Keeping the peace: Series 1

About Fortis Therapy and Training

Fortis Therapy and Training are a multi-award winning therapeutic mental health and emotional wellbeing service. Alexis Powell-Howard, is the MD of Fortis Therapy and Training and a TEDx speaker, psychotherapist, systemic practitioner, coach, trainer, and mediator, who is facilitating the conversation. Alexis and her business have worked with police forces for many years providing effective therapy, training, and team development.

Episode list

Introductory podcast
Episode 1: Me, the force and the big C
Episode 2: The highs and lows of working from home
Episode 3: Managing change responsively
Episode 4: Talking bereavement
Episode 5: Stress less

Introductory podcast

In this short podcast, Alexis sets the scene for how this series of podcasts came about and what it aims to do.

Podcast transcript

Hello and welcome to the short introductory podcast introducing Keeping the Peace, with me your host, Alexis Power-Howard. I’m the Managing Director of Fortis Therapy and Training, we’re a multi-award winning therapeutic mental health and wellbeing service and I’m really excited to be working in partnership with Oscar Kilo, home of the National Police Wellbeing Service. And we’ve partnered too with Humberside Police to bring you these first five episodes of Keeping The Peace.

This podcast is for the police by the police and will be interesting too to those who are intrigued by the inner workings of the force and hearing people’s stories and also their ideas. At Fortis, we’ve been working for several years now supporting the force with psychotherapy as well as mental health and wellbeing training and speaking at their events. This podcast is an idea born out of the Keeping The Peace wellbeing training that we’ve been delivering to hundreds of officers and staff. And I’m really keen to explore further, off the back of that, the experiences of working in the force and to show how to manage the challenges of the job and also to share successes and ideas too.

In our experience of working with the police, the role, the uniform and the expectations and status that comes with it can generate a spectrum of responses. It can be rewarding, it can be challenging, create feelings of belonging and pride even when faced with adversity. There can also be responses to trauma, a sense of feeling overwhelmed, sometimes rejection, and then those who fall out of love with the job completely and leave the force.

I’m really keen to share ideas and I’m curious to learn more about the people, what lessons can we learn from the needs of different roles within the force and the impact of being at different stages of career too, whilst not losing sight of managing a personal life and wellbeing. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the good old days of debriefing in the station bar with peers are now long gone and the roles have changed considerably over the years as well as the expectations of the public.

I really hope you find these conversations helpful as they give a window into the real lives, experiences, and perspectives of cops, staff, and leaders, as well as giving food for thought and a bit of banter hopefully thrown in for good measure.

Keeping the Peace podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts from, if you subscribe to the podcasts you will be notified of the next episode as soon as it’s available.

We’d love to hear your feedback or if you have any ideas for future podcasts please do comment or get in touch using our social media platforms at Fortis Therapy and Training or at Oscar Kilo.

Episode 1: Me, the force and the big C

Cancer can strike fear into most of us. In this conversation Alexis talks with Janice Walker (Operational Police Training Sergeant), who was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Laraine Cowley Senior Occupational Health Advisor. The conversation takes you through Janice’s experiences as someone who survived cancer and how important the support from her management was to her.

Podcast transcript

Keeping the Peace Series 1, Episode 1 - Me, the Force and the Big C

Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast, with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. I’m joined today with two people from Humberside Police, and we’re going to be talking about a topic that is a really sensitive area, I think, and affects a lot of people directly or indirectly throughout our lives, and it’s a word that can strike fear into the hearts of most of us, I think. We’re going to be talking about cancer, and one lady’s particular story about their experience, and also from an organisational point of view, how people who are struggling or going through treatment can be supported within the workplace, and looked after in terms of their wellbeing. I’m joined today by Janice Walker who’s the Operational Police Training Sergeant. Morning. [Laughs]

Jan: Good morning.

Alexis: And Laraine Cowley, who is the Senior Occupational Health Advisor for Humberside Police. Welcome.

Laraine: Good morning.

Alexis: So we’re going to be talking a bit about this subject today, and I’m conscious that, obviously, it can affect an awful lot of people and can impact whole families and whole friendship groups, and whole organisations, really. From your perspective, Jan, what kind of story have you got around your diagnosis? I know it was about ten years ago now.

Jan: It was ten years ago, and I had a family history. So my mum had died while I was still at school, so to be honest I’d always had a little bit of a fear, a fear of cancer before I even found out I’d got it. I’d probably already had an idea that, will it happen to me? And so I’d already gone for genetic counselling, and at the time they said my risk was low enough that they wouldn’t actually send me for the test. They did later. But at that time, they said they wouldn’t, but they would do an annual test with me. So I had a mammogram every other year, and a manual nurse’s check, for breast cancer, this was.

And I was two weeks away from my mammogram, and I was just telling my partner about how they squish your boob in the plates, and I did it with my hands, and kind of went, “Whoa, it’s actually a bit uncomfortable when they do that,” and I physically did it to myself, and found a little lump through that action, and kind of thought ... And my head went straight to my history at that point, so – and that’s really where it started, and the rest of it was several years of going through lots of things I’d never even thought of, surprises, funny moments, sad moments, frightening, scary things. It was the whole gamut, really, but that’s where it started.

Alexis: Lots of – I know people I’ve worked with therapeutically who’ve gone through a journey with cancer, of different diagnoses, but there’s that massive sense of uncertainty, and you know –

Jan: Huge. Huge. You have no idea. I mean, really, in reality, we all don’t know what the future holds, but it really brings it home. At that particular moment, you think, oh – this was July when I first found the lump, and I’m already thinking, “Ooh, will I be here at Christmas?” It makes you start to think in a whole radical way that you’ve not thought of before. You look around, the people – I was in what I would consider a relatively new relationship; I’d been divorced. I was in a three-year relationship thinking, “Oh, gosh, I don’t know how ... ”

As I said to him. “This isn’t what you signed up for,” because you kind of think how are the people around you going to react to it. It’s not just me. I’m going to go through something now that somebody’s inevitably going to have to kind of go with me. Children, my children were sort of late teens, so older, but you still think, how do they cope? And your head is all over with all the questions, just questions.

Alexis: And no answers, actually, either, to any of those things.

Jan: No answers at all.

Alexis: No.

Jan: No answers at all. Everything is waiting for the next check-up and the next test and the next assessment, and that goes on for a long time. So you’ve got to learn to reconcile lots of different things in your life that you just haven’t really contemplated much before.

Alexis: How did you manage that mentally? Because immediately there, you’re thinking about everyone else, and obviously the diagnosis is your diagnosis, but you’re right, the relational aspects of being a person in a family, is that there’s lots of people who are worried and concerned, and then you’re worried and concerned about them, as well. And I guess how you manage what you tell them, and how you say things, and how you are, did that factor in for you?

Jan: Yeah. I mean, I’m a really open person, so I shared, and told everybody who wanted to know, really, anything they wanted to know, and I’ve kind of maintained that, and that helped me. Some people are far more private, and need to be, I get that, but actually sharing it helped me. It was things like, it was my daughter’s 18th birthday party which, it was a cèilidh. She wanted a cèilidh and I was doing the supper, and that was the day after treatment one, chemotherapy. And you’ve no idea. I’m thinking, “Will I be well enough to do this? Will I be able to be well enough to produce the food and be there at the party?” So you’re thinking about so many things.

I suppose you only learn gradually what the answers are. For me, walking, going out. And you would think, when you were out walking in the countryside with the dogs, your head would be so busily taken up with being preoccupied about your worries, but actually I found it cleared my head. It was the very opposite. It worked for me. I don’t know why. I can’t explain that, but so long as I was walking and looking at the open countryside, I could just forget.

Alexis: You know, it’s funny, I was just thinking as you were saying that, when you’re out walking like that, there’s something about physically moving forward as well, like you’re moving forward, and I think that can be, almost in the background of going on a walk and taking your dogs, and watching them live in the moment, and be in the here and now, it brings you back into what’s important, I think.

Jan: Yeah, literally enjoying the sunshine, or the beauty of the valley you’re walking through, you walk upon through the Yorkshire Wolds and things, and wildflowers, butterflies, it didn’t matter what it was, it is that beauty of the moment that, perhaps it just draws your attention and you just get some pleasure out of that. I was the worst for Googling.

Alexis: Google doctor.

Jan: Well, yeah [laughs]. Some people do, some people don’t. Again, I found some really useful sources of information, I found some useful forums where I didn’t feel so alone because you realise so many other people are experiencing this, too. But I also found things that then would set me into a total panic mode because I’d think, “I’ve read something now that, I’m not sure what that means.” And one of my consultants did one day say to me, “You’re the sort of person who wants answers, aren’t you?” And obviously others, you realise there’s a difference between patients, and actually your consultants and doctors are waiting to get the indication from you. Because, some people don’t want to know. I’ve known other people go through it who would say, “Don’t give me any detail, just treat me.”

Alexis: Yeah, just get on with it.

Jan: Yeah. And it took – again, you’re learning things. It took a while for things to drop into place, and me kind of going, “Ah, OK. My consultant hasn’t explained that to me, but perhaps they weren’t explaining it to me because I hadn’t expressly said tell me. So once we understood each other then it was like, “Yeah, I need to know, I need things explaining.”

Alexis: I guess it’s quite tricky for them to know who wants that information and who doesn’t, and it takes a while to form that relationship with your consultant, to know each other well enough.

Jan: Yes, and you have two or three depending what treatments you’re going through, so that varies. But yeah, I felt like it was a period of months as I worked out what worked for me. Going to work worked for me, too, and I was very fortunate with my management that they – you need so much flexibility about your appointments and things, and how you might be feeling on a given day. But I wanted to go in. I know some people want to be away from the workplace for a while and get their heads clear, and things, but for me, as much normality as I could keep going, the more of that, the better. And with the flexibility I was given, we could achieve quite a lot together, I thought, at work, and that made me still feel, again, distracted and doing something else that didn’t mean my life was all about cancer.

Alexis: I was going to say, it gives you that purpose as well that’s outside of that diagnosis, isn’t it? Otherwise you become defined by what you’re going through.

Jan: Yes. Yeah.

Alexis: And also, I suppose, if you feel like you are making progress at work and you’re valued there as well, all of that’s really important. And you’re right, some people really don’t want to do that. Or I’ve worked in organisations where someone’s had a diagnosis, and I’ve heard other people say, “Why would you carry on working? Why wouldn’t you be at home?” But it is very individual.

Jan: At home was too much time to Google [laughs] and think, so that didn’t really help me.

Alexis: So the distraction of work was –

Jan: So there was a distraction. There was companionship. I was taking pressure away from partner and children as well, because if you’re at home they’re still thinking, “Well, I’ve got to go to work, and so is mum all right? Is partner all right, because she’s sitting at home. Is Jan all right?” It’s kind of like sharing it because your colleagues are taking care of you a little bit as well, they’re helping you. Bless them. I’ve bent plenty of people’s ears about things, at work, who would perhaps give me a little time to chat through how I was feeling that day, or whatever. So you’re also sharing the load a little bit, aren’t you?

Alexis: Yeah, the support network is wider, I suppose.

Jan: Yeah, very much so. But the flexibility thing, the bit that was important there was, when you went for appointments, you didn’t know how long they would take. Sometimes they were hours because something would come up in that appointment and you would be so much longer before you got back to work. Sometimes you went for an appointment – I can remember going for scan results, which were a really key part of your cancer – I’m trying to avoid that word, ‘journey’. We all say it, don’t we? Your cancer journey. That you go for your body scan to see if there’s any spread, and obviously that’s a really key bit, waiting for that information.

And I was all keyed up and fired up and ready to go, and when I got there, they didn’t have the results. And so my ability to go back to work and focus on work that afternoon was a bit off, and it’s about that flexibility from your management, to say, “Right now I can’t actually do that.” But the flipside was, sometimes occupational health, my lovely nurse would say to me, “Jan, I don’t think you should be coming back in yet,” and I’d go, “Yeah, I can. I’m ready. I want to come and do four days.” Four hours, sorry. Four days – four hours in a day and start to – and it’s, “Well, it’s only a couple of weeks since you had that operation.” I was like, “Yeah, I know, but I’m ready, and I know ... ”

So we achieved a good balance, I thought, between us as well, between me saying, “I know I’m ready and I can do this,” and then the other days when I kind of went, “I can’t actually do this.”

Alexis: I think it’s being able to say that, isn’t it? It’s being able to say – and being honest.

Jan: Yeah.

Alexis: Because there was a couple of things going through my mind when you said that. One was about trusting, having that trusting relationship with your occupational health nurse, that you could have that open conversation and be realistic about what you could do, but also trusting your inner instincts that, “I can and I need to be able to come back in to do those four hours.”

Jan: Yeah. I did get sent home by my boss one day, who looked at me and went, “You are not fit to be here. You need to go home.” And you know, he was probably right that day. I kind of – a couple of hours in, I’d overdid it, but being given the opportunity to say, “but I feel I want to come,” even that, just being able to have some control. It’s that little bit of control back in your life, because you’ve lost so much of it in other ways, isn’t it? So that was important.

Alexis: Laraine, just from your perspective in terms of occupational health, can you relate to Jan’s story there about that flexibility that’s needed, and how to manage?

Laraine: Definitely. I mean, it is really, really important to listen to the person, and it is a case of having that compromise. Because as Jan said, Jan knows exactly how she was feeling, the occupational health nurse will have that, sort of, medical sort of background, sometimes they don’t exactly sort of meet in the middle, so you have to have that compromise. But what you don’t want to do is go in and sort of instructing the person what to do, saying, “No, I think you need to do X, Y, Z. This is my professional medical opinion,” because then like Jan says, you feel like you’re losing control. You haven’t got control over your full life anymore. You have those feelings of loss of control, so we would support that individual to keep that control over work, when they come to work, as well.

Alexis: And seeing that individual not just as somebody who’s going through cancer treatment, but seeing them as the person that you knew before that, who was working in the organisation, and that identity, because I think that’s the bit for me is, you can become quite defined by the experience.

Laraine: Yeah. It is. It’s not becoming, it’s like you’re a person who has cancer at that moment. It’s like, you are not the cancer, and it is really distinguishing that, you’re still an individual, you have individual needs. Some people do want to be at work, and you’re right, which we discussed earlier, some people just don’t have the space in their head to think about work as well. It is too consuming for them, and they just cannot free any space to concentrate and to actually focus in the workplace.

And it’s not just a physical illness; it’s a massive psychological impact as well, so it’s making sure we’re taking care of the physical and the psychological needs. We’re not there to treat. We’re not involved in any treatment; that’s very separate from us, but we are there to make sure that the person has support, that the line manager has support as well. That’s important, because quite often line managers will come to us and say, “What do I do? Is it OK to ask if they’re OK? What can I ask? What’s normal?” I was like, “They’re still an individual, just talk to them normally.”

But one of the worst things, what often gets fed back to us is, sometimes because of that feeling uncomfortable, not wanting to discuss that cancer word, you’ll get that walk-past in the corridor, “Hi, are you OK?” And you say, “Yeah, I’m fine,” because that’s what we do. Whereas, it’s important, and we always express to line managers, take five minutes, go away and have a coffee for five, ten minutes in private, then ask how somebody is, if they need any more support in the workplace, if they’re coping. You’ll get a more accurate response. You’ll be able to work together as a team.

Alexis: I think you’re right, you’re so right about confidence, I think, from being a manager and having a team of people, and having the confidence to be able to go and actually have a conversation about how somebody’s doing, and talk about cancer, which is often our worst fears, and what the experience is for that person, but also have the confidence as a manager to be able to be flexible and to make decisions based on that individual rather than the overall policy.

Laraine: The policy.

Alexis: Yeah, because I think when people aren’t sure, they go back to the policy or they go back to that rigidity around what I’m supposed to do, and they lose that bit about what’s actually going on for that person in their team, and what impact is it having on other team members as well, because that happens, as well, doesn’t it? We don’t work in isolation, we’re working within groups.

Laraine: And yeah, line managers, again, flexibility – it’s quite often we do recuperative duty plans for a phased return while someone’s having treatment, and it’s like, “What do you mean it’s not four hours every day?” Some days it might be; some days it might not. It’s really hard explaining the needs for the flexibility. And we are getting there. I think we have some brilliant managers within the organisation, and again, from the manager’s perspective, it is just having that confidence that not everything fits within a policy, that sometimes you do need a flexibility, and you do have to sort of stand outside of that policy on occasion.

Jan: It’s an awful thing, that cancer has become so common, I think it’s something like one in two, I think now isn’t it, of people in their lifetime?

Alexis: Yeah, it’s on the – is it the Bake Off where they always give you the statistics at the end, and you kind of look round your family and think, “Right, that’s half of us.”

Jan: Yeah, but I think there is a good flipside to that which, one of the things I was very fortunate in is that my manager’s wife had had breast cancer, and he’d seen it firsthand, what it was like to ... So he kind of knew some of what was going to come my way, and that probably made it a little bit easier. But now, so many people have experienced it and have somebody somewhere within their colleagues or family or friends, that I think the understanding in the country generally is so much better around cancer.

Laraine: It is.

Jan: I mean, years ago, as I said, my mum had died when I was still at school – in those days, it was really still quite unusual, and you could tell people hadn’t a clue what to do. Now I think there is a – it is better. People do have, sadly, more experience of it. There’s a good side to that.

Laraine: There is, and there are those specific characteristics and sort of phases in treatment and things, that you all go through.

Jan: It’s so visible, yeah. It’s so visible [laughs].

Laraine: But there are also, remembering that again, everyone’s an individual, everyone will cope differently. Some people will have side effects from treatment; some people will have less side effects. Going back to the, should I return to work or not, because some of the side effects from some of the medications, or the treatments, can be quite disabling at times. I mean depending on the type of cancer, you may start out with having to have a surgical procedure. Again, that can be physically limiting. It might be that you then need radiotherapy, which again takes a lot of time because it’s a daily treatment over a significant number of weeks, quite often, and that can cause localised issues like burning to the skin. Fatigue – people do not realise how tired they’re going to feel. And it’s distinguishing as well between feeling tired and feeling fatigued, which are two very different things.

Alexis: Yeah, they’re very different levels, aren’t they?

Laraine: Yeah.

Alexis: And also, I think, sometimes as well, feeling really low, because you’re taking a battering, aren’t you? Mentally, but also very much physically, as well, and how you recognise that, especially when you’re feeling fatigued, because it can all feel quite similar, can’t it, feeling quite low, and physically low as well as mentally?

Jan: There’s the other bit of it as well, because it is a very visible thing, as I say. You know, when you lose your hair and you lose your eyebrows, eyelashes and the works, and your skin pallor goes a little different, you can’t hide it, so people know. And I think sometimes that awkwardness that people feel when they meet you in the corridor, and they’re kind of, “Ooh,” especially if they haven’t seen you for a while, but even when you get so that you’re looking better, the hair’s coming back, and actually you’re all nice and radiant and you’re doing quite well, and you might even have got past the stage of treatment, I can still remember having some real – I used to drive past Castle Hill Hospital where I’d had all my treatments, to come to work. It was my daily route.

And sometimes, I can’t even explain to you why, but as I came by, it would be like a – I could barely even glance left. That place, I had a sort of mixed relationship with it. There was a point when I almost missed it because my life was this routine of hospital appointments and somebody looking after me, so when they released me into the wild, and kind of went, “Off you go, Jan. You’re OK now.” I was like, “Ooh, really? Can’t I ... ? Am I not coming back for another six months? That’s an awful long time, because I’ve been coming here twice a week or more.” And so you look apparently completely well at work, but actually you’re still feeling a bit fragile.

And it can take the smallest of things, like a Bake Off for cancer, or one of the other charity fundraisers they do, Stand Up To Cancer, it is. Stand Up To Cancer, when they do those sort of things, sometimes I can just go right back into a feeling of being – you almost feel a little bit guilty because, you know, obviously I had my treatment and I’m still here, and they’re often very sad stories, and younger people and children. So you go through all sorts of mixed emotions that all come flooding back, but you’re apparently better.

Alexis: You’re well.

Jan: You’re well. So on the whole, life’s fine, but just occasionally, even now, something can happen that just makes you kind of go into that place of thinking, “Oh, it’s all come flooding back.” Or meeting somebody else, a new colleague who’s going through some of what you’ve gone through, and you sit down to talk to them and help them, but it brings your own memories flooding back.

Alexis: You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo, and Humberside Police.

Jan: But even carrying fear now, with COVID this year, I realised there was a little bit of me, and it was something my husband said, actually – he mentioned that if I get an illness, it tends to floor me. So a virus that made him think – oh, we had it a few months ago, we both had the same virus – I was out of it for a couple of days, and he was fine. Now, that might be absolutely nothing to do with my cancer background.

Alexis: Yeah, it could just be how it would’ve been anyway.

Jan: Literally nothing, but I know, when he said, “You tend to – you must be careful at work. You must be careful because when you get something, it tends to hit you.” And I flick back to that thinking, “Did the chemo do anything to me? Did it?” Because I had it for a long time, and I think, “Did it? Did it do anything?” Because you don’t know, really. Did it do something that has made me a little bit more susceptible ... ? You ask that kind of question.

Alexis: I was going to say, it just creates a question mark, doesn’t it?

