Keeping the peace: Series 3

Music begins

Alexis P-H:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Keeping the Peace podcast, with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today I’m thrilled to be joined by Dr Ian Hesketh.
Ian is the wellbeing lead at the UK College of Policing and the senior responsible owner for the National Police Wellbeing Service in the UK. He also supports the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Manchester University Alliance Business School, and he’s an honorary Fellow at Durham University Business School, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Open University Business School.

He holds a PhD in management and social psychology, and having been a police officer for 30 years, he’s passionate about wellbeing and using research and evidence-based
interventions to support police officers and staff. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

You’re listening to this Keeping the Peace podcast, produced in collaboration between Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service, and Fortis Therapy and Training.
Ian H:
So, I’m Ian Hesketh, employed by the College of Policing currently, and I’m the head of the National Police Wellbeing Service, and I have the role of SRO, which is senior responsible owner. That means I’m sort of responsible for the day-to-day running, the financials and things like that, what projects we undertake. But my passion’s really about research. So, I was a police officer for 30 years before joining the College of Policing, who actually was on secondment with them prior to a full-time role with them, and I set up the National Police Wellbeing Service together with Andy Roads, who at that time was the chief constable of Lancashire, but, probably more importantly, was the – what is now the national police chief’s council lead for wellbeing, which was a relatively green-field site at the time.

It had attached itself to the workforce directorate, and Andy ran the wellbeing offshoot of that, which was really good, because it enabled us to more or less set everything up from scratch, which is really good with policing interventions. And we’ve been doing it ever since. I think the launch was in 2019; probably started working on some of the themes around 2015. Prior to that I did a PhD at Lancaster University, studied under a great chap called Professor Sir Carey Cooper, who was probably one of the leading voices in everything that’s wellbeing in the workplace. And Carey and I still work together now on the National Wellbeing Forum, which is a forum of about – I
think it’s about 40-odd business on it, which is based out of Alliance Manchester Business School at Manchester University, and we look at the wellbeing challenges to industry as part of that. And I think many of those challenges are exactly the same as what we have in policing, though.

Alexis P-H:
Oh, yeah. Definitely. I think – it’s interesting, isn’t it, because – you – I mean, I – we both kind of work in a – in the wellbeing field, but it’s interesting to see how much it’s developed over time, because I think even in 2015, it was very much in its infancy, wasn’t it? Even the language around it, people understanding what it really means. Still, now, in certain industries, not – there’s not that much clarity.

Ian H:
I remember – you’re right there, Alexis. I remember really well going into the assistant chief constable’s office at Lancashire, and Carey and I were doing some studying on resilience, then. Resilience – how people could be resilient, whether you could train it – and we were doing a big piece of research. And we wanted Lancashire to join in with it, so I went into the office of the assistant chief constable at the time; I’ll spare his blushes.
Alexis P-H:
[Laughs]

Ian H:
But it was [unintelligible 00:03:55]. And he had a big leather Chesterfield in his office, and we sat down and discussed it. I sort of listed all the benefits around – you know, about officer safety, officer wellbeing, people enjoying their work, getting meaning and purpose from it, viewing things probably slightly different. And then all of the benefits that we now know are established in stone, that good wellbeing brings in policing. And he rocked back on his chair at the end of it, and he said, “Well,” he said, “I’ll go with it, but …,” he said, “I cannot ever see myself stood on a stage talking about wellbeing. Can we call it something else?” I went, “Well, not really.” [Laughs] [Unintelligible 00:04:36]. He just …

Alexis P-H:
Like what? [Laughs]

Ian H:
Yeah, like what, like – so I don’t think it was just quite macho enough for him at the time. And – but, I mean, that’s literally under 10 years ago. So I – it just goes to show how quickly policing’s moved on with the –– [unintelligible 00:04:51], and really, it – I mean, you won’t catch me not really shouting from the rooftops about the benefits – but I think it’s probably one of the areas where you can have most benefit for any business, really, not only policing.

Alexis P-H:
Well, it’s a whole cultural shift, isn’t it? And I think, you know, how – working in businesses, I see that culture take – it does take time, because you’re trying to – you’ve got to get the engagement, you’ve got to get the language right, you’ve got to get people to understand the benefits, and – you know, in businesses, it’s the bottom line, isn’t it, about what’s – you know, what’s the bottom line going
to show me in terms of being able to make these improvements. Thinking policing, the cultural aspect of it is massive, because of the expectations, because of the way that things used to be managed, you know, the kind of debriefing at the bar – you know, all
that stuff that – there were ways people were doing things; not necessarily helpful ways, but they were trying to find ways to be able to cope, I think.



