Dragon’s Den type exercises in the past to gather these ideas for similar initiatives.   

Top tips for implementation