Jan: Yeah, I don’t know. And maybe not, and I guess I’ll never know, and most of the time I don’t need to think about it. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But just occasionally, when something like that comes onto the horizon, and you think, “So if I did catch Coronavirus then, would I be a little bit more vulnerable because of some unknown effect that the chemo had all those years ago?” And it’s just that – so there’s that kind of – just a little bit in the background, it can just play up now and again. On the whole, vast majority of the time, the memory’s a distant one, but just occasionally, something will come back up where you just – perhaps just have to kind of think, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, I feel a bit nervous at work.” And have that understanding, and the conversation, still being able to have that conversation about it with your managers as well.

Alexis: What sounds really helpful is that you – because you said earlier about, I do talk about things, I just felt that that was your coping mechanism, was just to be honest and talk about where you’re at.

Jan: Yeah.

Alexis: I suppose I’m thinking about those people who maybe don’t do that, and keep it very private, or don’t want to talk about it. Because I think when we talk about it, we have to kind of hear ourselves say things, and I guess that’s what happens in therapy, you hear yourself say something, “I can’t believe I’ve just said that out loud. That’s what I’m really thinking.” When you don’t process things in that way, that kind of can stay internally, I guess, and I’m wondering what the impact of that has on people who are working? If they’re not being able to have those conversation with an occupational health, or they’re not approaching their manager and saying, “Actually, this is going on for me at the minute,” how can that be –

Jan: I think you’ve got to be able to help people. As a manager, and this isn’t cancer, actually, this is about my student officers, because students officers are brand new into the organisation, they’ve started this whole new career, it’s maybe something they’ve been wanting to do all their lives, and they’ve waited two or three years through the recruitment process. And suddenly, they find themselves going through some kind of emotional crisis about, actually, is this job for me, or something literally is going on that’s a personal family crisis, whatever, and that’s come right in the middle of this whole new career change.

And I spend a lot of time talking to people in those situations, as the supervisor in there, and I know, the people who open up and tell you, I feel like I can help you because you’re telling me, and we can explore the issues. And I sometimes get the ones who are very closed, very private, and it’s about trying to find some other way then to say, “OK, I hear that you don’t particularly want to tell me or discuss it in here, but I want to try and find you some way. So if you lead me on what is it that’s going to help you, and I’ll try and help you find that thing, that person or whatever it is.”

And I think it’s the same, as a supervisor, you can only ever try and – I mean, I’ve had other colleagues who’ve been sent to me to talk, to say, “Look, Jan’s had cancer. She’ll talk to you. You’ve just been diagnosed and things,” and I have had conversations with people, and I can understand their very different responses, they may be a little bit more closed. And you’re just trying to find their happy place, aren’t you? My walking, my Googling and walking and sharing, that was for me, but it doesn’t work for everybody. So it’s just, it is that listening thing, again, isn’t it? You tell me what helps you and then we can try and facilitate it for you. That’s the key, I think. Not always easy to do with somebody who doesn’t want to talk.

Laraine: No, it’s not, and exactly what you say, some people just do not want to talk, or are not ready to talk.

Alexis: Yeah, timing’s everything, isn’t it?

Laraine: Yeah, I was going to say, it really is. We’ll have consultations, meetings with people in occupational health, and if they’re not ready to talk, it can be a really difficult consultation, you’re just trying to read between the lines, look at the body language, try and put the best support in possible for a person. But then you might find after two or three sessions, that person’s then got that trust and confidence, and you’ve built up a little bit of a rapport with them, then they feel more able to speak and start talking about their worries, what support they need.

Alexis: I think sometimes people have got to get past that shock stage as well, and that can take various different amounts of time, can’t it?

Jan: Some things feel a little bit too scary to say out loud, especially at the beginning when you think, “Ooh, OK, I don’t know what this means.” And I think then, some things – yeah, you – I think there was probably even things I just didn’t ever say out loud because they were too scary.

Alexis: Yeah, just too much.

Laraine: Yeah.

Jan: But again, you get past that, and find the things you can talk about.

Laraine: Yeah, and we do get the Googlers coming in quite often [laughs].

Alexis: It’s the first thing we all do, isn’t it? Right, I need to know what’s happening here.

Laraine: They come in and they tell us exactly what they know, what information they’ve found out, and they’re scared to death, but it’s like, “No, listen to your consultant, and if you really do want to find out more information, because some people really do. The more armed they are with information, the more in control they feel,” so at least then we’ll point them towards some reputable websites as opposed to just a generalised Google.

Alexis: Something that we talk quite a bit about at Fortis with people when they’re going through those kinds of difficult times is about, deal with what you know, as well. So actually, this is what you know at the minute, so deal with that step, because on one hand it’s helpful to have more information, for some people, so they can feel more in control and feel informed, and can be ready for the next step. But for other people, knowing more about it can actually be more overwhelming than anything, and then it becomes – whatever they’re going through becomes more scary. So it’s finding that balance, isn’t it, between having some information, whatever you feel comfortable with, but also dealing with what you know right now.

Jan: It’s funny, actually, because I can remember going to a particular board meeting, and I was the first point of contact for the Crime Stoppers Charity, and we had a big board meeting, and it was at the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner. And it was the afternoon before I was going in first thing the next morning for a double mastectomy. And people couldn’t – a few people couldn’t get their heads around the fact I could be at work that day, but I was dealing with what I knew. It was fine, I was going in for surgery tomorrow. I could keep myself busy today, because actually I did know what was going on. The harder days were the days where I felt a bit adrift and then you couldn’t focus your mind on something.

But actually, I knew what I needed to do, and so many people said, “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t here,” and I’m kind of like, “yes, I should. Today, I should, because I know what’s happening right now, and I know where I should be tomorrow, and I know what I’m doing this afternoon, and I’m quite comfortable.”

Alexis: It’s like I’ve got an anchor point and that’s kind of keeping me steady even though it was something that’s really difficult to go through.

Jan: Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal, what’s happening tomorrow, but it’s set, I know what it is. So it was the unknowns that were harder to deal with, I think.

Alexis: How do you, in terms of helping, say, managers, leaders, colleagues, within the police when you’re trying to support someone who’s going through that process, I know it’s individual to everybody, but what kind of advice would you give around carrying on being connected to the organisation, or the team or the people? Because you’ve just described there, Jan, about actually that was really important for you, that support network. I imagine, and I see in the therapy that we do, that sometimes people don’t want to be connected to anybody for a while; they just need to deal with what they’re dealing with and then they can step back in and start work when they’re ready. But how can you keep connected to the organisation and the team that you work in when you’re going through that process? Because it’s not short term, is it? It’s a long term –

Jan: It is long term. There were points at which, I mean, when I got into the – because I had the first bout of chemotherapy treatments were eight, so one every three weeks. And what I did was go to work after the first one, I just went back to work; after the second one, I went back to work; third one, I had a day; fourth one, I had a couple of days when I wasn’t in. By the time I got to the eighth one, I wasn’t in at work, and actually at that point I couldn’t have contemplated keeping in touch with anybody at work, doing anything at work. I used to always see if I could walk to the bottom of the garden.

Alexis: Just get through this.

Jan: Yeah, yeah, and I’d set myself – they were always a little physical goal, so I used to do a two mile walk with the dogs, and at the beginning, I kind of went to see how much of the two miles can I do. And by the eighth one, it was walk to the bottom of the lawn, and turn round, and then go back to bed. But that was still enough because I was still up, and showing I can do that much, and then I could build that back up. And at that point, I had no room for work or colleagues, or I don’t think – I think there was probably a point for a few weeks when I probably didn’t have any contact, and that was the right thing. So it fluctuates all the way through.

And it goes back to that P word of flexibility. Your manager’s got to be listening and observing and flexible, and working with you, and responsive to the lead that you give them. And there has to be, like we said at the beginning, an enormous amount of trust.

Alexis: Just before we finish, Jan, you’ve mentioned walking the dog, and that being something that was really helpful.

Jan: Yeah.

Alexis: I’m guessing that’s still really helpful because we were talking before we started recording about dogs, and how much you love them.

Jan: It is. Yeah.

Alexis: Is there anything else that you do to look after yourself when you’re maybe having those niggly feelings, or you’re feeling under pressure, or just generally that you do to look after yourself?

Jan: I do try to keep a balance. I went through a period, when I was first diagnosed, of being incredibly strict, anything that anybody suggested might remotely be bad for me was out. I lived a very pure life, but I remember going to a coffee shop with some friends, and I had some green tea, and nothing to eat, and everyone else was having cappuccinos and all sorts of fancy cakes and things. And I went to the loos and cried, and I thought, “I can’t really do this.” So you have to have a bit of a balance.

So I love red wine; I allow myself a glass of red wine on a Friday night and a Saturday night but I don’t drink a lot because I see drink, alcohol as a bit of a risk factor, so it’s a bit of balance for me. I try not to put weight on because I know that would be a risk, so I try to keep that, but I still eat chocolate and I still have fun. So I think it’s all about achieving some level of balance, and working out how much do I need to do of the naughty stuff in life, but that keeps me happy, the cappuccino and cake? How much of it do I need, balance against, I am conscious of my health and I do try to maintain a good level of health.

Alexis: And keep that in the forefront of your mind.

Jan: Yeah.

Alexis: But also not lose out on some of what life brings, as well.

Jan: Not preoccupied with it, but just have a subtle consciousness in the back of my mind.

Alexis: Yeah, that makes sense. How about you, Laraine? What do you do to look after you?

Laraine: I’m an animal lover as well, so I don’t have a dog to walk; I’m desperate for a dog, but [laughs] –

Alexis: I can picture you with a dog.

Laraine: Yeah, desperate for a dog. It’s definitely going to be a retirement present to myself when I eventually get to that age. But I have cats, so I find the cats really, really soothing, so again, really reduce stress levels, just grooming them, stroking them, and just them being around, the presence of them.

Alexis: There’s a reason why pets can be used in therapy.

Laraine: Yeah.

Alexis: They just bring you back down, don’t they?

Laraine: They really, really do. Yeah, again, I like a glass of red wine, in moderation of course.

Alexis: We should’ve brought that today.

Laraine: Yeah, we should – [laughs]. The important thing for me is getting enough sleep because I know I don’t feel well psychologically if I don’t get enough sleep. So if I recognise my sleep pattern’s not too good, I will try and get into a really regular routine to try and establish a good sleep pattern. Difficult when I go to work doing that because my natural sleep pattern is getting up about ten o’ clock in a morning and going to bed about two o’ clock in the morning [laughs], so I have to be really careful not to revert to that when I’m on holiday, otherwise it’s so difficult –

Alexis: Yeah, that retraining.

Laraine: I feel like I’ve got jetlag just having two weeks off [laughs]. But yeah, so sleep’s really important to me. The things that help me psychologically, the glass of red wine and the bit of chocolate and things like that that make me happy, and probably good for my mental health but not so good for my physical health. So I need a bit more of a balance there, but –

Alexis: Yeah. I think it can ebb and flow, can’t it?

Laraine: Yeah.

Alexis: Sometimes you might be really on with certain things, and then you have to remind yourself that, actually, no, that really works for me and I need to look after that. You said about your sleep, you get yourself back on track. I think it’s the same thing sometimes with food, and diet and alcohol, and all that kind of stuff.

Laraine: Yeah, it is. And lastly, a trip to the coast. I just find, some people are countryside people, but I’m definitely a coast person, just the sound of the sea, walking barefoot on a beach, just so amazing, especially when it’s somewhere hot as well, as long as you don’t burn your feet.

Jan: Well just think, when you’ve got your dog, you’ll be able to take the dog to the beach and have a fantastic time.

Alexis: By the end of this podcast, Laraine will have a dog [laughs].

Laraine: Oh, I still want a dog.

Jan: We’ll talk later.

Alexis: Yeah. That’s brilliant. Thanks ever so much, both of you. It’s been lovely speaking to you. Thank you.

Laraine: Thank you.

Alexis: Thank you for listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast. It’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you subscribe you’ll be notified of the next episode as soon as it’s available. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training, or Oscar Kilo.

Episode 2: The highs and lows of working from home

Alexis hosts a conversation with Lianne Moore, Contact Officer in the Force Control Room and DCI Pete Thorp discussing all aspects of working from home. As a new concept to policing, working from home has had its challenges and innovative approaches to working and managing people, have been needed.

This conversation takes you through the lessons learned from both Lianne who is working from home and Pete, who is managing a team remotely, with the good practices that have been developed along the way with huge successes and benefits.

Podcast transcript

Keeping the Peace Series 1, Episode 2 - The highs and lows of working from home

Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, your host, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today we’ve come out of the police station where we were in the last podcast, and we’re sat in a beautiful garden in the middle of Hull, and it’s a bright blue sky so we’re all hoping to get a tan as we go through this conversation [laughs]. We wanted to talk about working from home as that’s been a massive theme for people over recent months, for obvious reasons, and we thought best to do it actually in someone’s home, or in their garden at least, socially distanced and following all of those regulations. But, wanting to discuss what are the challenges of working from home, what works in terms of being at home, but also being managed at home, and all of those kinds of themes, really.

So I’m joined today by two different people. So Lianne Moore who is a contact officer in the force control room, and I’m going to ask you what that means in a minute, Lianne, so hello. And also DCI Pete Thorp from the protecting vulnerable people unit who’s going to be discussing things from a managerial perspective. Welcome, Pete.

Pete: Hello.

Alexis: Hi.

Lianne: Hello.

Alexis: Hiya. OK, so Lianne, just to come to you first, just introduce what you do and what your job – what’s the difference between what you were doing before at work, if you like, and what you’re doing at home?

Lianne: OK. I’ve worked for the organisation for almost eight years now and I’m in the force control room on the crime resolution team. So basically, our job is to create crime reports when an offence has been committed, so you’ve got your details of the MO, of the circumstances surrounding the offence, the victims, suspects, witnesses, and an action plan on obviously what evidence we’ve got, lines of inquiry, and what we’re going to do with that. We refer the crime reports to our crime management unit. The sergeant reviews and allocates it to an officer to investigate. We also take 101 and 999 calls but there’s a lot of admin involved in our job as well. So obviously, working from home, I haven’t been able to take the calls, I’ve focused more on the admin side of our job.

Alexis: Did you ever work from home before lockdown?

Lianne: No. No, I’ve never worked from home in any job [laughs]. So it was –

Alexis: It’s all new.

Lianne: – it transitioned, yeah, it was quite – it’s been positive, but it’s been a little challenging and it’s had its moments as well. But I think I’ve adapted pretty well, to be fair, under the circumstances. Yeah.

Alexis: So what’s your experience been of working from home? Because I know a lot of people across the force have had to do that probably for the first time. What’s your experience been?

Lianne: It’s been a positive experience, but I will say that I have had my moments, mainly because, well, I didn’t get a choice in the matter. Because I have a condition with my immune system, I’m on the shielding high-risk list, in that category. So I was instructed to stay at home for 12 weeks and work from home if I can. So to be honest, I’m just lucky and fortunate that I’m in a job where there is a heavy amount of admin and I can work from home. So when we went into lockdown I was provided with a laptop probably about three days later, and initially I kind of thought, “Mm, this is quite different. I’ve never worked from home before.” And I thought, “Do you know? Embrace it. It’s a change.” I like the variation. So yeah, it was OK at first but then I think after a few weeks, I did kind of start missing a few things, yeah.

Alexis: People or just ... ?

Lianne: A lot of things. I missed just getting ready for work, putting my uniform on.

Alexis: The ritual of leaving the house.

Lianne: Yeah. Just putting my uniform on. I still even now get dressed, but I’d be putting my t-shirt and shorts out [laughs]. I still do my hair, and I’m still having my hair in a bun, and I’d still put a bit of makeup on, I’d still do all those things. I know it makes me sound daft, but it’s what made me happy, and I needed to get in the work mode. And I missed just doing my packed lunch and driving to work, and then just being in the office environment, and that banter you have with your colleagues, and all the jokes, and missing people. And yeah, a lot of things.

Alexis: It sounds like that, kind of, routine –

Lianne: Yeah, I like routine –

Alexis: Yeah [laughs].

Lianne: I like structure. I like structure and routine.

Alexis: Yeah, and when you haven’t got that structure in the same way, it can really throw you, can’t it? But it feels like you kind of kept hold of some of it, as much as you could.

Lianne: I think one good thing is that I followed my own shift pattern with my team, because I work four on, four off, and I continued to do that. One of my colleagues said to me, “So long as you just put in the hours, can you just do 40 hours a week just as and when you want?” And I said, “Oh, no. No, no [laughs], you follow your team.” So I will do four on, four off, and I’ll do maybe seven/seven, Monday, Tuesday, and then I’ll do my two late shifts, say for example 12/12. Checking in with my supervisor during the shift via email or telephone call. And I liked that, because I was working with my team, and I was following that same structure, and I like that, that stability.

Alexis: That sounds like that was really important, that you were still connected to the team that you worked with all the time.

Lianne: Yes, definitely. Definitely. To be honest, I wouldn’t have really liked it or felt as comfortable if they said, “Look, just do your hours,” and I’d be a bit like, “so what am I doing? When am I doing ... ?” I liked that, that they said, “Right, follow your team and do your shift pattern,” yeah.

Alexis: Because actually, if someone had said, “Oh, no, just do your 40 hours over the course of the week,” you’re out of step then with everybody else, aren’t you? It makes you even more different to what’s going on elsewhere in the team.

Lianne: Yeah. And then you would cross with different line managers, different supervisors, and if I had a problem, I’d think, “Right, well who’s on duty?” whereas if I’m following my own team and aligned to my own line manager, if there’s any issues I can just email or ring her. So that’s a little bit of security, and I feel more comfortable doing it like that, yeah.

Pete: It’s really important, isn’t it, that you have that – because you have that bond with your supervisor anyway? They know you, they know your quirks, and they know your strengths and weaknesses almost, and what your issues are. So being able to have that continued contact with your supervisor has clearly been really important, hasn’t it?

Lianne: It has for me, definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

Alexis: How would you say from a line management point of view, you were saying that your line manager’s Maxine, before we started recording?

Lianne: Yes.

Alexis: What was your experience of being managed through the process? Because I think from my understanding, and we work with a lot of officers and staff, is that there’s some real different experiences across the force, really.

Lianne: I think there is. Yeah, my line manager, Maxine, I think she’s been incredibly supportive to me. I think she’s really gone above and beyond to make sure I’m all right and just to check on my welfare, and look after me [laughs]. But she’s also trusted me as well, that she’s sort of said, “I’ll leave it to you. You know what you’re doing. You like doing the emails. You colour them all up in purple and put your vin number on, your collar number on. But, any problems, let me know.” So she trusts me, and there’s a mutual respect there.

But she has really looked after me as well, and I think – for example, it was my birthday in lockdown and she got everyone to sign the card, and posted it through. There was charity fundraising events, and she’s bought me, like, the party platter of food [laughs].

Alexis: Always welcome.

Lianne: Oh, yeah. Do you know, I’ve put on over a stone in lockdown, and I’m like, “These buns [unintelligible 00:07:47] Maxine.” I haven’t been able to go to the gym for months. That’s probably bothered me more. And when a girl was leaving as well, and they had another buffet and brought food round, and other line manager haven’t done that for other people. And when I was talking to another girl working from home and I said, “Oh, yeah, Maxine’s done this, and it’s lovely. It brought a tear to my eye, they haven’t forgotten about me,” and then she replied saying, “I didn’t even know they were having a fundraiser. I didn’t get no party food.” I kind of felt a bit guilty and a bit mean that I’d said something then, and I thought ... Do you know?

Alexis: So there seems to be different approaches across different managers, different teams, but it sounds like it was really important to be involved in the things that were happening for the rest of the team, and that acknowledgement that you were still part of it, even though physically you can’t be there.

Lianne: Yeah. And when we came out of lockdown I was still working from home. They were going out for tea, and just going to sit outside a pub and have something to eat, and Alice sent me an email including me in the email, and I replied saying, “Thank you for including me, but I think under the circumstances, I’m not going to be able to come, and I’m still working from home.” And she was like, “Honestly, I knew you were going to say that but I just didn’t want you to feel left out.” And I thought, “Oh, that’s real nice, yeah.”

Alexis: Really nice to be considered and included in everything.

Lianne: Yeah. Yeah, and things like that, really, it does mean a lot, that you’re still thought of, you’re not forgotten about. So yeah, it does, and especially then when you talk to other people working from home, and they say, “Oh, I didn’t know there was a buffet. Oh, I didn’t know they was having a night out.” Things like that. So it’s not the same on every team.

Alexis: Yeah, and I suppose eventually, when you can go back in, you want to have been able to have tracked alongside the team as to what they’ve been doing and what events have been happening, and be part of those conversations as well, because otherwise you can be very separate, so that feeling of being isolated from the team all the way through, and then how do you rebuild that when you get back in, as well.

Lianne: To be honest, I think because I’ve known them for quite a while, I think they’ll just be as welcoming and it’ll kind of just go back to how it was when I first went off and went and started working from home.

Pete: In some ways it’s almost like you haven’t left, isn’t it?

Lianne: Yeah.

Pete: Because of that level of support you’ve had, and engagement, and being included all the time in everything.

Lianne: Yeah. And to be honest, I’ve kept in touch with quite a lot of my colleagues via email, and even telephone call. A few of them have rang me, particularly on a late shift at maybe, like, ten, 11 o’ clock at night when it’s pretty quiet, and they’ve rang me, just like, “Hey, hiya. You all right?” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So yeah, we’ve still kept in touch. It’s not that I haven’t spoken or liaised with them or anything in months, because I have.

Alexis: One of the things you’d mentioned there was about feeling trusted, and I just wanted to pick that up with Pete, really, because I think trust is a big thing, isn’t it? Everyone’s had to start working from home, which probably wasn’t the pattern before, and you can fall into micromanaging somebody.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely. I think, when I think back to late March when everyone – when it all really broke properly and we were sending people home to work from home, certainly for me, one of the questions in my mind was, “Well, how’re we going to maintain our productivity, and how are we going to make sure the staff are working from home?” And almost having to take that leap of faith that, I always thought I could trust – I trusted my staff, almost, if you see what I mean, before this happened, and it really made me think, “Actually, well, you do trust them, so this is fine. This isn’t actually ... They’ve got the right equipment to do their job. Just let them get on with it.” Stop worrying about whether they’re going to be doing it or not, because they are.

And I think my wife has been working from home all the way through this process as well, and I think that trust thing is so important that, as an organisation, that we have to be really clear that, “Yeah, we do trust you.” And I think that’s come – that message has come actually, for me, from Humberside Police to the people working, that we do trust you, actually. But as part of that, there has to be that level of engagement from – like, Maxine sounds like an absolutely fantastic line manager who’s really done what we’d want all our line managers to do in that situation.

She’s kept an eye on you, she’s looked after you, she’s kept you informed, you’re in the loop of what’s going on, you’ve not felt isolated, because it can be a really lonely experience, can’t it, working from home? And having that pressure, added pressure thinking, “Well, I have been trusted, so actually I’m going to work my – I am going to work eight hours solid now. I’m not going to leave this computer, and I’m going to go all the way through.” That’s unrealistic. That doesn’t happen at work, so why would it happen at home?

Alexis: No, and I think that work ethic starts to kick in, doesn’t it, that we almost ... ?

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: I know, even for myself, it’s almost like I’ve got to show that I’m here and I’m sat here and I’m working.

Pete: Yeah, I’m working hard.

Alexis: Yeah.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo and Humberside Police.

Lianne: I think, though, because with the job that I do, there’s so much admin, there’s emails when a member of the public submits a report online, the emails from other police forces, from bobbies. There’s the logs that we’re got to do, when we go through the logs and create crime reports, and all the crime reports that officers submit to our department that we then check and then refer back to the crime management unit. So there’s that much admin, and to be honest, I kind of think to myself, “My supervisor, my line manager does trust me, but at the end of the day she could easily just put my collar number in, my force identification number, and see what I’ve done for the last five hours.” So she could check that if she wanted to, so you couldn’t get away with it, not doing anything. But I think when I go into our emails, we tend to flag them all different colours so then people know who’s dealing with what, and I just flag them all purple, and she’s like, “Lianne, you’ve flagged 20 purple there. All you all right doing them all?”

Alexis: What are you doing?

Lianne: And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll deal with all these, it’s fine.” She’s like, “I can give some to other people,” and I’m like, “no, I’m doing them. No.”

Alexis: So for you, is that about wanting to make sure you’re seen to be still contributing as much as possible?

Lianne: Yes, and I think it’s maybe kind of like – I don’t know – because I’m so conscientious at work, I kind of still want to prove that, I may be working from home, but I’m still working as I would, probably even harder because I want to prove that I’m pulling my weight and I’m not logging on and then going having a cup of tea, sunbathing or whatever. I’m still doing my bit.

Pete: I think it’s great to have that conscientiousness, isn’t it? But equally from the organisational point of view, and it comes back to that issue about trust, that really people shouldn’t feel that pressure because actually, if we get it right, which it sounds like with Maxine and you. Lianne, is right, that they know what you’re doing, they’re more than confident that you are doing the work that’s required to be done, and you’re not just sat sunbathing or whatever it is you might be doing, then ... But it’s people having the confidence, I guess, to see that, that yeah, that’s all right, actually.

I mean, one of the things we did within my area of the force was, for the staff that were working agile or working from home or shielding, was to sort of formalise some – every day, I’ll have had like an hour dial-in on Skype that was an open invite to anybody, and it was like a coffee morning, but it was in the afternoon and there wasn’t any coffee [laughs].

Alexis: Sounds rubbish, Pete.

Pete: It wasn’t the best coffee morning, to be fair. But at least it was an opportunity to say to people, “Look, it’s all right. Have half an hour of just, let’s have a catch-up and a general conversation about what’s going on.”

Alexis: And I think that actually creates – it gives people permission to do that, whereas you might not give yourself that permission at home.

Pete: Yeah. No.

Alexis: And kind of, head down, working through things, and for acknowledging that we need to just check in with each other as people, not just as the job.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely.

Alexis: Because I think what I noticed over the lockdown period was that conversations became very task orientated and kind of, “We’ve got to get this done,” and it was – I don’t know, it was just almost like the people side of it can fall by the wayside because we’ve got a job to do,” but it’s factoring it in. It’s actually having to consciously factor it in because you don’t just bump into somebody in the office or in the corridor, or get a visual of how they’re doing, you’ve actually got to create opportunities for that.

Pete: Yeah, and I hope, actually, when we finally get back to whatever the normal is going to be, that a lot of our line managers are going to be operating more like Maxine, in that they’ve got more of that understanding of the personal element of supervising someone, and what that means, and how important that is.

Lianne: Yeah. And what I was going to – it’s something I just remembered, actually – as far as I’m aware, that only Maxine has done this, the other supervisors haven’t, but she actually went round the office – it was on a late shift, so it wasn’t when we were busy during the day, it was probably about 11 o’ clock at night, but she went round the office and got each member of staff just o say something, like just to say, “Hi, Lianne, we miss you,” or tell a joke or something, and it was only for three minutes.

And so she went round everybody, and they were all waving and just saying, “Do you know. Lianne, we really miss you? We hope you’re OK,” and telling jokes. And she sent me it on WhatsApp, and I opened it and I watched it. And I’m normally quite strong-minded and a bit of a tough cookie, and it actually made me cry. And she rang me and she was like, “What did you think?” And I went, “[Unintelligible 00:17:17]. Maxine!” And she was like, “Are you all right? That was meant to make you smile.” And I was like, “It was lovely. It was lovely, and I just miss you all.” And it was just so kind.

Alexis: That’s really thoughtful.

Lianne: And then I rang her the next day and I was like, “I feel real stupid now, I broke down a bit over that.”

Alexis: But I think that you’re in an emotional place already, so it doesn’t take much to tip you over the edge with that, does it, just because things are so different?

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: But visually seeing everybody kind of reminds you also what you’re missing, in a way.

Lianne: Yeah. And I think there’s a guy called John, and we have banter and we bicker, and we’re like an old married couple, and we really annoy each other sometimes, and do you know what? He’s probably the most helpful, and if I’ve had a quick question, he’s like, “I’ll do it for you. I’ll help you. I’ll sort it, don’t worry.” And he’s rang me a couple of times just to see if I’m OK, and I’m like, we don’t actually really dislike each other, we’re actually –

Alexis: The guy’s all right [laughs].

Lianne: [Unintelligible 00:18:13] as much as I bicker with John, I said, “He’s actually been really supportive.” And do you know what? Yeah, I just missed all that. I really have, and I think I don’t know about everybody else, or people on your team, Pete, but I just think I’ve got a nice team and a great supervisor, so yeah, I do have my moments when I’ve maybe felt a bit down, but at least I’ve got a job. It’s a job I enjoy. I didn’t lose my home in the floods. I really can’t complain, so yeah.

Alexis: There’s always going to be ups and downs, isn’t there? And I suppose it’s the fact that you’ve had that support that means that there’s probably been less downs than maybe there would’ve been had you not had that.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: So that’s the benefit of having the support, isn’t it, and the manager who’s checking in and just seeing how you are, never mind anything else, never mind workload or anything like that?

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: It’s just, it was –

Lianne: No, and I think as well, even pretty much nearly every shift, Maxine will email me and say, “Thank you so much for all your hard work. You really have ploughed through those logs, or all those emails. I really appreciate it. Speak soon.” And things like that really do make a difference as well. It’s really nice to feel valued, and just to receive that thank you email. It does. It means a lot.

Alexis: It’s that old thing, isn’t it, thank you doesn’t have to cost anything, does it? It’s just a nice thing to receive.

Lianne: Yeah, it doesn’t. But even – because I report directly to Maxine – Liz is our big boss, she’s head of department, and she’s emailed me quite a few times as well, just asking me if I’m all right, “Just checking on you. Is everything OK? How’re you coping? Any problems, let me know, or speak to Maxine.” So even that, it’s just nice just to, when you log on, just to see an email, “Are you OK?”

Alexis: Yeah. Someone’s thinking about me.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: You talked at the beginning about having been shielded.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: Do you think that’s added another layer on? Because obviously everyone was working from home a lot, but the shielding part of it is another element.

Lianne: Yeah. Yeah, because I didn’t have a choice in the matter. When I received the letter, I was instructed to do so, and it was a list of instructions all what you can and cannot do. And you cannot leave your home, and you must get your family or friends to do shopping, or ring your local authority, and I just thought I’m so grateful that I’ve got a close family that all really pulled together and helped me. And mum, dad, brother, sister all live nearby, so they did my shopping. And I hadn’t – to be honest, I’m just so glad I had my work to do because I think if I didn’t have a job for 12 weeks, I’d have gone mad [laughs].

Alexis: [Unintelligible 00:20:53].

Lianne: Well, to be honest, I was finding things to do on my rest days, on my four days off, decorating the house. I love reading and never find the time to read, so I was like. “Right, I’m going to do some reading and things like that,” but I’m just so glad I had my work.

Alexis: Yeah, because you’re in the same environment all the time, and I think that’s quite difficult when you’re shielding, that you’re in your home when you’re at work but also when you’re off work.

Lianne: Yeah. Yeah, it does get a bit tedious and boring [laughs].

Alexis: Yeah. Yeah, exactly because you can’t even – I don’t know, I mean, some of the things we’ve been helping people with when they work from home is how do they move from being in work mode into home mode? And people who aren’t shielding were able to go for a walk at the end of their working day, and process what’s happened, come back, pack everything away or cover it up, and then be at home. But when you’re shielding, you’re in a different position, you’re in different circumstances to that.

Lianne: Yeah, because I do like change and variation, and at first it was kind of nice working from home. It was something different. I’ve never done it before. But then after a few weeks, and being instructed that you can’t go out and things like that, but I’m lucky I’ve got a large back garden to play ball with my dogs, but when you’re coming from a work day, it’s nice to go for a walk with your dog, and go and clear your head and things like that. And being in the same environment, yeah, that did kind of get to me a little bit.

Pete: I’ve not thought of that simple thing, actually, because I have that routine, where I always like to go for a walk after work, and it is that clearing your head space moment.

Lianne: Yeah.

Pete: And I’m not quite sure, actually, I’ve not thought how fortunate I am, I guess, that I can still do that, actually.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: Yeah. It’s having space, it’s actually being able to get out of that place you’ve been sitting all day, and I think it’s different when you’re shielding, that you haven’t got that opportunity. Well, you’ve been told you can’t, and I think actually having the choice taken away is quite tough, when you’re somebody who’s used to managing your own life and doing things the way you want to.

Lianne: Yeah. The thing is, I went from obviously going to work in the office, and then on my rest days, I’d be going to the gym, I’d be walking the dogs, I’d look after my niece and nephew. I’m incredibly close to my four year old niece, and I couldn’t do any of that, bothered about the fact I’ve put on over a stone [laughs]. I don’t normally look this fat.

Alexis: You look great, because I –

Lianne: [Unintelligible 00:23:04]. Ah, there’s so much that’s bothered me, but I kind of – there’s nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do, so I just had to get on with it, didn’t I?

Alexis: I know some of the people I’ve worked with over the lockdown period, who have been shielding, they’ve felt, I suppose, quite defined by the fact that they had an illness that most people didn’t know about, and that they would just function every day. They were on medication, or they were having treatment for something, but not everybody would know that.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: And then suddenly it’s obvious that there’s something else going on, because they’re not able to leave the house, and especially if they’re working in a business or they’ve got a team they’re running or whatever, they’re more limited in how they do that. How did you feel about that? Did that affect you?

Lianne: Well, to be honest, all my family and my friends and my colleagues, they all know about my immune condition, so to be honest, when I first started working from home, that wasn’t a shock to anybody. Everyone was aware of that. And even girls on other teams as well, they know, and even they’ve been incredibly helpful as well, with things. And I don’t mind people knowing, to be fair, because then I think well, there’s no sort of questions then, “Oh, how come she’s still working from home?” And I’ve said, “Well, because my consultant advised that it would be best to, to continue working from home for the time being.”

Alexis: Have you got a timeframe on that, or is it just open-ended at the moment?

Lianne: It’s indefinitely, at the minute because I received another letter saying, “From the 1st August you’re still considered high risk and you should continue to work from home if you can. If you can, then you should only return if it’s COVID-safe. And I thought, “Well, I can, so am I still going to continue to do so?” And I spoke to my consultant and he said, “I’d recommend that you continue to work from home until the end of September and then we’ll review again.” So yeah.

Alexis: And the deadlines keep moving, and that mentally can be quite tough, can’t it?

Lianne: Yeah. And to be honest, I’m glad I can get out and about now, because I’ve got a young German Shepherd who’s only four, and I can walk for miles with him, and I can go on my push bike now as well. So actually doing things like that, that’s going to improve my mental health.

Alexis: Yeah, definitely.

Lianne: Rather than just being stuck in.

Pete: Absolutely.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: Yeah. Pete, how do you think it’s kind of – I know we don’t know yet from a COVID point of view what long term things are going to be, but how do you think managers can continue to support people who might need to – might have people who’re still having to work from home, or having to, I guess, be almost operating as if we’ve just come out of lockdown, can take the dog for a walk and things, but can’t actually come into the office? It’s a longer term –

Pete: Yeah, and I think really –

Alexis: Have we got seagulls going on now?

Lianne: Yes.

Pete: Apart from moving to the seaside –

Alexis: I don’t think we’re even [unintelligible 00:25:56] [laughs]. They’ve got plenty to say today.

Pete: They have. I think they’ve just answered my question. I think really it’s about those key things that we’ve talked about in this conversation, really, and the way that Maxine has managed Lianne. And I think you look back and there is that level of trust there, and there is that level of confidence and communication and engagement and inclusivity. Is that a word?

Alexis: Yeah, it is.

Pete: So for me, the fact that, yeah, the lockdown has eased, that doesn’t mean you can come back to work, that doesn’t change the parameters that you can come back to work, but actually you can still do a number of things safely like cycling, walking the dog, whatever it might be, and it’s how we, I guess, reconcile ourselves to the fact that that doesn’t still mean that it’s safe to come to work. And actually, if there’s the ability to allow you to continue to work from home, still be productive, to still support the organisation and still do your job, then that’s the position we need to adopt, isn’t it?

Or think that – and not get too hung up on the fact that – you can imagine some people, some cynical person somewhere will be sat there, “Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with her anymore. She can go and walk the dog, and she can go on her bike and go to the shops or whatever. She needs to get her bum back to work,” and it’s like, “well, no, actually. Everyone’s got a unique set of circumstances.” I think it’s really interesting that I hadn’t thought about, when you talked about people knowing about your condition, and it’s almost like you’ve been outed. So if you are in that situation where it’s slightly different for you [unintelligible 00:27:28] where everyone knows, or your colleagues know about your situation, but if you wanted to keep that really private, and then suddenly you can’t, then that must be really difficult, I think.

Alexis: I think for some of the conversations I’ve had over the time, it’s kind of affected people’s identity because I was talking to somebody who had an immune condition that nobody knew about. Their manager knew about it. this wasn’t in the police; it was somewhere else. So they were aware, but suddenly the team of people this person manages were aware, and then suddenly the wider family knew, and you know, that then meant she had something else that she had to manage, because she was managing other people’s fears about her condition, where actually, she was just looking after herself, doing what she’d been instructed to do, and she’s lived with it for years and years. So yeah, I think it creates another ripple effect that you might not necessarily know unless you’ve been in that circumstance.

Pete: Definitely. And I guess if you’re managing someone in that situation, there’s that need to have that real sensitivity, isn’t it, about well, how do we control that message, I guess, to other people, and making sure that if you’re in that situation, Lianne, where you didn’t want people to know, then actually how do we tell, inform your colleagues or ... ? Because you kind of have to put something out there, otherwise people’s imagination will run away with them, wouldn’t it?

Lianne: Well, I guess as well that I didn’t want people to think that I’m having any sort of special treatment, because I’m not. I’m not working from home out of choice or because it’s been advised. It’s because I’ve been instructed. So I’m not receiving anything different; it’s because of what the Government have said. So yeah, so that’s probably another reason as well.

Alexis: Yeah. I was just thinking, when you said about the instruction, you’ve had the letter, there isn’t any control, there’s no choice; actually what is in your control, I guess, as somebody at work, is to be able to give the message to your manager about what you do want to be put out there, or what you’re happy to be shared and that kind of thing. Because it’s that bit about, “This bit I can’t control, but what can I control?”

Pete: Yeah, you can control the message, can’t you?

Alexis: Yeah, you can, and that maybe helps a bit, just to feel like you’re not completely up against it.

Lianne: Yeah.

Alexis: OK. Is there anything else, in terms of tips and strategies that we haven’t covered, that you think would be useful for people who may be listening, in terms of if they’re having to work from home, or shielding or managing somebody? Is there anything we haven’t covered?

Pete: I think certainly from a managing someone point of view, just be like Maxine [laughs].

Alexis: Yeah. Be more Maxine, that’s all [unintelligible 00:29:59] hash tag.

Lianne: You’re probably going to say to me, “Ah, you’re just saying all this.” But do you know what? I’ve worked for the organisation for nearly eight years. If I was not happy, I wouldn’t have stayed that long. And like I say, I know it maybe sounds a bit corny, but I just thought, “When I received that letter, I thought I’m not going to be able to go out, I’m not going to be able to see family and friends, and go to the gym, and do a lot of things that I love doing.” But then I thought to myself, “Do you know? I didn’t lose my home in the floods; I’ve got a job. It’s a job I enjoy. I can crack on with all the admin. I’ve got all the support of my family and friends.” So really, think about what you have got.

Alexis: Yeah, and I think that’s a real key point, actually, that you can be upset and feel quite low about what you can’t do, and what you haven’t got.

Lianne: Yeah [laughs].

Alexis: But you can also feel quite grateful for what you have got, and it sounds like you were kind of like, “Right, hang on, let’s just put this into some kind of sensible rational thinking that, yes, that’s been taken away, but actually, this is what I have got to be grateful for.”

Lianne: Yeah. I always – and I know – but you probably think it sounds corny, but I do think to myself, instead of thinking about what’s depressing, try thinking about what’s a blessing, and what you have got. And I think I’ve got a lot of family and friends that all live nearby, my job, my manager, my colleagues. So yeah, I have had a couple of moments when I have felt a bit down, but I’ve got all that support, and that has really meant a lot.

Alexis: It made a big difference.

Lianne: Absolutely, yeah. And I’m grateful that the organisation has supported me in this way. I don’t know whether they’d have done that for other people as well. When the Government said about returning to work, I’ve got friends that work – I won’t mention any names, but work for different organisations, and felt the pressure to come back. And if they’ve got a medical condition or pregnant and they haven’t felt comfortable, and then I’ve turned round and said, “Well, actually, my organisation are fully supporting me, and I’m going to continue to work from home for the time being.” So I don’t know if every organisation – they’re not all like that. They’re not all as supportive.

Alexis: No, they’re really not, and it sounds like you’ve had a really good experience, actually, although I know things have been tough as well.

Lianne: Yeah [laughs].

Alexis: They could have been much tougher, I suppose, if you’d put yourself in a position that you’ve seen your friends in, and things like that. It would’ve been very different, wouldn’t it?

Lianne: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Alexis: OK, thanks ever so much for meeting with me, both of you. We’ve done OK with the background noise. I think we’ve had a car, dogs [unintelligible 00:32:25] and seagulls [laughs]. Not bad. So thanks very much for joining me.

Lianne: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Alexis: Thank you for listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast. It’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you subscribe you’ll be notified of the next episode as soon as it’s available. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts, so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training, or Oscar Kilo.

Episode 3: Managing change responsively

In this episode, Alexis talks with ACC Paul Anderson and ACO Nancie Shackleton about the challenges of COVID-19 and supporting staff in these changes, learning as an organisation, and the importance of fostering a learning culture.

Podcast transcript

Keeping the Peace Series 1, Episode 3 - Managing change responsively

Alexis: Hello and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today, we're going to be talking to Assistant Chief Constable Paul Anderson and Assistant Chief Officer Nancie Shackleton from Humberside Police. I'm really excited to have this conversation. We're coming out the back of COVID-19, we're coming out of lockdown, and we've just had quite a difficult few months which I know you've had to step up and manage an awful lot of people and an awful lot of the public as well around how they've been managing themselves. So, the topic of today's podcast is around change and how we manage change, how we help people to engage with change.

Firstly, before I start, I'd like you to introduce you yourselves and tell people what assistant chief constable and assistant chief officer means, if we can start with that. So, I'm going to come to you first, Paul, if that's OK?

Paul: Yeah, pleasure.

Alexis: What does that really mean in terms of your role and what is it you do at Humberside Police?

Paul: Well, I'm the assistant chief constable for local policing, so I oversee all the elements of local policing within Humberside Police. So, it's what it says on the tin, it’s the visible aspect of policing. It's divisions, response, neighbourhood olicing. It does incorporate the CID side of things, but also under my portfolios I've got departments such as community safety and the force control room, so our first contact from someone picking up the phone and calling us and then from the officers, for the staff going out, and then giving them that service.

Alexis: Brilliant. OK. Thank you. And how long have you been at Humberside Police for?

Paul: I've been here, bar two weeks, almost exactly a year.

Alexis: Oh right, OK.

Paul: So, it's nearly my one year anniversary. It's my birthday coming up.

Alexis: OK. Thank you for that. Nancie, how about you? What about your role?

Nancie: Yeah, so I'm a civilian member of staff, I'm not a warranted police officer, and there are five of us in the chief officer team, so that there's Paul and other colleagues who do that. So, what I'm responsible for is all the support departments. So, I'm in charge of HR or people, finance and money, IT, estate, and cars.

Alexis: Oh, not much.

Nancie: Not much.

Paul: So, you don't upset her if you want anything. You’ve got to keep Nancie on side.

Alexis: Yeah. You've got to keep Nancie on side at all times if you want anything.

Nancie: It's been said.

Alexis: That's great. Thank you for that. So, tell me about your experiences over the last few months. How have you felt things have gone in terms of managing that change? And if I can come to you first, Paul.

Paul: I mean, you touched right at the beginning about COVID. I mean, I've been a police officer for 29 years, and this one's been a new one on me. I mean, we've looked in terms of pandemic flu to prepare for such things for years. This is the first time it's become a reality. I have to say, only personally, it's new, it's been really, really challenging, but in terms of dealing with something that's different it's that uncertainty. I’ve felt that uncertainty personally, and it has had a real operational focus.

In some terms that's really, really good because our staff have been wonderful. It's given them the ability to focus, and really there's like a moral emphasis there because we're doing it to save people's lives. However – and there is a however – everybody, each and every one of us has had to significantly change the way we work.

And I mean almost described it at the beginning of “we're coming to the end of that,” but it's not really the end and that's the problem. It is the uncertainty word again.

So, for that, that would be the key thing for me in this period. People have been wonderful, but it's been a new way of working, we've had to adapt our physical practices, our operational practices, and coming in and not quite knowing something that's been familiar for you for a long period of time, that's unnerving.

Alexis: Mm. I think one of the things I've really thought about with COVID, and I've seen this with officers that we support, is that there isn't an endpoint. So, normally when you are looking at operations, you would be looking at a period of time to cover and what you’ve got to do in order to get past that period of time. Whereas with this, because it’s ongoing and we don’t know what that means and what that looks like, there isn’t an endpoint, so it's just open ended, so you’re constantly having to adapt and change all the time in order to be able to manage that or whatever that might bring, I guess.

Paul: I mean, absolutely. But I mean on the subject of dealing with change, people want to know what that change is going to be and what the timescale is going to be, and this is one of the most uncertain issues of this period because we can't provide that to our staff, we can't provide that to ourselves. I mean two key things that spring to my mind at the moment, right at the beginning from the police officer side of things we jumped into what we call a battle rhythm, but a very formal operational way of doing something.

Now in the police service, that's great, we love a crisis, but we are really good at dealing with something like that. However, and the people that have really stepped up, it's been the police staff members, and I'm really proud to be able to say this because it's the first time I've seen in my career, and I mean Nancie will probably have a view on this, it would be quite interesting for the discussion, but in some aspects the police staff members have had to step within the operational arena and this operational battle rhythm from daily meetings, doing things outside normal terms of working, normal hours of working, but it's for a sustained period.

It was really difficult at the beginning because it was new to a lot of people, and having to find new ways to work. So, that adds to the whole rich mix of the picture, I guess.

Alexis: And I suppose that bringing the officers and the staff together into that battle rhythm, because it is unusual, it's created maybe more connection between them maybe at times, would you say? Or has there been – because I suppose the staff side of it, there’s always very defined roles, isn’t there, in terms of what warranted officers can do and what the staff can do. Do you think there's been a sense of bringing those people together in managing COVID-19 and the fallout from it?

Paul: It's one of the best examples I've ever seen of one team, I’ll leave it at that. It’s been a good experience. There’s been ups and downs within it, and individuals, some people have really found points of stress. And once then we get the familiar way of working which we've adapted over the past three to four months then things smooth down. However, once again, it's that uncertainty going into the future. We could be looking at outbreak management, and it's highly likely looking to how things are developing around the country.

So that uncertainty will all continue, but it has brought people together. And what it's also done is engendered an understanding from police officers to police staff roles and vice versa, because one of the real key points, the thing that was really important to us as an organisation through the whole COVID situation, was looking after our police officers and police staff and from a real operational perspective. Because we wanted our staff to be healthy, we wanted to protect them, because if we didn't and we lost great swathes of our staff, we wouldn't be able to undertake our key operational role, our very purpose for being there.

So that focus on HR, the processes, the welfare, and the support, if anything it's the police officers that have learnt more.

Alexis: Mm. Mm. I think I can really relate to that idea about the battle rhythm. I know some of the officers that we help with therapy just stopped straight away, like “No, we've got job to do, and we've got to go off and do that,” and the staff were the same that we support, a real change in focus and needing to get – almost like get – “We've got to get our heads down, we've got work to do.”

But we also saw that obviously there's a lot of people having difficulties at home because everyone at home's affected by this as well. It wasn't just that there's a particular part society, everyone was going through the same thing. So, if I just come to you, Nancie, about that in terms of managing the people side of things, how have you felt that's gone over the last few months?

Nancie: So, I think there was both a professional response and a personal response, you’re absolutely right. So, professionally, everybody was doing a day job anyway, and then you had a layer of additionality that went on top of that and that was responding to COVID. So, whether you were working in the estates department, and we had work out how it's safe, put in one-way systems, entry/egress routes and things, whether it's how I kept my garages running 24/7, so we altered the shift patterns so that my cars that get damaged, we can get them back out on the roads, et cetera.

And just like everybody else, we were waiting for government policy at five o'clock on a press announcement and having to respond to it overnight and put it into place whilst making sure IT got rolled out and everybody got a laptop at home. So, if you like, professionally there was a layer of additionality put on top straight away, then you're absolutely right, there's a personal effect.

So, you've got people who have got caring responsibilities, there are people who are fearful because they've got underlying medical conditions, what does shielding mean. Then there's this question about how do you work from home, particularly if you've got little kids running in and out of the room.

Alexis: Yeah, schools are closed.

Nancie: How are you doing that as well as homeschooling, doing my day job, being on a Skype or a Microsoft Teams, doing some bit of caring, making sure everybody gets fed at 12 o'clock. And I think the fatigue of that, because home wasn't normal, work wasn't normal, and my weekend wasn't normal, and after a certain point the novelty of that wore off really clearly, but there was no escape from it because it was there, and it still is here.

And I think at the moment we've almost got a false sense of security. Just because government’s released some lockdown measures, people think it's gone away. It hasn't, we slowed it down because we all stayed at home, and we've got more coming. And I think the culture of the police, we’re great at responding. There's very few, probably other than the military, who can respond as quickly and as disciplined as we can. What we struggle with is maintaining it 365 days a year for several years potentially. And this for me is what is the slow burn.

And I think it's that fatigue on a personal level, whether it's your professional life, your work life, your home life, or what I want to do on a weekend. You know, I want to get on a plane and go to a sunny climate and I can't.

Alexis: No.

Nancie: And it's all those things that I think lead to frustration and how you have to look after yourself to stay well in a really unnatural environment.

Alexis: Definitely. We work in a lot of different sectors and one of the things that we’ve found with a lot of people working from home is that you don't get that differentiation between your compartment of work and your compartment at home if you like. And you don't get that time to almost debrief, and change your mind set in your car journey from one place to another.

Nancie: Well, someone said to me the other day it's not working from home, it’s living at work.

Alexis: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it.

Nancie: And it is very different when you don't have that commute to go home, the chat when you’re … “How was your day?” “Well, you know how your day was because you were sat in the living room while I was sat in the study,” or whichever way around.

I was talking to a colleague who is working out of London, a very compressed space, it’s fine for me in a house where I've got spare rooms and things like that, but if your bedroom is your only space where you've got private time, you've got a communal kitchen, et cetera, it's very different and it's a layer that we've never had of stress around us personally.

Alexis: No, and you’ve never needed to be aware of it either because, as an employer if you like, you’re providing a working environment, aren't you, on a general day-to-day basis.

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: But when it's actually people working from home, we've had people who've been in apartments and actually set up a corner of their apartment with planting and a chair so they can actually go and sit somewhere different to have a break or have a coffee, because actually they're just in that environment all the time.

And as you say, you're going in and out of your different roles constantly as well. So, you might be parenting for five minutes there, and then you're straight into a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting, and then you’re back out again. And it's that fatigue, I think, that comes with the whole management of everything.

Nancie: And it's almost like we pretended that you didn't have a personal life. Whereas actually if you're on a Skype call and a two year old comes in and screams, “Mummy”, “daddy,” whatever, “I need the potty,” that's real life, isn't it? And for me that's just about, “OK, everybody, we only ever saw you as a work person, but now actually you're a family person as well.”

But equally we talk about everybody who's got somebody around them, there's also acute loneliness for me. So, if you live alone, how does that do it? If you've been working from home and you've had no social contact. So, I think you've got both ends of the scales to deal with here. You might have someone who feels too isolated and someone who's absolutely screaming “I could do with just five minutes by myself, do I need to go and sit in the car to achieve that?”

Alexis: Mm. Yeah. And that adrenaline that kicks in at the beginning to get that battle rhythm going and to be available, and to be able to function at that level, once that adrenaline starts to burn out and we start to see people feeling really fatigued and exhausted, that starts to impact, doesn't it, on what you can offer as a force. So, if I just come to you for a minute, Paul, how do you think that long term that's going to impact on the force and what they can – how you manage that really in terms of the offer and the service that you give the public.

Paul: Nancie raises a really good point in respect of, yeah, how we’ve adapted things. I mean she used the example of the meeting, so Microsoft Teams, or be it on Skype. Albeit I have to say I have found it quite amusing looking at a number of key partners’ houses now, and it's a bit like Lloyd Grossman and Through the Keyhole. So, there's some aspects that have been quite enjoyable.

But reflecting on that, we're humans, and as people we generally – not everybody, but in general terms, we gravitate towards other people, we like conversation. At first, the Skype meetings, the meetings on Microsoft Teams, life became really efficient. And looking back, all the things in some ways we wanted to rollout in terms of certain terms of IT and they seemed to take an age, the great thing, and one of the great things in COVID, it happened really, really quickly because it had to happen, so that’s a benefit.

However, what I have noticed as time's gone on there's – and I feel it occasionally as well, we are missing that social interaction, and the meetings, some of them become very functional, they do become very efficient, and so there's a danger there you end up doing back-to-back Skype meetings all day with no time to think.

Alexis: Yeah, and I think when you're actually checking in with people it has to almost be a conscious effort to do it on those platforms. It has to be a thought of, “I need to just see if that person's OK.”

Paul: Yeah.

Alexis: “Especially if you’re seeing a number of people on the screen as well, how you read what's going on for those different people if you’ve got them on that, or if you’re just using it without the video you lose a lot of communication, don't you, in those meetings.

Paul: You do, and as an organisation, our challenge, because I mean here we’re talking meetings that would happen at executive level, senior management, and partnership level, that's easier in some ways to understand, and understand the effect on people in your business, because you're dealing with a smaller amount of people.

But just looking into the operational units that sit under myself, for instance so take Hull, take North Bank, that’s a thousand people. And a thousand people don't dial in and Skype.

Alexis: No.

Paul: I mean, in terms of agile working, working from home, we've got over 500 people now who are working socially distanced and that's become quite nuanced, very effective in terms of the childcare arrangements, that flexibility, that's been really good. But the real challenge in the conversations we're having now is with our managers and supervisors, “Do you really know that person's OK,” before they're getting that interaction, that contact every day. And when you look into the whites of someone's eyes, that nonverbal communication, you can feel it if someone's not quite right. That. And I think the real danger for me is that could be lost.

And if this goes on to a real long-term way of doing business, I think we're going to really have to think maybe about a blended mix of rotating people into the workplace, out, and it's our responsibility to them as people.

Alexis: Yeah, it's keeping that going long term, isn't it? What does that look like and how can you adapt and keep adapting to keep those people engaged, I guess, and connected as well. You were talking about isolation, Nancie, and people being separate, and I think when people have been shielding as well there's that real sense of being defined by an illness that maybe doesn't get in the way on a general basis for some people, but it's how do you keep them connected to the organisation as well, isn't it, and actually what you're doing here and that they're valued, I suppose.

Nancie: Yeah, so we have done some messages out to people where we've thanked them and we've responded, and people have genuinely been touched by that, I think, that we do care about them, we are grateful for all the additional – all the discomfort they've had to go through to keep our service running, as well as in their private lives.

But I think it's those – I was laughing while Paul was talking, because if you don't put the cameras on and you're talking to a black screen with a load of dots on it, it is soul destroying. Quite often I go “Can I just ask proof of life? Is anybody out there? Or am I just talking to myself?” They don't always respond either.

Alexis: No.

Nancie: But so sometimes I've put the cameras on, and I know with my leadership team occasionally we’ll have lunch together. And I know it sounds daft, and we're probably both all slopping into a camera while we're eating whatever sandwich we're doing, but it's actually that communal thing of just, yeah, we're still on camera, but we're sat chatting over something to eat.

And I have a friend who is shielding, so I FaceTime her quite regular, and we cook dinner together. Obviously we're 80 miles apart, and to the point that I forget that she's on the camera. So, when she puts the kettle on I goes, “Oh, go on, yeah, can I have a tea as well?” And I feel like I’m going to have to drive to Leeds for that cup of tea if I really want one.

But it was so strange because I did drop some shopping off for her, and obviously I had to do it socially distanced, et cetera, but I remember thinking, “God, it's really weird to see you in 3D,” because I’d just got used to this flat image on the screen. And then to actually see her as a human being, I just remember noticing at the time thinking, “Oh, you look differently in 3D,” and I just thought what a bizarre thing to think.

Alexis: It's weird, isn't it? Because I went into a meeting. I'd been on doing Zooms and Teams for weeks and weeks, and went into a meeting with four other people, and I had a time- – I was waiting, there was a time delay, I was waiting for the video conferencing to catch up so that they could answer. And we were sat in the same room, and I thought, “God, I've become conditioned, in about three months, to wait for the response.” And I can't talk over them because I won't be able to hear them speaking back to me because of …

It's strange, isn't it, how we adapt to it? But actually, it also gets in the way of the communication aspect and it's a bit overwhelming when you do see people [unintelligible 00:18:22].

Nancie: But I think it's also how you stay well out of work, because quite a lot of people will socialise to stay well. They’ll go out for something to eat, they might meet at a gym class, et cetera. Suddenly you become very isolated in what are your traditional wellness, if you like, mechanisms, whether that’s going to a church, et cetera, etcetera. So, I think on a whole number of levels it has interrupted how you live your life and how you stay well throughout that time period.

Alexis: Mm. Mm. Definitely.

[00:18:47 - 00:18:50 - Music]

Alexis: You're listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo, and Humberside Police.

How do you feel as the future comes and we're adapting to what's going on that you will be able to manage that, or support and lead people, whilst those changes are ongoing?

Nancie: I think we've got to – we’re an organisation who will support, and obviously some people will engage with us, and some won’t. I think at the principle of this, people have to take some level of self-responsibility for their own wellness, and that’s easy to say, difficult to do.

And also find a way to say when they’re not OK and they do need our help, because some people won’t do it under those circumstances. And none of us know what the long-term effect is if we’re going to live in a pandemic for some time.

So, I think the usual things that you do to stay well that you may have adapted, so instead of going to the gym you might go out for a run or a walk or, et cetera, if you can't go to your church and pray you might be doing it just by yourself, et cetera, you will find ways that you have adapted.

And it’s about being consistent, because I know if I don’t eat right and I don't sleep enough, I then tend to get ill. And it's not a very complicated formula, so that takes care of me physically. How do I then do the stuff that's mentally and emotionally to stay well with that? And for those who have faith on top of that, you may have spirituality as well.

But for me it's ensuring that what we used to offer is still there. But I think what will be different for us as managers and leaders is noticing when people don't look OK and aren't able to say that they're not OK, but we notice something's different. And, as you say, it's really hard to do that on Microsoft Teams.

Alexis: Mm. Absolutely. Do you think that longer term that the training that those officers and staff you've got in leadership and management roles is going to need to adapt in order to be able to take that into account?

Nancie: I do, because I think we will become less human; I think we will become more transactional because of the way we communicate, and all of that non-verbal stuff that you can pick up in a room, if you've just seen it in 2D it's really hard to read it, particularly if someone's not got their camera on.

Alexis: Mm. Definitely.

Nancie: And that's where it is knowing that voice, that response, seeing somebody's email and thinking “Oh, that’s a bit sharper than normal, what’s up there? I need to put a call in.” But I'm encouraging people, if you are going to work, et cetera, checking in with people on the phone. Please don’t keep sending me another email, I’ve got loads of those. So how is it that you ultimately show people you care and really mean that you do care, because people know when it's just a ticky box that this is me doing my bit for management responsibility. They need to feel that you care.

Alexis: Yeah. It’s that human-to-human bit, isn't it, that's really important.

Nancie: Mm.

Alexis: Paul, I think for me, there's something about officers asking for help and staff asking for help. Notoriously, I guess historically, that wouldn't be something that would happen because there would be a peer-to-peer support and conversation, there would be a debrief maybe. So, how do you think you can encourage people to step forward and ask for help as a team, as a leadership team?

Paul: I think culturally, the police service is an area we’ve always been – well, it’s an area we’ve been, in the distant past, fairly pants at to be quite honest, because we’re all rufty-tufty and we’re not good at standing up to say, “I need help.”

The last decade we’ve seen huge changes there, which is really good. It comes down to I mean two things, certainly in this COVID world we’re in, it’s the adapted way of working. I mean the challenges, and where I'm putting my mind to at the moment, we’ve got three big commands with I mean literally hundreds of people into the thousands, it’s that personal contact.

And Nancie's so right when she said, “Everything will become transactional,” the Skype meetings, they are very business-like. It’s very efficient, but it’s business-like. So how, if people are going to work remote, it's now in terms of working with our managers to say, “We’re expecting you to phone up.” There's nothing wrong with phoning up and having a natter with someone, no agenda, just – and a diaried call, a spontaneous call, “How are you?”

And speaking in general terms, looking forwards in some ways – and we touched on childcare earlier, but that's such a massive area for all of us. And I mean, looking into my family, I live away during the week, so my wife picks up that responsibility and she works on top of that. So, I get it. Children will go back to school, and that appears to be the government's intention, but that coupled then with potential outbreak management, that's going to give us more challenges.

And the other element and something we probably haven't talked about, but I saw it and it was palpable right at the beginning of COVID, but it still exists, is fear. People are scared of this disease. And it's where some people where you think they're being resistant, they're not, they're genuinely scared. And the trick for us, and the trick in the conversations and as an organisation, is to recognise that fear. Yes, we have got a really important role to do, a duty, a job, whatever you want to call it, however you’ve got to recognise people’s fear, because people are scared. And when people are scared, it’s recognising that they behave difficulty.

Alexis: Definitely. And I think that it’s having that compassion to recognise that people are scared. Right at the beginning of the pandemic I wrote an article called 'A Pandemic Within a Pandemic', and it was about actually COVID-19 wasn't having a massive impact at that point, it was the fear of COVID-19 that was having the impact. And we could see people starting to go into that fight and flight response, and it’s been a long time that people have been in that now. And if there is another lockdown, or we have to manage this over the next few months and years, it’s that background fear, isn’t it, that’s there all the time.

And so, it’s interesting what you were saying there about as a leadership team, and as managers and leaders within the organisation, recognising what people need and having that context of, I suppose, some compassion that actually there is this fear element to it, but there’s also that need for people to step up and step forward themselves because you can only meet people halfway, can’t you?

Nancie: Well, I think it's really interesting because globally it's very rare that human beings feel threatened unless you're in a war zone.

Alexis: Completely.

Nancie: So, most of us in the first world, if you like, we've never really experienced living with fear. There might have been the odd moment when you were frightened about something, but to have something that made you think about your own mortality doesn't normally happen until later in life or as a result of a serious illness. So, I think, for me, there was a recognition that we were under threat, whereas centuries ago it would have been woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers trying to eat us and things like that. So, we have evolved, but we haven’t been threatened recently.

Now obviously there’s a generation that went through the wars, et cetera, and you’ve got people, military personnel, but globally, I think this is the first time that people have held fear. And also, I think it's interesting how adults try to explain it to younger people. Because I found for once my nephews came to ask me, which they don't normally ask Auntie Nancie much because they're in that age group where they're young adults, but both of them came to me about how long did I think it would last, what did I think would be the impact. And so even for them, I saw them recognising that something was different.

Alexis: And also looking to you for some certainty –

Nancie: Mm.

Alexis: – like “What am I dealing with here?”

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: I think the other part of it is that we've been faced with our own mortality, we've also been faced with our children’s, and our parents’, and our friendship group, and it’s creating vulnerability, which we can generally ignore that, like you say. Until we get to maybe a certain life stage, or we're given a diagnosis of something, or – we have to really think about it’ But generally we can be avoidant of those things happening to us, can’t we?

Nancie: And normally you think something threatening is this dark figure in an alleyway, not someone who's coughing over you in the supermarket while you're looking for some bread. And also, your friends, suddenly it was, are they your friends or are they a potential germ carrier, and I think it was quite a lot for us to psychologically process. The way I found to do it is what could I do with my life to reduce the risk.

So, I would go to shops early in the morning when there were very few people in there, get what I needed, if it weren’t there, it weren’t there, I was cooking something else for dinner. But it was just about how could I do risk reduction. I did sit there – because I live alone – and think “Right, if I get sick who’s going to look after me then? Who’s going to walk the dogs?” et cetera, et cetera, and I found myself doing it, “OK, so how do I de-risk all of this?”

Alexis: Yeah, how do I minimise it. I know some of the people we were working with who were single-parent families, real fear about “If something happens to me, where are my children going to go?”

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: And those are things that might be in the back of your mind occasionally, in general living, but actually this has been acutely put right in the front of your brain. And trying to process that and look for ways of being able to manage it, and who can help me, but those people who can help me also represent risk. So, were caught up in this web really.

Nancie: Yeah. And there was also that – you know, I wanted to see my mother who's elderly and she had a fall during this, but I knew I couldn't go to her because I was potentially bringing something to her, particularly as I'm going into a police station five days a week. And so, I think there’s those kind of thing. I mean, I have no idea how people process their bereavement during this time when you potentially couldn't go to the funeral, you couldn't go and see someone till right at the end of lifetime care. So, I think there's been some really unusual things that probably we haven't seen people yet process that will come to us probably next year.

Alexis: I agree with you, I think there's going to be ripple effects of this, and I think there's going to be a trauma reaction to some of it as well for people, for some people, not everybody. But there is a sense of unfinished business, and the ways that we would normally process loss, or trauma, or fear, we have not been able to do it in that way.

Nancie: I think there'll be some anger as well.

Alexis: Yeah.

Nancie: Because we always want something to blame, or somebody to blame. And later on, when you haven't been able to go to that funeral, you haven't been able to grieve properly, people will look back and say they were senseless, people died, this could have been prevented, we could have done things differently and sooner, et cetera. I think there will be anger, but it is part of the grieving process. But I think we may loop that a couple of times.

Alexis: Yeah, and people get stuck in that sometimes as well, because there is so much that they can't change and can't do anything about, so going back into that is quite a natural thing to do. It's when you've got lots of people going back into at the same time, that's when it starts to become difficult as a society.

Nancie: Yeah. Well, fear is contagious, isn’t it?

Alexis: Yeah, completely.

Nancie: And once you get that fear you can feel it going through a building, or through a team or whatever it is, and it's how you manage with that. And there's a difference intellectually than emotionally, and don't confuse the two things.

Alexis: No, and I think over the last few months we've seen that people who have had difficulties in their lives maybe previously to this it's triggered emotions that maybe hadn't been around for a long time, or maybe even ever. It's almost like a compounding of emotions and experiences. So, it’s just such a muddle, I suppose. I was going to say mess, but I don’t think it is messy, I think we can figure our ways through it. But rather than doing it as a carte blanche “one size fits all” it’s just not going to be possible over period of time, is it? And people will be coming to us and to you with different experiences and for a long time to come.

Paul: I think the hard bit here in dealing with the fear aspect, because we’re talking about our own staff here, but we’re – in terms of our society, we are the protectors. We are one of the only compellable organisations within government, as I say apart from us and the military, and we have to go out there, we have to do our duty and to keep people safe, and the public are genuinely scared.

What I found really interesting, so right at the beginning when we looked at our core responsibilities, and it was watching different aspects of the business almost go through the fear in waves, because there was some people that had to go out there, those responding to emergency calls for instance, regardless. And then as the new normality started to land upon us and business was adapted, as the next group were venturing back out into that society, we’re almost going through that same process. Which was good because we got to learn the lessons over each one, and it was a good dialogue.

But that one key message that still binds us all together, that point I said, “we’re being one team here,” we have to go out there, and ultimately we have to do our job because our job is to keep people safe, and that’s the difficult balancing act because there’s some things we still must do.

Alexis: Yeah, absolutely. And I think from what I've seen, working with different officers and staff, is that there's also those feelings of being almost that those ones who've been out there doing that, it’s almost like “we've been sacrificed while people work from home,” and there's that. You can get that split, can't you, as well? Not for everybody, but there's that sense of, “I've got to carry on doing this and you're at home, and what does that mean?” And I think as you've said, as those waves of change and other people have been going out, then that starts to dissipate because there's more people who are operationally out there if you like.

Paul: It is, and there's dangers in that in itself. So, initially there was palpable fear with our staff. It’s subsided, it's gone away, and as senior managers we’re constantly having to reinforce the message around correct use of the PPE, wearing of the masks, what situations you would use them. Because what we're finding is staff are accepting more amounts of risk, and it's, “Hey, you don't have to do that.” You shouldn't have to do that because it's a bigger strategic importance that we keep you well and we keep you safe in order that we can continue to protect people.

Alexis: Yeah.

Paul: And as we go into the new normality, if something's happening over in Preston, if it's happening over in Bradford, it's not necessarily touching the cops and the staff in Grimsby, in Scunthorpe, up in Bridlington, Hull, but it could come to a police station near you soon. It’s that unknown. And when it comes, the second time, it'll happen suddenly as well. I mean, Nancie touched on the government advice. That's probably been the most difficult – one of the most difficult things through all of this. When it arrives and when the direction comes, I mean people think we've been briefed in advanced, and in a lot of those cases, sorry, that's just not the case. It’s like playing catch-up, and for me I found that really uncomfortable.

Nancie: Mm.

Alexis: We've been talking a lot about managing change during the COVID time and the COVID process, what lessons do you think you've learned that you can take forward in managing change generally from that period of time? What's important?

Paul: There's two key things for me that are really important dealing with change in general, but lessons from COVID because it's been a reoccurring theme, number one is communicate, communicate, communicate, and number two is “it's the why,” it's the explanation. There's a difficult balancing act sometimes because when you have to get information out there, it can be done in quite a transactional way. You say “We are doing this, there is going to be this element of change. Here is the timeline, this is what you can expect.”

The lessons from COVID have been really around the personal touch because we've had to really focus on that people's side, but that's absolutely rammed it home for me as an individual, so looking into the future and looking at policing in general where it is a constant changing beast. Corporate comms, absolutely imperative. And we talked about fear, people like to know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, but the question is why.

The big lesson, and from my perspective what I try to do, is how do you engage on that personal level. Because it’s great getting the “why” from our perspective, but the individuals, officers, and staff members want to know they have been listened to. Past months we've got better and better and better at that, and we're talking today very much in the context of COVID, but for me it's taking that out, taking some of the forums out, the different ways now of communicating, looking at be it Zoom, be it Microsoft Teams. We’ve held now a number of virtual meetings; I would look to take those as examples and put them into normal change process.

Because what I'm finding is there's really effective ways we can touch whole team members where we wouldn't have done so before. And a great example about that is, but, you know, I wanted to say thank you to the staff for … I think it was … I’m just trying to think. It was about six or seven weeks ago now. But by use of setting up Skype meetings, I managed to dial into virtually every operational briefing within the response teams, and that's no mean feat, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of officers across the force.

I was personally surprised about how successful that was. And when I mean successful, the fact that it worked, that it was that level of conversation. I didn't think you could have an effective conversation. I was wrong.

Alexis: Mm. Yeah.

Nancie: I guess for me three things, I always simplify things down to a cooking recipe, because I think when you've got change, you just want to know what's going to happen, in what order, and when. So intellectually, give me the cooking recipe of what's going to happen. I might not like it, but at least I understand it, and that gets rid of some of the uncertainty in it.

I think, for me, the second bit would be allow me to have an emotional response because just because intellectually you've said, “This is why we need to do something,” I might get it, but I might not like it. Two separate things. So, where's the space to have an emotional reaction to it? And then the third one is about understanding what does it mean for the individual. Because you can talk about this global thing for policing and all this big change, ultimately people want to know, “How does it affect me? What do I need to do? What's the impact on me?”

So, I think you need to be able to take the big thing, right down to the individual level, and say “This is what it means for you, and this is what you’re going to have to do and change.”

Alexis: Yeah. And actually, people can accept it more readily because they understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. I think that also that point you were saying there, Paul, about being heard, a lot of the time for people in an organisation as large as this with the hierarchical structure that you've got, that two-way communication is something that maybe over the years hasn't happened as well as it could. So, being listened to, but also being able to use the technology. And almost you've been fast-forwarded with that, haven’t you? That’s something that maybe would've taken years to put into place, but now it's actually happening more regularly.

Nancie: I think we’ve got to try to change the style here. So, we have all the usual organisational mechanisms for people to engage. Whether people do or not, people are the judge of that. But I think we all try and be really approachable. Our Chief goes out and does a load of discussions with everybody, so we hear and get told what's not working. The frustration I sometimes experiences is, if it isn’t working then tell me because I can do something about it then. I can’t do if I don’t know.

And it’s a big organisation, we’ve got 60 police stations, I can't be everywhere. But if people tell us we can do something about it. And that's where I think people have to realise that you do care enough that you will do something about it.

Alexis: Mm. And that you want that two-way communication as well.

Nancie: You might not always like where you get told.

Alexis: No.

Nancie: But that's what comes with the pay cheque.

Alexis: Yeah, exactly.

Nancie: That we will put it right for somebody. Because actually if someone's just picked up body parts at 2am and actually got a problem with an IT system, I want to solve it for them, particularly when they've just gone and done that.

Alexis: Yeah. And it's those small things, isn't it, those environmental things, if you like, that just tip the balance sometimes for people –

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: – when they're dealing with issues like that. OK, thanks both of you very much for today, it’s been really interesting talking to you, and hope that the people listening have also found that there's been some useful tips in there and ideas about what people can do to look after themselves, and also the challenges that organisations face and will continue to face as well over the next few months and probably years as well. Thanks very much.

Paul: My pleasure.

Alexis: Thank you.

Nancie: Thank you.

[00:39:02 - 00:39:04 – Music]

Episode 4: Talking bereavement

Officers often deal with situations and incidences that involve death but what happens when you lose someone close in your own life, or you grow up in the shadow cast by loss in your own family. In this conversation, Alexis speaks with ACO Nancie Shackleton and Health and Wellbeing Manager Sandy Powdrell about the losses they have faced, learning to talk about how they feel and strategies that have helped.

Podcast transcript

Keeping the Peace Series 1, Episode 4 - Talking bereavement

Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, your host, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today, I'm at the Priory HQ Police Station in Hull, and we're talking about bereavement and loss. I'm joined by Sandy Powdrell who's a Health and Wellbeing Manager, and ACO (Assistant Chief Officer), Nancie Shackleton. So, I think it would be good, to start with, to just get a sense of both of your roles and kind of where you fit in the organisation, really. If I come to you first, Sandy, what's your kind of role and remit?

Sandy: Ah, yes, so I work in the occupational health and wellbeing unit. I, as the Health and Wellbeing Manager, manage the wellbeing side of the unit, which it's actually a really fun job to do. So, I work though with the senior psychotherapists and the senior occ[upational] health nurse advisor who deal with the other aspects of all wellbeing. So, my role really is to make sure that culturally, within the organisation, we are trying to change the culture to one of wellbeing and to show it's OK and allowed for people to care. So, I have a number of activities that are across the force, but I also support all the local wellbeing boards in achieving the things that they want to achieve.

Alexis: Mm. OK. So, quite a lot to do.

Sandy: Yes. Yes.

Alexis: And that cultural work's really interesting. I love all that kind of stuff.

Sandy: Yes.

Alexis: So, it sounds like you love it, but it’s really interesting as well at the same time.

Sandy: It's really interesting and it’s really important. I've historically dealt with – I’ve worked in the force for a good 23 years, so from within people services, which is where occupational health and wellbeing sits, I still will oversee some situations where the support maybe hasn't always been readily available, so we make sure, and we service recover that to make sure that that does happen. But, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it’s in-depth and you get to know a lot of people.

Alexis: Yeah, absolutely. OK. Thank you for that. Nancie, I'm going to come to you. So, just tell us a little bit about your role and your remit within the Humberside.

Nancie: OK. So, I'm one of the chief officers at Humberside Police. I'm the civilian member of staff, so I'm not a warranted police officer, and I look after five principal departments; the human resources or the people department, the money department, the IT department, the buildings department, and the car department.

Alexis: So literally nothing's standing unless you go.

Nancie: It’s a little bit like that. And I was really interested in today because I think as a senior manager there's both a personal role that you have in bereavement, and there's also a professional role that you have in bereavement, and I think the two are often intertwined about how you see things through your own personal lens. So, I’m really happy to be included on this. And I hope that for somebody listening, something that either Sandy or I say today makes them feel less alone.

Alexis: Yeah. I mean just to put this into context, really, this wasn't a podcast we planned to do today, was it? It was something we've been talking about as the day’s gone on and we decided that we would do this. So, again, I hope in line with what you are saying, Nancie, that this will be something that will help somebody. And I think specifically clicking on this podcast is because people have either a vested interest or they're managing people and they kind of want to know a bit more about how to do that well when we're looking at bereavement and loss.

And having worked with a lot of cops and staff over the years, we've been talking today about how you deal with death every day in what you do for a living, and that's what happens in this organisation, isn’t it? That’s a big part of what you do. But when you’re looking at it from a personal perspective that's a whole other ballgame.

Nancie: Yeah, and I think in the police service we've almost got a culture that we try and save people from death in a way that in the medical profession, perhaps, death is part of it. They save, some patients they don't. I think there is a real heroism that is cultural in the police that we try and save you from having something really bad happen, and when something really, really bad happens we lose lives.

So, I think for us, we try and prevent it, so therefore when it does happen to us, particularly in our personal lives or in alignment with our duty, it's really difficult for us to process it culturally.

Alexis: Mm. Definitely. Yeah. There's a real difference there, isn’t there, actually, when you think about it in that way. I know both of you have had experiences yourselves of bereavement and loss, and that's kind of where this conversation's come from really, so are you both happy to share a little bit about your context and, yeah, are you OK to go, Sandy?

Sandy: Yeah, absolutely. So, for me, I've had two significant bereavements over the last 12 months. My older brother died last May, and my mum died in February of this year. It was my mum that's had the biggest impact on me. She had Alzheimer's for 15 years and was comatose for seven, so my normal, for want of a better expression, was going and visiting her every week in the care home, watching her being turned every two to three hours for seven years in total.

So, when it came I was expecting I would feel relief, and that didn't happen at all. And not many people that I was aware of could actually empathise with me in terms of the length of time. So, that ambiguous loss all the time. I grieved when she got diagnosed 15 years ago, I grieved when she went into the care home nine years ago, and for the last 18 months she was stopping breathing, stopping swallowing, so it was just a matter of time and I thought I'd get that relief.

It wasn't actually until three months after her death that my head came out of the sand is the best way I can describe it.

Alexis: Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sandy: I just didn't want to deal with it. Everyone around me could see it wasn't me, and people, my managers. And this is one of the reasons why I'm doing it now, and I appreciate it is still quite raw for me, but that for me, my managers could see that I wasn't my usual self no matter how difficult the times have been previously.

Alexis: Yeah.

Sandy: But that saying of, “Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine,” you say often enough you start to actually believe it. That's why I’m doing this now because I think it's important managers understand. It's not about just asking someone, “Are you OK?” It's actually listening to them.

Nancie: And creating space for that conversation, I think, because how many times a day do people say, “How are you?”

Sandy: Yeah.

Nancie: And we kind of go, “Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.” And I remember vividly a couple of years ago there was a lot going on for me in my life, and somebody said, “How are you doing?” and I went, “Yeah, yeah, I'm good thanks,” as I was signing in somewhere. And I knew this person, and I thought I can't even begin to tell you what is actually going on at the minute. Because it was not the right time, but there was loads I could have said, and we do that with bereavement and loss. And when we've lost somebody close, how do you start that conversation?

Alexis: Yeah, it’s tricky.

Sandy: Yeah, to me, personally, I just didn't want to come across as being such a miserable, sad person when actually I was a miserable, sad person.

Alexis: Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sandy: But people expect me – “Oh, that's Sandy Powdrell, she's always got a smile on her face, and she comes to work to enjoy herself,” and I weren’t enjoying life never mind work.

Nancie: Yeah. Yeah.

Sandy: And that was all to do with grief and bereavement, and actually accepting it, and doing something about it.

Alexis: And I think accepting sadness is really hard to do, isn't it –

Sandy: Oh yeah.

Alexis: – because actually we don't allow ourselves to do that and we can get on that hamster wheel of “I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.”

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: You put your mask on every day, you go into work, and you think you're being really productive and that nobody's noticing –

Sandy: Yeah, and you’re not.

Alexis: – but actually it can be seeping out, that sadness and kind of just loss of direction, and feeling unhappy and upset, that can be coming out in different ways that you don't even realise I think sometimes.

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: Other people, like you say, people you've worked with for a long time can maybe think, “Hang on a minute, something's not quite right there,” but you'd probably keep going a lot longer unless someone actually said to you, “I don't think you're OK.”

Sandy: Yeah, and that's what it took for me. The COVID and the pandemic gave me a perfect opportunity to forget about my mum, and I did that for three months until one of my managers said, “We're really worried about you,” and it was having that conversation. So, it's them listening to me and being supportive.

I think sometimes, as a manager, when you've got a member of staff who's suffering with bereavement and has lost a loved one, the person who's had the loss feels that they can’t grieve, and the person, the manager, is actually scared to say to them, “Look, if you need time out of work, that's fine. If you need to take some annual leave, or if you want to go to your GP,” you know, depending on their circumstances it's a part of life, isn’t it, that we've all got to accept it's going to happen, and it’s just learning to manage it and to cope with it.

Nancie: Mm. Yeah. It is, it's absolutely part of life. We all experience it, don't we, either as we are getting – I think we were talking before we started recording, about as you get older this starts to happen more, we start to lose our parents, and there's a generational shift. And I think within organisations as well, depending on the age of the workforce, depends on how that's going to happen, and that comes in waves sometimes as well. I think quite a lot of people are struggling at any one time.

Sandy: Yeah, I think again, it's just that – to me, what helped, with the manager, as I say, the advice I would always give is – I can remember talking to other people where I said about my mum's got Alzheimer's and she's got a do not resuscitate order and I’m waiting for her to pass away, which is horrific, and I would get from other people, “Oh yeah, my grandma’s like that,” or “my grandad’s like that,” and I wanted to scream at them, “this is my mam,” or mum, however you want to say it. You know, “this is my mam I’m talking about.” And it just felt so difficult that it is a case of don’t try and sympathise, even don’t try to empathise sometimes, it’s just a matter of –

Alexis: Sometimes it’s just listening, isn’t it?

Sandy: Learn to listen.

Alexis: Mm.

Sandy: You know, one of the things during this time that my husband's learned is to learn – he's learned to listen. He really has. My husband's learned to listen, and I just –

Nancie: See that that's something positive that’s come out of it.

Sandy: Absolutely, and I'm all for looking for the silver lining. It has taken me to contact our employee assistance programme, and I've had five sessions of bereavement counselling purely because I just – after a death, and three more months after a death, there was this void that I just didn't know how to fill. I didn't know what to do, and they helped me through it.

And considering in my role, I was the one who actually chose that tendering process, so I had to be very careful when I actually rang them and got that support in place, because I didn’t want to tell them who I was because I thought they might just give me that little bit better service. So, I made a few things up, and the service that they gave me was absolutely exemplary. It was brilliant, it really helped me. Marvellous.

Nancie: Don’t you think as well, being able to access that support at a time when it’s ready for you and you can get it straight away, because I think that’s one of the key things. I know for me at [Fortis? 00:11:37] it’s really important that we don't have waiting lists because I want people – if people have picked up the phone and said, “I want to access some support,” they need to be in, because the process has started. Whereas if you’ve got to wait weeks and weeks and weeks to access a service –

Sandy: It’s too late.

Nancie: – yeah, you’re left with it, really, and you’ve already made a decision that you want some support.

Sandy: Yeah, I rang them from my bed in the morning when no one else was around, they rang me an hour later, booked an appointment for later on in the afternoon, and I was talking to a counsellor by the afternoon.

Nancie: Yeah. Brilliant.

Sandy: So, yeah, I can strongly recommend it. And I appreciate there's a time and a place for telephone counselling, and I’ve had both. I’ve had psychotherapy, I've had EMDR, to then have this telephone counselling for bereavement, yeah, I think for me it was the right thing to do.

Nancie: Yeah. Yeah, well it’s all part of what's on offer, isn't it? You know, now actually as well, we've had to move everything online. So, we’re using different platforms, things that wouldn't have been available really, or people wouldn't have engaged with before. So, I think telephone counselling, anything that helps really.

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: You're listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo, and Humberside Police.

Nancie, what, from your perspective, I know you started to tell me a little bit before –

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: - what your story is then.

Nancie: So, mine is very different than Sandy’s, and mine – death, I think, comes in different forms, doesn't it? There's no one death that everybody experiences and that's what it is. So, I had a 10 year old sister who was murdered walking home from junior school, and I grew up in the aftermath of her death. So, if you like, my normal I get is really abnormal, and in that generation you didn't talk about it, you just had to process it yourself. So, I've not been one of these people who has reached out about it, but I've been very curious all the way through my sort of developmental years and then into adult life about not only why people do such horrendous acts, but also how do you survive and perform as a human being after that. Because, as you can imagine, I see the ripple effects throughout my family, some dealing with it better than others.

And for me that instance doesn't end, because I've had to attend parole board hearings where the offender, there's decisions to let him out of jail, those kind of things. And everybody who's lost anybody has birthdays and death days and Christmas days that you have to get through. That particular death day, because it's such a horrific death day, it’s just something I can’t find the words to explain to somebody else. But when I take my personal experience, so then I overlay it with my professional position, what I do find is if I meet people I can tell if they've been through a trauma. There is something that I can sense in them.

Alexis: Mm, it's like a sixth sense.

Nancie: Yeah. And I also find that if people are struggling with difficult things to talk about, they'll come and talk to me about it. And part of me wanting to do that today and discuss it is because there will be somebody listening right now who feels really alone and really isolated by it. And just as Sandy said, people don't know how to talk about death, they don’t know how to deal with you when you're upset. They want to make you feel better and to stop crying, and kind of patch you up, particularly in the police service, and move you on.

And some things you don’t just move on from. They change you fundamentally who you are, and you have to work through what is a really difficult time period regardless of how that death has occurred, whether it's a family member, whether it's a child, et cetera. You know there are all different types of that. And there are ones which I would call a natural death. So, when my father died, he was an elderly man who had a heart attack, he'd had something horrible happen in his life with the loss of a child, but he'd had a good life as well and I could rationally cognitively deal with that in a way that I think most people could process. It's horribly sad, but you love your dad, the love never goes, and things move on, but you still miss them.

The other death of my sister, I will never make peace with that because it is just so abnormal, how do you try and normalise that. But I don't do this for sympathy because I have a great life, but I just want someone who's listening to this who feels alone at maybe 2am when they're listening to it just to think, “Do you know there was one thing that they said in that podcast that helps me right now,” and that’s all I want to do is to give back.

Equally in my professional life, as a manager, I've had two people who have worked for me in service who've died at a very young age, and having to process that both for individuals, for their family, their line managers, co-workers, et cetera, just to share a little bit of what my learning has been around that and to make people feel it's OK to talk with someone who's really upset about something.

Sandy: Mm-hmm.

Alexis: And I think those personal experiences you both described, they are something that – they're your personal experiences, as you've said, but it informs how you then can recognise those signs in others, you can empathise, and also that you know it's an individual experience. Nobody's going to go through this in the same way, and it's messy, isn't it?

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: Whether you've just lost somebody, whether you've lost them 10 years ago, whether you've grown up in the aftermath of that as you've just described it, it’s just messy emotions and it can feel, I think, very isolating because it is so individual. People can say, “Oh yeah, I felt a bit like that,” or “I get that.” They don’t really get it because it’s yours.

Nancie: No, we were talking like in the beginning it's really raw, it’s like a really punch in the stomach kind of feeling. But I was just saying to Sandy, for me, it's a little bit like motion sickness, I never know when I’m going to get it, and it just hits you like a wave that you have a very physical, emotional, and mental reaction to, and then it just passes.

And someone may not know they’ve said something that triggered you to three, two, one, out of the room you go, you have a little thought process and then you come back in the room. You’re still the same person, but you have physically and emotionally and mentally reacted to something in a way that they will never know. You know, there's certain keywords that are triggers that just push you and then you come back again.

Alexis: And it can be anything can't it? It can be keywords, it can be aromas, it can be music, it can be all these things that kind of – you know, or you hear something on the radio, or you listen to a podcast, and someone says something, and you think “Oh god, that really …” It’s like a sucker punch and you think “god, I’ve got to think about that,” or “I want to avoid that and come away from it.”

Nancie: Well, we both said that, that if someone's chosen to click on this it's because they need to do something about what they're feeling at the time. And we both talked about the delaying tactics we’ve both used to distract, because I don't want to feel all of that. And I described mine as a pressure cooker. So, as long as I can keep the lid on, occasionally it rattles, I take a couple of scoops out the top but I'm not going to the bottom of that pan because there is nothing good for me at the bottom of that pan.

And ultimately I can't get the answers that I want to get, so it’s how do I be a functioning adult. And if people say me in my professional life they'd never think anything that I was carrying this around. But that’s where you don’t know what’s going on for somebody.

Alexis: And I think sometimes, I mean obviously I'm a therapist, so I would – a lot of people will come and talk, and we do go into those things that feel really difficult and uncomfortable and that's part of the process, but not everybody needs to do that.

Nancie: No.

Alexis: Because you don't need to always. It’s the same thing with abuse, it's the same thing with all these kind of traumatic events, we don't have to relive them in order to be able to come to terms to be able to manage. You’re right, there’s going to be waves at times, there's going to be to be occasions where you feel overwhelmed by this emotion and it kind of knocks you off your feet, and then it goes away sometimes as quickly as it's appeared.

But being able to learn techniques around distraction, and just taking your head away from it because sometimes you need a break, don’t you?

Sandy: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just to me it’s – so it’s still quite raw for me, but it's about processing it, and knowing there's a – so, to me, there's a time and a place. So, at the very beginnings I would wake up in the morning and remember and it would upset me. Now I don’t even – you know, you get to a stage, and I think it’s fair to say to anyone listening to this, is that you’ve just got to go with the flow of it.

And so many people said to me when – you know, within the first three months of a passing away, that it's just like a rollercoaster. It will come in waves. And I was thinking, “Well, yeah, it does, but when does the tsunami stop? When does the waves start to actually calm down, and how do you get it to calm down without …” Sometimes I think without that support it won’t necessarily calm down.

And I've heard other people say, “Well if you're still grieving a year after they've passed away, then you need that support.” I think actually it’s a personal thing. I've been grieving my mum nine years.

Nancie: Yeah, and I was thinking it’s how open you are to that. So, I'm at the other spectrum, I've got a really “be strong” driver that’s off the Richter Scale that’s probably typical of the police station, and I will choose when I talk about this, and with whom I talk. And it’s very infrequent, and I’ve got to say I’ve never met anybody who’s got any similarity to my personal circumstances.

So, one of the things I find quite hard is that there's nobody like me who understands what I've gone through, and that's not in a self-centred way, but I just think for people who are listening out there, that there is that thing that that's what helps make you feel more alone, and it is harder because you can’t … If someone’s broken their leg you can ask anybody about it and they can tell you how their leg got broken, how they fixed it, how long it took, et cetera. This kind of breaking doesn’t have that logical process to it.

Sandy: No. No.

Nancie: And because people, I think, are so frightened about being vulnerable and to risk losing control, because, you know, you start crying and all those kind of things, it's very difficult to bring up. And I think for my response, I probably – a friend of mine says I intellectualise emotional issues, which I know isn’t a word, but I want to think my way out of it.

Sandy: Yeah.

Nancie: I don’t necessarily want to feel my way out of it.

Sandy: No.

Nancie: Now I’ve had overwhelming feeling situations, because do you know what, going into a parole board hearing where the press are waiting for you, he's going to be in the room, you know, I have been saturated with feel and particularly with fear, and that is for me why it's just like “I've had that, I really don't like being in that place.” So, I choose as a strategy to do that. Whether that's right or wrong, it kind of works for me and it's the way I've grown up doing it. I'm not saying that's the right way either.

Because equally, if someone comes to me, I'm really comfortable if someone comes to me and has tears, because you know they've done studies about tears, and stress tears are made up of something completely different than distressed tears. Well, there's a reason we've evolved that way; it’s a natural way to get rid of stress out of the body, so I’m really comfortable with people sat crying.

I can sit with them, and then sit for however long it takes for them to do that, but I think you need to let them do that if that’s what they need to do.

Alexis: Mm. I think we need to allow ourselves to do that as well, because we can stop ourselves, can’t we, where you’re going to go, “Oh God, I feel upset about that,” and then I come away. And, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we kind of avoid going into those emotions because we feel like there might be feelings about being weak, or being seen to be vulnerable, or not capable or whatever.

And actually, it's a natural part of our responses. And that tsunami you were describing there that – there might be a tsunami that's happening for several months and then it starts to become something that's a bit less intense, but it's still there. And we go backwards and forwards, so you might take a step forward and you take two steps back. I think that’s the other thing that, well, it's like you said, “It’s been a year, what’s the problem?”

Nancie: But I think you can have a physical response to it. So, I know if my body does not want to talk about this, it tries to shut me down. And it's a really bizarre way, because even though we're recording today and it must be, what, the hottest day of the year, it’s about 25, 30 degrees.

Alexis: And we can’t have the fan on because we’re recording.

Nancie: Yeah, if my body says “I don't want to talk about this” emotionally, it actually makes me go cold and my teeth will physically chatter even on a day like today, because my normal response is – if I've been out for a dog walk on a really cold day I either get in the bath or I get in the bed and I go to sleep, and that stops the need to talk about it. So, it’s literally like my body just says, “No, we’re not doing this. I’m going to physically stop you.”

Sandy: Yeah, “I’m out.”

Nancie: I will start teeth chattering, and then eventually it starts to block my throat and my ability to swallow. And it’s just it's something as I've noticed as I've got older and just thought that is really bizarre as a physiological, but I understand intellectually that my body's just saying, “we're not going through that trauma, I am closing down, you’re going on to snooze.”

Alexis: Closing down, you're going on to snooze.

Sandy: Mm.

Alexis: And sleeping actually, I mean it’s there for a reason, we want to cut out. And often when we talk about feeling depressed or low, we sleep because we need to recover, and it just stops our brain, it stops us overthinking because you're right, the intellectual side of it, we have that, but it can help us, but it can also hinder us and get in the way of us processing what's happening emotionally. So, being able to cut out sometimes, whatever that is, whether it is going for sleep, or whether it's going for a walk, or it's doing something else.

Years ago, I suffer with trauma, and I used to just swim because no one could talk to me, I could just do lap after lap after lap, and it was process time, and I could just get into that state of kind of coming away from what was going on for me emotionally. And it was physically tiring as well, and emotionally I'd got myself through it by the time I got out the pool. So, you find your way, don't you, with what works for you, and it is very specific I think. And you don't always know what works for you until –

Sandy: Until you do it.

Alexis: – yeah, until you do it.

Sandy: For me it’s Zumba.

Alexis: Yeah, OK.

Sandy: Dancing.

Alexis: Yeah, yeah.

Sandy: In exactly the same way.

Alexis: Ah, you see, I would just get that wrong.

Sandy: Well, it’s tiring, it’s fun –

Alexis: Yeah.

Sandy: – it don't matter whether you can do the dance moves or not –

Alexis: No.

Sandy: – and that, yeah, it gives you that headspace. And as I say, just from a work point of view, being away from work for a period of time gives you that headspace, gives you that chance just to – how can I put it? Just to process what's happened and accept actually you … What I've found and what I've seen in other people as well, especially when I've been as a manager in my professional life, some of the people I've had to support from People Services when they've got terminal illnesses, and you get to know them, you get to know their families, and then when they pass away, it would still upset me because I am a crier, I don't think I have ever been to a funeral where I've not cried. And I've been to a lot of funerals because I've been here for a long time and a lot of people have died, unfortunately.

But going into – oh, sorry, I forgot where I was coming – so, but going into – actually, when someone's passed away and it's personal, I found what I was doing that I wasn't expected to do, I thought I would fall apart, I thought I would just cry because I'm a crier, and I thought life would just then carry on. But what happened for me and what I've seen in other people is that actually you just put it on a shelf, and you carry on as normal thinking it's normal.

I’ve seen it where I've been line managing other people where they've lost their parents and they've said, “I want to come back next week.” You know, “I’ve been off a week, I want to come back next week,” and they haven’t even had the funeral. And I’ve said, “No, you're not coming back. You can work from home if you want to, but I don't think it's the right thing for you to come back.” And they haven't always appreciated that because then I'd stay in touch with them, making sure they're not alone, that they have got that support there.

And then when they reflect later on, they say, “I'm glad you stopped me from coming in because, yeah, I needed that support,” but coming into the workplace everyone feels sorry for you, you feel like you’re the focus.

Nancie: Mm. Like getting stared at.

Sandy: You’re getting stared at.

Nancie: With Bambi eyes.

Sandy: Yeah.

Nancie: Oh, that's awful.

Sandy: Oh, I can’t stand that.

Alexis: I don’t do that.

Nancie: Yeah, that’s not helpful.

Sandy: You you'd said, Nancie, that you've got this bucket and you don’t go to the bottom of it.

Nancie: Yeah.

Sandy: I actually feel like I’ve gone to the bottom of it, and I've actually poked a hole in it, because it's took for it to leak for me to be able to move on because it's gone on for that long.

Nancie: Yeah, I think that the keyword there is normal. So, when you've had a bereavement, nothing is normal. And people talk about “when it goes back to normal,” well, you don't have – you have a new normal. You go through something very abnormal and then you create a new normal, and as human beings I think we crave that routine, don’t we, so that’s why people say, “I want to get back to work,” or “I want to organise the funeral,” and you get into all those kind of ritual things that you do.

But you find yourself stood in the aisle, picking toothpaste, and having this random out of body experience where you look at everybody like, “Why is the world still going on” –

Sandy: Yeah, “why are you all carrying on, walking around me.”

Nancie: – “when my life has just got shattered.” And that's when I think you've got to recognise that there is some good routine that you do need to have, and you do need to have some time when you process it, and everybody's different. And I guess my plea to line managers who are start listening to this is your staff are all going to do this differently and there is no right way or wrong way. And it's not you've had two weeks bereavement leave and then you come back and everything's normal and you're back to tickety-boo, because that's not the case. Processing and getting to the funeral, for me, I think's the easiest bit because you’re in shock and you’re transactionally dealing with something.

Sandy: You’ve got a task; you've got a job to do.

Nancie: Yeah. The bereavement starts, for me, after the funeral.

Alexis: Yeah. And I mean, we are in COVID-19 territory at the minute, and obviously people haven't been able to do those processes in the way that we would expect to.

Nancie: And you can't give anybody a hug right now.

Alexis: No.

Nancie: So, if someone’s had something – which I've got to say I'm in two minds about, because when you're coming back and someone hugs you and gives you Bambi eyes, it doesn't help because the waterworks start. But equally, there is that thing of humanity that you want to show somebody I care.

Alexis: Yeah, I mean, I was talking to somebody recently who'd lost a friend over lockdown, and he'd gone to the funeral for this person. Obviously there was only, I think, 10 people allowed in at that point, so there was a lot of people that were in the churchyard and that were kind of stood outside, and there were people live-streaming it. And there was quite a lot of anger that somebody was doing that, and actually somebody was doing that because a lot of people couldn't come to the funeral. But there wasn't any of that physical touch, there wasn't the usual kind of getting hold of somebody and just saying, “Are you OK?”

And we are disabled with that. You know, we do like that; we’re social beings and some people will say “This is my worst nightmare, I'm quite happy for people to stay away,” but generally speaking, we want that kind of connection with other people.

Nancie: I know two people who've lost people in the police family where there's been a police funeral, and both families have asked for the event to be recorded, because when they were in it, they couldn't see it, they were just – but they wanted to be able to keep it, not only for them, and a particular couple of them were young women, but to be able to show it to their kids to say, “This is how much your grandmother who’s not now here was respected.”

And as they said, they just were through streams of tears, but afterwards they could see the people who were there at the event that they hadn't seen. And so, I think what we view as normal in terms of Victorian images of wear black and all of that, to now, is very different; we grieve in different ways.

Alexis: And in a way that has helped us to recognise that hasn't it, because we have had to over these last few months, really, to grieve in different ways. And whether that's felt OK or not, it's just different to what we've done before. And I think that kind of idea of what is normal puts people under a lot of pressure. It's quite oppressive really, because we feel like we've got to do something in a particular way, and if it doesn't fit for you and that's not what works for you, that's not going to help you.

Nancie: Well, we were talking about, you know, you have the humour, don’t you, after a death, the immediate, you know, they call it dark humour, but it's part of your stress release.

Alexis: And the giggling. You get quite a bit of hysteria sometimes with families.

Nancie: Yeah, when you're talking about crazy things that these people have done it in their lives, et cetera. But then after that, and sort of after the funeral, we were both talking about that first time when you feel happy following their death, and then you feel guilty for feeling happy again. And it's just this real complex world that you have got to go through to come out to a new version of normality for you.

Alexis: Yeah.

Sandy: Yeah, as I say, I'm happy to share, you know, when you talk about what's normal, I don't think I'm normal in any shape or form, and I wouldn’t want to be to be quite frank with you.

Alexis: Me either, I’m with you.

Sandy: But what I will share with the listeners as well is whatever works for you when you are going through that grief is just right for you. So, some of the things I did, and this is where you might think I'm a complete weirdo here, and I don't care because I'm going to share it –

Alexis: Yeah.

Sandy: – is that when I went to see my mum in the rest home, and I took a photograph of her because I wanted a photograph. See, I'm getting upset, but –

Nancie: OK.

Alexis: No, that’s OK.

Sandy: – but it was the right thing for me to do.

Nancie: If you're not going to get upset now, when are you?

Sandy: Exactly. And I also – I kept her eulogy. I've got it as an email. I proofread the actual service where they put pictures on of her, and it was a humanist one. She weren’t religious in any shape or form, but me and my brother, the day – actually it was about three days after her death, I got him to sit with me and I typed up a eulogy and we did it together. There was no way we could have spoken. So, we got a humanist to actually – to say it. And we made sure we got the craziest woman we could find, because my mum loved crazy.

And, you know, the music, it was a case of – there was the – some of the music we chose was very personal, and at the end of it, one of the – the final song that we played was Meatloaf, 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'.

Alexis: Oh, I love that song.

Sandy: This is to an 88 year old who’s had Alzheimer's for 15 years. Now people who knew my mum who were there would know that she used to sing that all the time, you know, and it was part of the eulogy, and it was the right thing for us to do. So, even if – and no one did say it, “Oh, that's not appropriate,” although I did have to forewarn her 91 year old brother, “Look, Uncle Les, we're going to be playing this record and it's quite rocky,” as we're putting daffodils on her basket. But it's the right things to do.

So, I've got that eulogy, and my two children who were adults, early – late teens and early twenties, they came obviously to the funeral, and I've kept it though for when – as they get older, if they say, “What did we say, can you remember?” it’s there just to share later on. And I don't know, some of the music.

Nancie: I'm going to come in there with you, because my family are of farming background, so we put my dad's wellies in with him. So, the Tony Robins of the future, when they dig the following ones. That weren’t the only object either, I mean he must have weighed another four stone heavier than my dad did, but like you –

Sandy: You didn’t sing, “I’ve got a Combine Harvester.”

Nancie: Yeah, the tractor didn’t quite fit. I too went to the care home, and I've got to say, if people are brave enough it’s probably one of the best things I did. And I went, and I was with my dad, and I sat and talked to him, and I said everything I wanted to say to him. And bizarrely I’d held his hand that long that he got warm again, and this is when you know your mind is playing tricks on you because he felt like he was warm. So, I was like, “Well, he can't be dead because he’s warm,” and actually it was just the heat from my hands because I’d held it so long.

And that’s when you just know that you are in a different place when you're going through an acute bereavement. But, yeah, don't worry. I think probably every family is actually quite eccentric deep down, it’s just whether you know it or not.

Sandy: And it’s OK though.

Alexis: Or you accept it.

Sandy: It's OK to go through that and do. You know, to me it's a bit like with weddings. When you're getting married you feel like you’ve got to try and please everybody, right? Well, the best thing I would say, having gone through the experience as I now have, is –

Nancie: Do what you want.

Sandy: – you do it what you want, you do what you think your loved one would want you to do, and what feels right.

Nancie: I remember someone saying to me that funerals are about the living.

Sandy: Yeah, definitely.

Nancie: And I didn't know what that meant until I kind of went through it.

Sandy: Yeah.

Nancie: And it is, it's actually about making those people in the congregation feel better about the deceased at the front of the church or chapel.

Alexis: It's a process for them, isn’t it? It’s a process for us to actually be able to say goodbye to somebody and say what we want to say, and have a safe place to grieve I suppose.

Nancie: And I think you celebrate that individual, what they meant to you. Because Sandy and I were talking earlier about coming in, and we were saying about what happens if you get upset, and I says, “Well, the problem with death is death is actually all about love.” Because you love these people, when you lose them, it hurts. And would you rather have a life where you had no love in it? And that’s the problem. You do love them, you do care about them, and therefore there's a cost to that when they're not there, and that’s the difficulty. But would you want a loveless life?

Sandy: If we haven’t got the listener in tears now then we never will.

Nancie: Well somewhere, in one mad sentence or another. Probably not the one about the wellies, but –

Alexis: I don’t know.

Nancie: – somebody will say “I got that, and I wasn't alone, and someone else …” Because you know, it'll be 2am and you're listening to this podcast by yourself in the dark somewhere, won’t it?

Sandy: But I think it's one of those – I was trying to be very proactive, because I'm quite a “be strong” character as well. And I can remember listening to podcasts on a night-time because I weren’t sleeping, and a lot of them were really quite – trying to be uplifting. You know, I was listening to meditation and just listening to some counselling tapes, and I got to the stage I were just angry about it.

Alexis: Mm.

Nancie: Yeah. Yeah.

Sandy: So, you've got to do it when it's right for you.

Alexis: You do. And I think it's what works for you, because you might have found something that really works for you but wouldn't work for me.

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: And I think it's accepting that when you are working in an organisation like this, I think a lot of people who work in the police have a “be strong” driver, you know, that's part of what you are here to do is to be strong for people who are out there who need you, as you said, to protect, or fix, or rescue, whatever – whatever, however you're seen, and to actually say as someone who's supposed to be strong, “I'm not feeling strong at the moment” is quite a tough thing to do.

And also, for teams and managers and leaders to recognise when someone's not in that place and to have a conversation about that is also hard to do because, you know, you're there to be strong. That's what you’re there to be.

Nancie: Yeah, and I think part of us growing up as an adult, what the challenge is, is how you work out to say, “I'm not OK.”

Alexis: Yes.

Sandy: So, a crab on its back is more comfortable than me asking for help. So, I have to work out as a “be strong” person, how do I tell somebody I'm not OK and how do I ask for help. And because of the way I'm designed, it has to be on my terms. So, if someone says to me, “Are you OK?” And I just think, “I can't be bothered to talk to you,” or “you are the last person on the planet I want to talk to,” I will just deflect them. And I'm skilful enough that I can just deflect them even if I'm having a dreadful day.

Alexis: Yeah.

Sandy: But what I need to do is find a way that I can get to somebody. A little bit like what you said, I needed to pick up the phone and ring somebody at that time, at that time of day, there are people that you need to find out, and you need to work out what works for you because nobody can teach you this.

Alexis: No.

Sandy: But I guess what I would then implore managers to do is, just because you’ve found a way doesn't mean that it works for somebody else.

Alexis: It’s not the right way for everybody.

Nancie: No.

Sandy: And if I was to give one person a piece of advice, if you've got someone who walks in, bereaved, is don’t judge, don’t say, just sit and listen, they’ll tell you.

Alexis: Yeah, and give time actually.

Sandy: And hear what they are telling you and hear what they're not telling you.

Alexis: Yeah, I think it is, it’s the subtext, isn't it, to what's going on as well, and all the other nonverbal cues and everything else that you can see. I think it's trusting your gut feeling. We have a human response to other people, and actually recognising that this person isn't OK, but I don't really know why, but I can clearly see, and giving them space and time, and talk about that.

Nancie: And it's also about treating me like I was Nancie before. So that Bambi eyes thing really don’t work for me.

Sandy: Don’t for me, either.

Nancie: And all it does is keep me upset and whatever, and actually, what I might want is I might want a bit of that, but I want you to treat me like normal.

Alexis: Like you know me.

Nancie: Yeah. Because I'm still me. And I think you see this with people who cross the road who want to pretend they haven't seen you, and aren't – well, just when you've had a death. Now for my colleagues who are going to the homes of victims where they've had someone killed in traumatic situation, et cetera, please take that learning with you when you go in there, because they feel doubly isolated.

I know in my family's experience, it was almost like we were unlucky to be around, so people avoided us even more which makes you even more isolated. And, you know, “you’re the one,” and if it becomes public then it's even worse because –

Alexis: It’s like a reputation, isn’t it?

Nancie: – everybody’s staring and pointing at you, et cetera, and it's the only thing your surname becomes known for. So, there is something for me about recognising, be the human that reaches out. Don't leave them on their own. Even if you're dropping food around for them and they don't want to talk, you know, it’s just the fact that I was thinking of you.

Alexis: It's the nurturing part, isn't it, you’re nurturing someone and recognising – you know, like you say, if you drop food around for somebody, you’re just recognising that you are showing that –

Sandy: I care.

Alexis: – you’re there if you need them, and you care. I think the other thing as well is, is knowing who not to talk to.

Nancie: Yeah.

Sandy: Yes.

Alexis: Because there are mood hoovers, there are people who will – who – I don’t know, love to be –

Sandy: Love a drama?

Alexis: – yeah, love to be in the drama, love to be needed, and –

Sandy: Pour some petrol on it. Yeah.

Alexis: Yeah. The Bambi eyes thing about, “oh, but don’t you want to talk?” And actually, sometimes it’s recognising who doesn’t help you.

Nancie: Mm.

Sandy: Yeah, definitely. I think you tend to. I certainly have found out who my real friends are.

Nancie: Yeah.

Sandy: You know, I didn't really need to calculate or work that out, I think I already knew, but yeah, you do.

Alexis: They’re acutely in focus when you need support.

Sandy: Mm. Yeah. Definitely.

Nancie: Well, you don't need your mates when you've won the lottery, do you?

Alexis: No.

Nancie: It's at the difficult end of this game where you need people to step up, and people either do step up or they don't know how to step up.

Alexis: And that tells you so much, doesn't it?

Nancie: Yeah. And I guess one of the things we've not sort of talked about is when – and I've had it a couple of times now where people are in a terminal illness case and work with you, or work for you, and that's quite difficult when who do they talk to? Because quite often they don’t want to talk to their family because it upsets them. So, they may come to you as a line manager.

And I've had people say “Will you take care of my will for me? Will you ensure that the funeral …” I've sat with someone whilst they organised their own funeral about what they did, and they didn't want. I had one lady who thankfully has made a full recovery from cancer, but thought that she was in a life-limiting situation, and we sat and talked about what she wanted for her children, et cetera. She even actually asked me if I'd marry her husband. It’s [unintelligible 00:42:05], because she said he would need to someone to tell him what to do. So, I declined at that point, and I thought perhaps he would make his own choice on that. But thankfully it never came to that event.

Alexis: But you do have [unintelligible 00:42:17] I think.

Nancie: Yeah, but you do have these bizarre conversations, but if you can't sit with somebody during that time, when can you? And they need someone to talk honestly with them, and I think you've got to let people do that.

Alexis: I think, as well, those conversations are really hard to have with people who are in your family, you know, to go and find somebody who is connected to you, but doesn't have that emotional, I don't know, connection I suppose, where you can almost voice it and work it through for yourself. Because even if the worst case scenario doesn't happen, then you've had that thought process, and it's almost like “I've got my affairs in order.” And I think that is something that people feel a lot better for having done that, there's less ambiguity, things feel like they're organised, and I can now focus on what I've got to do here.

Nancie: Yeah. Yeah.

Alexis: Thank you for talking about all of that. We've covered a lot of ground there. Is there anything – just before we finish, is there anything in terms of kind of tips that you want to leave people with? You know, we've talked about talking to the right people.

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: Yeah?

Sandy: So, I’d say, yeah, talk to the right people, do what feels right for you, acknowledge that you are not superhuman, that grief is a natural part of living, and you can't be superwoman/superman. Just be aware that when you're going through this process, identify who the people are who you can go and talk to and get the support at the right time. Do what's right for you.

And don't be ashamed. Don't be embarrassed by it. You don't have to be strong all the time. You know, my smile has come back home. You know, I’ve got …. You will get through it. It’ll take time, but everyone – you will eventually get through it. But, yeah, if you're listening to it now, get some support, get the help that you need however you feel would work for you.

Alexis: Yeah. OK. Thank you.

Nancie: So, I guess my one thing, if I had to boil it down is we all have what I call “the dark night of the soul,” where it's always at 3am when all your mates are asleep, you don't want to wake anybody up, and you think that this is just awful. The one thing I would say to people is I think it's normal to have that feeling where you feel so utterly wretched that your mind will take you to places where you think this would just be so much better if I didn't wake up tomorrow.

Alexis: Yeah. Mm.

Nancie: And my advice to people, or my plea to people under that is, that is a momentary thought process. Do not stay in that place. Do whatever it takes to get yourself through the next 60 seconds, five minutes, 30 minutes, because afterwards you do realise that that was a real dark moment of the soul when you were alone at the worst time of the day. And that is you have just got to keep going, promise me that you will see that sunrise and then think about it again.

Alexis: I really echo that. I think sometimes when you're feeling that, those desperate feelings and those intrusive thoughts and, you know, you start to kind of go down that rabbit hole, that actually it doesn't last. It feels like it's going to last forever –

Nancie: Yeah.

Alexis: – but it doesn't. And it's having faith that actually time does help, and that this won't last. This feeling won't last. You know, it's almost like having mantras, “This is just where I'm at today and it'll go,” and you know.

Sandy: It is, it's having those mantras, like you say, and also, to me it’s would your loved-one want you to be in that dark place forever, you know?

Alexis: Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sandy: They just wouldn't; they would want you to get through this.

Alexis: And I think three o'clock in the morning is very difficult because everything seems much, much worse, whatever it is, I think. But knowing what works for you in order to kind of help you put one foot in front of the other, so “what is it that I need to do to help myself feel a bit better than I do right now,” and that might be something really simple.

But there are things people can do, aren’t there, that can help them to lift out of that very dark, desperate place. And also, there's lots of help out there that's available, you know, and there are people who can support as well. There’s lots of national helplines and things that people can access, too, 24 hours a day. So even if it feels like it's four in the morning and no one's interested, actually there is somebody who's interested and there's somebody there who will take that call.

Sandy: Yeah.

Alexis: Thank you for listening to the Keeping the Peace Podcast it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you subscribe, you'll be notified of the next episode as soon as it's available. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts, so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training, or Oscar Kilo.

[00:46:57 – 00:47:01 - Music]

Episode 5: Stress less

In this episode, Alexis speaks with DCI Pete Thorp all about supporting personal resilience, cultural aspects affecting self-care, and the impact of the keeping the peace training rolled out across Humberside police.

Podcast transcript

Keeping the Peace Series 1, Episode 5 - Stress less

Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast. Today I'm meeting with DCI Pete Thorp. We've been doing some work together quite extensively over the last probably year and 18 months I'd say, developing Keeping the Peace training which is all around wellbeing and stress management and personal resilience. So, I'm really looking forward to talking to you, Pete.

Pete: Mm.

Alexis: He looks nervous. Pete, do you want to just give a bit of an explanation about your role and area of business for the police?

Pete: Yeah, sure. So, as you said, I'm a DCI and I work in the protecting vulnerable people unit. Within that we deal with all child sex abuse investigations, child safeguarding, and a lot of adult sex offending as well, so it's a really difficult environment to work in. I guess, in a way, I am really fortunate that I'm a DCI in this department and not a DC in the department because actually the people doing the actual investigations, and seeing that trauma with victims, and the material that they have to view is such that it is so demanding on them that actually I genuinely feel quite fortunate that I'm not doing that job.

But my job, I guess, is to make sure that we care for those people as much as we possibly can, we make sure that they're looked after and that they can actually deliver something really positive to that victim of what can be the most horrendous crime that you could be a victim of. So, it’s a really, really challenging department, but the people that we have are not there by chance, they want to be there, they have an interest or an aptitude to do this sort of work and are very compassionate caring people. The trick is just to make sure they've got the right help and support around them, and that they can their identify and manage that stress, which is something we're going to talk about today –

Alexis: Yeah, yeah.

Pete: – is really important.

Alexis: Yeah, I mean I’ve met a lot of them in the trainings and in different pieces of work we've done, and it's really struck me how passionate they are about what they do, but always juggling that kind of – you know, it's the worst. It’s the worst part of people, isn't it, that they're managing all the time –

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: – that they're investigating –

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: – and it's the stuff that most of us would shy away from and they're going straight into that.

Pete: Yeah, no, absolutely, and it's maybe they're not putting themselves in physical danger if we think about a firearms officer running towards a bomb going off or something like that, but they are putting themselves every day in some sort of emotional danger which is a totally different thing to manage, but equally is really important.

And the great thing about having done the work that we've done together in the last 18 months, I think we've really started to understand how we support the workforce in a much better, more compassionate, more human way. And certainly, when we've done the Keeping the Peace training, the ability for them to have that, someone like you come in and talk about what stress is, actually that it's not something to be afraid of, it's not something to feel embarrassed about, that we all have those moments where we are going to really struggle, and actually that’s all right.

There's definitely a perception in the cops that you have to be strong and you're there to help people, and you'll always be that person that you can be relied on to do anything. And it's like, “That's great, but that's not always the case, and actually, you're going to have stuff going on,” whether it's at work in our environment, which is pressurised, it's very demanding, it's high intensity. And imagine then going home to something else that's pressurised, high intensity, distressing, how do you manage that?

So, it's really important that we step up as an organisation, and not want to sound really corporate, but we need to care for our staff much better, and we need to make sure that they feel valued, and they feel supported, and they're engaged with us, and they have good leadership, and the support mechanisms are in place them to get them through those really tough times, whether it's at work or away from work.

Alexis: Yeah. And I think making it more acceptable to be able to say, “I'm finding this really difficult,” or “this case is really getting to me,” or “I'm overwhelmed with cases” or whatever, and be able to flag that. Because you're right, I think cops tend to keep going, keep going, they keep putting their mask on, they keep turning up.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And often there can be a lot going on at home as well, but that doesn't come into work because we keep that separate, but eventually over a long period of time it takes its toll and there's a payment for that.

Pete: It does. Yeah, it does. And even if we can do a little bit of “these are the signs to look out for,” or “this is what you need to think about,” or “this is how people get stressed, this is the build-up to that, these are the markers that you need to see that are happening,” and if we can stop someone getting to the point where they got off sick, or they have some sort of moment, then that's fantastic. Because then they feel supported, and for us, they're here, they’re at work, they're doing that really difficult job, but a really important job at the same time, but equally they're not damaging themselves in the process.

Alexis: I think that timing is really important. When people have gone off sick and actually because they feel that they've got to a point where they can't do this anymore, then they've got to get back in, it’s much better for people if they can continue to do their job, because it’s being at work and the structure and the process it gives us, and the identity and everything else, it’s important.

To actually have to walk away from it because you feel that you can't do it anymore and take time off is really hard, I think, for cops, because then they've got to find their way back in.

Pete: Yeah. And I think, I mean I've never really worked in any other job. I've not had a real job, I've always been a cop. So, it is a bit of a cliche, but you are in a weird family, and maybe that's apparent in other jobs, it probably is, but certainly when you are working in a world surrounded by child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular, you do bond in a funny way with your colleagues, and you become oddly close in a weird way.

And to be out of that, that's almost like your support mechanism for many people, I guess, at work, and then to be away from that is quite difficult. It's not like you go home and my wife says, “oh, how was work today?” And it's like, “oh, well like tell me about all the things that I've done today, do you really want to know?” And actually, out socially, the best conversation killer in a pub is you meet someone new and say “oh, what do you do for a job?” “Oh, I manage the team at Humberside Police that deals with child sex abuse,” well that's the end of that conversation.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: Because no one wants to do that.

Alexis: It's pretty similar when I say I'm a psychotherapist, people just stop talking and walk away.

Pete: Well, that and they’re worried you’re going to be analysing them [unintelligible 00:06:18].

Alexis: Yeah, I know, yeah, like, “Oh god, she's going to know all about me.” Yeah, so I know you've got real passion for wellbeing, we’ve talked about it and we've –

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: – worked on things for a long time now really. Why are you so passionate about it? Well, I know you've talked there about almost buffering the staff in the offices from what they’re doing, but you are really driven to make sure that people have good leadership and are taking their own wellbeing into an account. So, what’s that driven by?

Pete: It's a really good question. I think partly, having worked in this environment now for, I don’t know, eight or nine years, the thing that – and I've been quite fortunate because I came into this department as a DS, as a detective sergeant, and have gone through several promotions but never really left the department. I've sort of clawed my way out a couple of times and have managed to be sucked back in again.

So, I think one of the things that really sticks in my mind is having been newly promoted as a DS and coming into what was then the family protection unit, but was the PVP, I remember having a conversation with a colleague who I was their manager, and I had no clue about child protection or safeguarding at all. And they sort of said to me about how I needed them more than they needed me.

And it was true, because I need them because of their knowledge, their understanding, their ability, but equally, and I reflected this back to them and was like, “well you also need me because there'll be points where you need my support or help or guidance,” but that really grounded me, I think, and taught me a really valuable lesson about what it is to be a leader. And it's about how you support an individual, not a group, an individual, and from there it's really grown, I guess, in terms of seeing some of the pressures that the staff face.

Like I said, at the beginning, I actually feel quite lucky that I don’t do their job, which I don't think we should be afraid of that point of view, it's understanding the difficulties that they have. And they do such a good job, and they help – the reason people join the police is they want to help people. If you sit in an interview with new starters and you say, “why do you want to join the police?” and there’s almost like a stock answer, “I want to help people. I want to do something good for my community.” So, we're all driven by the same things.

And if my part of that is to make sure that the people that help the people that need us the most at times, this the most vulnerable people, they can't always ask for our help, they can't always put their hand up and get that help, we need to be really on the front foot in finding these people and supporting them, and giving that confidence that they can trust us, and we can help them.

And if my bit of that is to make sure that the staff, when they come to work, feel that they've got that support and the right environment around them to give that help, then that can't be a bad thing. So that's, I think, my motivation behind the wellbeing stuff, and it's just grown, I guess. Having worked with you and understanding much better some of the elements that we've covered in the training before. I mean, I've learned a lot through it as well, things like the selfcare wheel, and understanding that all those pieces of that jigsaw come together and it's always going to be a bit lumpy, and it's how you sort of smooth that circle out to make sure that you feel that you're on an even keel all the time. That's really helped me, so if I've got benefit out of it, then it should be that people who are working with me get that as well.

Alexis: I think that self-care will impacted on a lot of people, didn't it, in the training?

Pete: Mm.

Alexis: And it's something that I've developed over the years just around looking at different parts of our lives, and how we function, and what we do look after ourselves, because often when you're in a really stressful job or potentially stressful job, you can really lose sight of yourself and what you need in order to be able to function. And I think also culturally, especially from the police point of view but also from being British point of view –

Pete: Yes.

Alexis: – it's very much about not putting yourself first because that’s seen to be self-centred. And this whole thing now about wellbeing, and about self-care, and looking after yourself and taking that responsibility for yourself, it's a massive shift away from culturally where we've been.

Pete: It is, yeah, it is, and it’s really interesting to start seeing. I mean the great thing about when we did that training, so we delivered that training to, what, a couple of hundred people.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: The response from that was, “oh my God, we’ve never had this before. No one's ever sat down and talked to us like this before. We've never had the opportunity to air our grievances like this before and explain the difficulties that we face and actually get something practical that is going to help us.” It's almost like we've forgotten the people there. So, yeah, it's a fantastic opportunity, and the way I think about that self-care wheel is a little bit like on the Trivial Pursuit where you collect your cheeses.

Alexis: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Pete: And then you get your full wheel and then you're all good. And watching people go through that process, and you can see them thinking about it and actually suddenly maybe almost realising that this issue that might not be anything to do with work is clearly making my wheel a bit wonky.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: And it's a really, really useful way of identifying those bits. So, yeah, that was – for me that was – and it was the first bit, I think, of the training.

Alexis: Yeah, it was, yeah, we did it really, really early.

Pete: It was the first thing we got them to do was fill your wheel in. But, yeah, for me that’s just set the tone then of what we then talked about. And the feedback we’ve had from it has absolutely been fantastic, hence why we’re going to do it, well we’re planning to do it again.

Alexis: Part Two if we can get people in a room.

Pete: Yeah, if we can get more than three people in a room together it’ll be great.

Alexis: Yeah.

[00:11:45 - 00:11:46 - Music]

Alexis: You're listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo, and Humberside Police.

Wellbeing is kind of integral, and I suppose in the COVID-19 era, I suppose that's something that we're having to think about more and more. People are working more remotely, we've got people working from home, we've got leaders and managers who probably would be able to pick up on someone struggling and see the signs if they were seeing them face-to-face. But not being able to see people face-to-face, or them being at home can be quite tricky.

How do you think leaders and colleagues, I suppose, because this is about taking responsibility for self but also for others, isn't it?

Pete: Absolutely.

Alexis: What signs do you see, I suppose, when you are working with people and you physically can't see them, and you can see other managers struggling with that as well?

Pete: I think it’s certainly a real challenge because you forget how much you rely on visual communication. So, you can look in someone's eyes, you can judge by their body language, you can see it in them almost, that's really easy. What's really difficult is when you don't see your staff as often as you want to, or they’re not there, and the only way you can overcome that is to – well, at the moment it’s through Skype calls, video calls, but equally looking out for those other signs.

So, sometimes we do see that the workload of officers is quite large in our department, but actually at times you can see it growing and growing and growing, and you can be very quick to sort of say, “well, they’re clearly not working hard enough because they’re not turning that work over.” And actually, what we should be saying is, “well, is there some reason why that person is almost like stocking work up.”

And having spoken to some colleagues who have experienced this, they will actually say, “Well, yeah, what I was doing was I thought if I took more on, I would look busy and it would allow me to hide, almost, from the pressure or this thing that I'm facing right now,” and actually it just makes it 10 times worse. So, it's really important for managers at every level to not misinterpret that culture of trying to monitor performance.

That is important; we've got a job to do at the end of the day and we need to help people, but equally it does allow us to maybe look deeper into what's going on with an individual. Having that regular one-to-one support session is really important. We aspire anyway for our sergeants and inspectors to keep a close eye on their staff. Every 28 days they should sit down and have a conversation with them about what's going on in their workload and how they're progressing that.

Something we're working on at the minute is to try how we become more reflective in our practice around some of the things that they've experienced, and almost steal some of those things that you will use in your professional life as well as social workers, and having that regular sort of supervision, or that point where you go, “do you know what, yeah, stood in that mortuary watching a post-mortem of a baby was absolutely horrendous, so how do we support them and get that rather than just going, ‘yeah, you’ve done that now so we’ll move on and we’ll just pretend that never happened’”, or “you don’t need anything do you, you’re fine, you’ve done it before.”

Alexis: Mm. I think that reflection side of it is really important. I mean, in my practice we, as a profession, expect to have supervisory support, clinical supervision every month, and we are not seeing things first-hand; we're hearing it, and working with people to help them through it. But that reflective conversation, I have that with my supervisor. At Fortis we have peer support, reflective groups where it isn’t about me facilitating, we help each other, and we'd share ideas and talk about tricky cases without breaking any confidences.

But it’s creating space for thought and also about bringing yourself into that equation. So, someone may have been to a mortuary and gone through what you've just described 10 times, but the tenth time is the time that actually they're finding it really difficult, and we might not know why.

Pete: Yeah, why, yeah.

Alexis: Yeah. But by with reflecting and talking about it, we can help people to understand why, but also what do we need to do differently in the future and all of that stuff that comes from it. That bit about “Well just keep moving forward and keep pushing it down, you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine,” which I think is what we can tell ourselves in our own minds, our self-talk stuff.

Pete: Yeah. And I think because people don't understand or don’t recognise some of those signs that they need to look out for themselves, or if they do, they ignore it, that's what's been good about the work that we've done with the Keeping the Peace training and now having Keeping the Peace podcast.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: That actually people can recognise that actually I feel a bit weird about this, or I've got this odd thing in me, and I don’t know what it is. Well actually, maybe it is something we can help you with and very quickly support you through and you can understand it better, and then it's not going to spill over into something else.

It'd be very easy in a job where you're coming in and you are bombarded with high-risk distressing work, and it's almost like it's relentless. And actually, how would you park that when you go home, and actually, should that be having such an impact on your own private life? For me I believe quite strongly work’s work, home’s home, but you can’t always have that distinction. And we need to be really clear how – it’s almost like catching it early, isn’t it? It’s like you’re starting to exhibit these symptoms, or clearly this sign that this stressor is starting to come to you, so let’s get it resolved now. Let’s be happy enough and bold enough to identify it and then deal with it.

Not be judged about it; no one tittle-tattles in the background thinking, “oh, look at them, they've had to go, they've had a wobble.” And it's like, well, yeah, we're all going to have wobbles at some point and then move on from it.

Alexis: I think it's helping culturally for people to just accept that that's part of what we do as human beings.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: We're not robots, and we are affected by a lot of things. Whether that it might be a work-related thing, or it might be a person-related thing, or it might be that there’s an investigation ongoing and there’s children at home that are the same age, or that kind of thing.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Alexis: And also, the area of business especially that you’re in, those are the conversations, as you just said, if you’re at a dinner party people are like “Yeah, OK, you want to go that way?”

Pete: “Mm-mm, OK.”

Alexis: That is the societal stuff that people have very strong feelings about, they have really strong reactions to it.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: So, who do you talk to about it other than people –

Pete: At work.

Alexis: – who you work with. Yeah.

Pete: And actually, I think partly that's because you think that no one else is going to understand it. So, actually how many people in the world do view child pornography, for example, and sexualised images of children who are not paedophiles? Well, cops in my department have to; they don't want to. So, how do we support them through that, because that's not a dinner party conversation, is it?

Alexis: No.

Pete: Equally, stood – one of my vivid memories about being in my role as a DS and I went to a post-mortem of a child – and I seem to talk about post-mortems of children quite a lot, maybe they affect me more than I realise.

Alexis: Mm.

Pete: But it was at Christmastime, and I remember stood in a mortuary while they autopsied a nine year old boy, and they were playing Wham’s Christmas music in the background –

Alexis: Oh god.

Pete: – in the mortuary. And that, every year since then, I always think about that at Christmas. And it’s like I shouldn’t have to think about that actually, so how do I park that and get over it almost and then move on.

Alexis: But it's interesting that, isn't it, because that's about your senses and something being triggered by something externally.

Pete: Yeah, and it was nothing to do with –

Alexis: What was actually going on.

Pete: – what I was seeing.

Alexis: No. It just reminds you.

Pete: Yeah. And it was like, “This is weird. Why is Wham playing in the mortuary? And I know it’s Christmas, but come on.”

Alexis: I know. Yeah.

Pete: And then it’s like you’re out shopping next year in wherever and Wham’s playing in the background, and you think “Oh yeah, I remember that boy.”

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: And people are carrying that all the time. So, unless we get better at understanding those triggers or those signs, and we know how to support our staff better, which I think we’re getting there now with some of the stuff that we've done together, that can only be a good thing, definitely.

Alexis: Do you think that that is improving culturally within the police in general?

Pete: Yeah, I think it is actually. I think it's long overdue, but I think when you look at what we've managed to do in the last couple of years there is more of a focus now on wellbeing and supporting staff, and that comes partly from leadership. So, having people that are engaged that are visible, that will spend that time to understand what the concerns of their staff are, talk to them, explain things to them, tell them the reasons why something is like it is, or we're doing something, that helps massively.

And we definitely a different organisation than we were, I would say, in the last four or five years, absolutely. And hopefully, as we move forward, it'll take that further step forward where it will become common that people are quite content going for their psychotherapy sessions, or whatever it might be, without feeling embarrassed about it or worried about other people finding out, or someone in the office viewing that as a weakness. Then, yeah, we’ll get there, definitely.

Alexis: We see with clients police, officer, police officers, and some from your department, there will often be this resistance at first to come in for support. And when we get the feedback it’s like, “this is the last thing I wanted to do, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And I think that, for me, that shift is massive because we’re coming in with someone who’s actually really in denial, and really avoidant, and really – it’s like pulling a – you know when you’re kind of trying to pull a donkey and they’ve got the – he’s completely – and then the stubbornness of it, and then actually there’s a process that goes on and they come out the other side feeling well balanced and able to function, and that that's a huge shift.

And I think the more that it's acceptable that we can recognise that we have a capacity as a person, as a people, to manage those kinds of jobs, and that actually we need to be looking at psychological wellbeing. We talk a lot about physical wellbeing, and people will go to the gym on a regular basis, and go running or whatever it is they like to do, but it's also about what you’re doing psychologically and mentally to help yourself.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes there’s going for a – I mean, for me, I love going walking. I've got campervan, she’s called Mabel. She is quite pink.

Alexis: Brilliant. Flowery curtains I'm now imagining.

Pete: Pink gingham, thank you, Alexis. But for me, the ability to go somewhere remote with my wife, and turn off, and have that open air, fresh air, nature, and be exercising, I'm not really doing it for the physical benefits of it at all.

Alexis: No.

Pete: And I think sometimes people think, “Yeah, I'm really healthy. I go to the gym, and I eat really well. And I look after myself, and I'm really ripped,” and clearly not me, and for some, and that means that therefore they are going to be fine. And actually, no you're missing a crucial part of your health, it isn't your physical health at all. And we don't seem to quite click that sometimes..

Alexis: It's a link, isn't it? I think the physical health side of it, what I'm always fascinated by is that when we are struggling mentally and we're ignoring it, often our physical health will be the first thing that tells us.

Pete: Mm. It takes over.

Alexis: Yeah, like we’ll get ill, or you go on holiday, and you’ve got tonsilitis for the whole time you’re off, or you’re wasted, fatigued. So, our body physically will tell us when we're mentally drained, but we tend to be more focused on physically what we're doing. And if I was assessing somebody on their mental health, I'd be looking at what’s your sleep pattern like, how much water do you drink, what's your diet like, are you on a medication, all that kind of stuff. But that's the nuts and bolts of it actually, that's what we need in order to just as a baseline.

Pete: Yes.

Alexis: And then it's the extra bits.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And the bit you just described there with Mabel is about grounding and being in an environment where you can kind of put things in perspective, I suppose.

Pete: Yeah. I think it is.

Alexis: And [unintelligible 00:23:54].

Pete: And it's opportunity. Yeah, it is. And I think, I mean, Mabel isn't very fast. So, when you spend –

Alexis: Does she's she break down a lot? They don’t tend to break down a lot, don’t they?

Pete: Yeah, she’s not the most – she's an old lady. She's not a reliable.

Alexis: Unreliable.

Pete: She leaks, she forgets things. No. So, when you're in an environment that is really busy and you're getting bombarded with things all the time, and people are boom-boom-boom at you, and it’s fast-paced, Mabel isn’t. So, you get in Mabel, she can only do – if you go over 50 miles an hour all the plates fall out of the cupboard.

Alexis: Rattles.

Pete: And the gin falls out, and it’s just a terrible weekend.

Alexis: It’s a disaster.

Pete: Oh, it’s awful. And I think for me it’s that ability to slow down, and then get to wherever you’re going which generally takes a long time, and then you stop. And you’re probably somewhere where your phone probably doesn’t have a lot of signal, it’s different, it’s a different environment altogether. There’s normally a nice pub, and it’s just that you need that time.

Alexis: It’s interesting, I was just thinking it’s the change of pace, so –

Pete: That's more the more important bit for me, yeah.

Alexis: Yeah, yeah. And actually, there's a process there to going away where actually you start to slow down because Mabel’s slowed down.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: It's like, you know, how when you get there you've arrived, and actually you're there in the place you're in, I think that's the other bit about wellbeing is being in the here and now and being able to take out of it what you can rather than being in the there and then.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's really important. And I think when we look at some of the other bits that we did in that training, I hope it’s allowed the people that had that training to get some of those points and to start taking that away and then interpret it and doing what they –however they want to do it.

So, whether they've got a Maureen or something, whatever that is that allows them to maybe identify “Yeah, I’m getting to that point now where I feel a bit full, things are starting to slosh about a little bit, so what do I need to do?” Well actually for me it’s this. And that could be anything, couldn’t it? It could be from going for a run to sitting in your pub, or whatever it might be, but just do something that you know is going to help you come back down again.

Alexis: One of the things I hear a lot when people are in busy jobs like yours is about time. “I haven't got time.” They’ll make time for other people, because often in the role that they’re in they are a fixer, or they’re a protector, or they’re a rescuer, but making time for themselves becomes something that it’s almost like a – I don’t know, what’s the word? But it's like a luxury.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: Making time for themselves is a luxury. So, when they actually take that time out there can be quite a lot of guilt attached to it, feeling guilty.

Pete: Yeah. I think, yeah, I mean I never feel guilty in myself, but maybe that's because I understand wellbeing, I don’t know. But it's interesting, I talk to people, and some of the people that work for me, it's really weird actually, a conversation I had with a DI even last week and he was about to go on – he was on annual leave, and he rang me, and he’d just emailed me, and I was like “I didn’t know you’re at work today,” and he’s “Oh, I’m not, I’m on annual leave.”

So, I’m “What the hell are you doing?” And it’s like that almost like a panic of “Well, no, I’m about to go off for a week, and if I don’t do this today it’s going to be horrendous next week. And when I get back, I’m not looking forward to coming back,” and it’s like “Well, you’ve not even left yet, so how can …” You know, if we’re in that position where people are feeling that level of burden almost where they can’t take that step back because they’re worried about – you know, that’s not right.

Alexis: No, and that’s about the size of the job, isn’t it?

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And also work ethic, and wanting to, I think, for some people not let the team down as well. Also not let their cases down, there's that real responsibility that goes with it. But so, it’s important, isn’t it, as an organisation to get that balance with this is really important work and we have a duty, and we serve the public with we also have a duty to look after ourselves so that we can continue to do that effectively.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely. And that still has to be a message that's really personal to them as well. So, it's not like us saying, “I need you at work so you can do your job.” That's true, but equally it’s like “I want you at work so you can do your job,” it’s not “I need you.” And I think it’s the way we think about that, and that's where that wellbeing work is almost like the fuel to allow someone to come into work, if that makes sense.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: And then whatever we can do in terms of showing people how to fill in a self-care wheel, or whatever it might be, if that helps them feel better about it and actually they can come in and feel more comfortable and actually do their job, which they can do. And the frustration often with staff is that they don't feel they can do their job properly because they're tied up in some way, or hamstrung in some way, well let's get rid of those blockages and let's just get you set up the right way.

We when you think about some of the other wellbeing things, and even like down to hygiene factors. I hate the word hygiene factors, and I'm reading it because it says – there's a label in the room over there that says, “hygiene station.”

Alexis: Hygiene station, surrounded by sanitiser.

Pete: It is an actual hygiene station, but it’s like hygiene factors around getting air con in a building. And where I work before we managed to get air conditioning installed in the office block, and we maybe used it three or four times last summer, but oh my god, the difference the staff felt because suddenly it was like – they’ve been asking for it forever. I don’t know quite how we flukely managed to get it, but it seems like it just appeared. And it’s like well it’s something really, really obviously basic but can make such a big difference.

Alexis: So that was what surprised me when we did the training when we asked people what were the stressors, it was the majority of them were environmental. It was “my chair is really uncomfortable,” or “my room is blue, and I’ve got no windows.”

Pete: Yeah, “my computer’s really slow.”

Alexis: Yeah, “my computer’s slow,” or “it’s boiling in the winter and freezing in the summer.” And what fascinated me about that was that kind of top layer of everyday irritants that was actually getting in the way of having a conversation about what actually people really do.

Pete: Yeah. And whether that's partly because people don't want to confront some of those real thoughts and it's like, “well, I'll use the excuse of the computer system being rubbish,” or “it's too hot in my office,” or “it's dirty,” then that's an easy conversation to have because it's not actually talking about yourself and talking about how you feel about something.

So, but it's almost like, “well that's fine, tell me what it is, and we'll fix it, or we’ll try and fix it.” And actually, if we’re demonstrating to you that we’re listening to you, that we’re taking account of what you’re saying, and we’re doing something about it, then you’re going to run out of things to say that “it’s no longer too hot,” or “it’s too dirty,” or “the computer system’s rubbish.” I mean the computer system isn't fantastic.

Alexis: I hear about that a lot.

Pete: Yeah. But it’ll get better. But once we've got all those out the way, and it's like, right, well stop putting these things – let's get rid of them for the good, greater good anyway, and then but like actually let's get down to what is it really that's upsetting you, or making you not want to come to work, or making you feel stressed.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: And by having those labels, people have been able to identify some of those reasons and why that might manifest itself that we covered in Keeping the Peace, then that can only but help.

And I think now we are starting to see more people engage in that way, so they’ve still got hang-ups about some hygiene factors, but more so people are more interested and more engaged in becoming wellbeing champions, or becoming peer supporters or whatever those – you know, the projects that we're looking at in terms of how we get that collective sort of feeling back together where we look after each other and we look out for each other.

Alexis: It comes back to that family feeling where – that kind of weird family, if you like, you're brought together because of this subject area, this topic, if you like, this part of society and trying to promote how to look after each other and recognise the signs in other people. Because I think that's the real key thing in your area of business is that if you know each other really well, and being able to say to somebody, “I’ve just got a feeling, I just don't think you're all right,” or, “do you want to have a chat, or shall we just go for a walk?” it’s just creating an opportunity to check in with each other and accepting that that's just all it takes. It might be a 10 minute catch up, but recognising what's going on for other people and knowing that somebody else has got your back with that as well.

Pete: Yeah, and making sure that they feel that they're allowed to do it.

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: Because obviously we are a disciplined organisation, and people sometimes confuse discipline with their ability to do something. So, do you remember in the training where someone –

Alexis: Mm, yeah, I was just thinking that.

Pete: – was saying about not getting their lunch break, and actually they would need –

Alexis: Permission.

Pete: – someone to come down and actually say, “go for your lunch.” It's like, “Well, no, come on, we’re all grownups, you can take your lunch. You're entitled to it. Yes, you're really busy but you need to …” the sort of the point is that people need to take that step forward where it's self-initiating and it's, “Yeah, do you know what, I’m going to have my lunch.” But equally that’s important for people who are in management positions to support that so they’re not getting grief for doing it.

We’ve really tried to encourage – where I worked, obviously I’ve just moved jobs, but when I was in my previous role we were working in Brigg which is quite a pretty little market town, there was a river, and you could go for a walk. And it's like, “Well go for a walk. You don't have to sit at your desk for eight, 10, 12 hours a day and we're going to stand over you with a whip and make you work,” let’s be realistic about it, and actually, no, if you go for 20 minutes, half an hour that’s not on your lunchbreak, heaven forbid, and you actually just a little bit of …

Alexis: Leave the building,

Pete: Just leave the building, it is possible. That can only be a good thing, can’t it, surely, that actually they come back. It’s almost like a reset, isn’t it, and then you go again.

Alexis: Completely. I mean, I was just thinking yesterday, I never – you know, obviously I’m working from home a lot more now than I’ve ever done, and I took my dog out, Digby, my German Shepherd, out for a walk. It was a mile, because he needed a leg stretch, so I just kind of did a bit of a root march, came back, and in the afternoon I was so much more productive because I’d just given myself 20 minutes, half an hour to just …

Pete: Yeah, I mean, one thing we did with the people when we were right in lockdown and we had a lot of our colleagues working from home, whereas we set up virtual coffee mornings. And it's like, do you know what, again, at work you will not sit at your desk for eight hours and not stand up and go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea, or just have a natter with your friend about what happened at the weekend or what happened on EastEnders last night. So why would we lose that?

And you shouldn't feel guilty about working from home and feeling that pressure that, “Oh my God, they're going to be watching me. I must do my eight hours.” Well, you wouldn't do that at work. So, why do it at home?

Alexis: Yeah. And it’s managing those expectations, isn't it?

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: Because people, when they're working from home I think can assume that they're being monitored all the time, and I think we've also moving away, hopefully, from a culture of if you're working from home you’re shirking from home which has always been the kind of idea around it.

Pete: Mm. Mm. Absolutely.

Alexis: But productivity’s increased, and absenteeism’s decreased, and so there are some positive signs that actually this is starting to be effective.

Pete: There is, there is, and I think it’s forced some managers to be better managers, because actually in order for them to feel comfortable that their staff are working, and they are, on the main they are, they’re going to engage with them more, they’re going to have more conversations, and they’re going to be more supportive straightaway. If that’s born on the back of them not trusting them to start with and thinking they need to check up on them, it then becomes apparent that they are doing what they should be doing, and that changes that culture again.

So, I suppose you learn as you go forward, don’t we, and certainly what we’ve gone through in the last five months, I think people have not possibly been forced but have become better managers and more supportive of their staff.

Alexis: You've got to be more conscious, haven't you –

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: – with what you're doing –

Pete: Definitely.

Alexis: – as a manager at the moment.

Pete: Yeah, absolutely.

Alexis: You can’t coast with it.

Pete: No.

Alexis: Because you’ve got to make an effort with people.

Pete: Yeah, without a doubt. Without a doubt. And if that helps somebody in terms of feeling they’re more comfortable that they can come forward and say, “Do you know what, something’s not right for me at the minute, I’ve had this experience,” or “this has happened,” or “I’m starting to feel stressed and I’ve identified these points,” and then that manager knows what to do about it, then that can’t be a bad thing can it?

Alexis: Mm. And I think that, going forward, is the bit, isn’t it, around how when managers have picked up on what’s going on and those signs, I mean a lot of the people in PVP, the leaders, were in the training, weren't they, they were part of the training.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And that was quite interesting to watch other people’s kind of checking out, “Are they doing the Selfcare Wheel? Are they having a conversation about that? What’s going on?” But seeing each other, I know the rank is really important, especially when you're investigating and you’re operational, but it's also about the people to people bit and recognising, and putting each into context.

Pete: Yeah, it is.

Alexis: And managers being able to say, “I think this person is struggling about don't really know what to do about it” as well.

Pete: Yeah.

Alexis: And being honest about that.

Pete: Massively important. Absolutely.

Alexis: Mm. OK, so we talked about Mabel as part of your selfcare.

Pete: Mm.

Alexis: What else do you do in terms of your own wellbeing? Apart from the Tiki Bar.

Pete: Well, the Tiki – yeah, it’s not a Tiki Bar, it’s a Bavarian Alpine [unintelligible 00:37:03], Alexis.

Alexis: Of course it is.

Pete: Of course it is. Yes, I –

Alexis: Can’t you think of a shorter name than that?

Pete: Yeah, it’s quite a mouthful isn’t it, the Tiki Bar? I’ll have to call it a Tiki Bar. Yeah, I have a bar in my garden which is themed like a Bavarian Alpine bar that sells – sells?

Alexis: Sells?

Pete: It doesn’t sell, it serves hazelnut schnapps and beer.

Alexis: Oh, it sounds amazing.

Pete: Oh, it is amazing. I am tempted to maybe start wearing lederhosen [unintelligible 00:37:28].

Alexis: God, that doesn't sound amazing,

Pete: But no, for me it's about that ability to be in a different environment, I think, and have the opportunity to whether it's have a bit of peace and quiet, or just be left alone for a moment.

Alexis: Mm. Psychologically it’s like being able to make the separation. And I’m quite good at not checking my emails on weekends and things like that, but I know other people find that temptation just far too much if it's too accessible.

Pete: Yeah. And I think when you work Monday to Friday, and then you come in on a Monday morning and people have been emailing you at eight o'clock on Sunday night it’s like “Ah, what are you doing?”

Alexis: Yeah.

Pete: It’s like that’s half your week, you know, Sunday evening? I mean for me I quite like sitting on a Sunday evening possibly drinking a glass of prosecco and watching Escape to the Chateau. Don’t judge me, but I aren’t going to be sitting doing my emails.

Alexis: No judgment here, Pete, it’s fine.

Pete: So, yeah, I aren’t going to be sitting doing my emails because I think it gives me a head start on Monday morning, you’ve got to have that discipline, I think, at some point that work’s work and home’s home. And, yeah, the two can cross over, but not constantly –

Alexis: No, it's a balance I suppose.

Pete: – to the point where it’s damaging either or the other.

Alexis: Mm.

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[00:39:00 - 00:39:04 - Music]

Keeping the peace: Series 2

Check out the ‘Keeping the Peace’ series 2 podcasts.

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