Ian H:
Yeah, I think you’re right there. And you mentioned that the sort of debriefing at the bars and that sort of thing definitely went on during my career. I mean, I joined in the late ‘80s, and that was definitely the decompression. But the period of austerity sort of off – saw that leave, to be fair, because a lot of – like police station bars and snooker rooms, and police stations themselves, closed; lots of canteens closed; officers and staff members were then going out to shops and basically eating a sandwich in their cars and things like that.
And so that place, or location where you could actually get together maybe half-way through a shift or after a big job and sort of decompress – you know, we have the mobilising, defusing elements of the Emergency Services Trauma Intervention Programme on the National Wellbeing Service now, which really looks at how we do that in modern society – and culturally, of course, it needed to go on; going and drinking’s not the answer to debriefing everything – but it was the sort of tool of choice, I think, at that time.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, and I think – so – I mean, we know from wellbeing, if you look at – you just look at even the basics around the five ways of wellbeing – relationships and – is important; that social interaction is really important, isn’t it? And having that opportunity to gather somewhere. It’s almost like by making things – breaking things right down to just the kind of tasks of the job, you lose all of that support mechanism that’s there.

Ian H:
Yeah, you – I think what it made everything was – and tech came along at roughly the same time, and went side by side the austerity. So as things like that social interaction went down and people spoke about things, you had the instances of tech coming up. So, things like centralised control rooms, you know. The – previously. They had – the control room was usually some of your more experienced officers and staff members in a control room in the police station in the area that you worked in, and they could direct activity, they knew everybody in person, they worked with the same shift – you know, that social function was there, that solidarity, they knew the areas well. Mapping and things like that weren’t as well established, so things like Google Earth and – you know, like the geo-fencing and things like that weren’t in place at that time.

However, the officers and staff members that did the communications room really knew the area well, and they knew the officers well, they knew who had experience, they knew who didn’t, they knew officers that would be good at certain things and others that may not be. And that sort of – that was predominant in the culture at that time. I know there’s many bad things that existed, but in terms of wellbeing, there’s that natural sort of dynamic there. And supervision levels were far better as well. So the austerity measures actually drove supervision ratios down, they put control rooms in centralised areas, with the – electronically managed by – like, autonomous people that – officers and staff members may not have even spoken to before that are directing them to high-risk jobs, you know, where they may face vulnerability, violence or combinations.
And I think that’s sort of – that colleague relationships – well, you know, you mentioned relationships as one of the sort of pillars of wellbeing – I think that may have suffered over time. But I think now, as we enter a period of what’s called uplift, where officer numbers are starting to rise again, and things have started being thought through, and hopefully, some of the work that we’ve done around the National Wellbeing Service highlights that, where people are now sort of realising that officers and staff need that social interaction, they need those relationships, they need that engagement with their colleagues as well as the public. Because it’s really important when they start to figure out the meaning and purpose in the work.

Alexis P-H:
Definitely. Absolutely. When you look at the reason why you went into this kind of arena in the first place, is that purely based on what you could see was happening in policing, and actually recognising there was something that could be proactively done, or was it about experiences that you’d had personally, about working in that – at that time?

Ian H:
Do you know, I – the moment in time, I think, was, I’d just finished an MBA, again up at Lancaster, so it was probably through education, I think. And sort of the MBA’s a good way of looking at all aspects of business. So I’ve never really been exposed to things like financing operations management, you know, engagement marketing. Things like that, you wouldn’t get in your normally experience as a police officer. So I was quite fascinated with them, and some of the human behaviours, I found myself really interested in that. How the psychology of it works. And how the psychology of – especially police officers, for what they do and what they see, you know, that connectedness, and how they sort of establish things. It just fascinated me.

And then I met up with Carey, and Carey sort of said, “Well, why don’t you – why don’t we dig deeper into it?” And that eventually became the PhD. And probably that drove activity more than anything. I’d sort of not had – I’d not had a sheltered life, but I’d not really been exposed to very much stuff like that in previous –

Alexis P-H:
No, but I guess you know what you know in the sector you’re in, don’t you?

Ian H:
Yes.

Alexis P-H:
And I think that’s why – like things like you were saying, about the forum that you’re a part of. Having that cross- – I suppose it’s cross-contamination or whatever you want to call it, where you’re picking up ideas from different sectors, because that’s something I’m really fascinated by. We do a lot of work in schools, we do a lot of work with policing, a lot of work in businesses. And, you know, at the end of the day it’s all people-based, isn’t it, it’s all about creating that environment for people to be able to thrive and do a really good job and be connected to what they’re doing and – as you say, that purpose, and what’s driving them forward. And sharing those ideas must give you a whole wealth of creativity, you know –

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
– in thinking about what you want to put into the service.

Ian H:
Yeah, I think some of it – it’s sort of knowing how you behave the way you do. I’m – I’ve just had a great conversation with Andy Roads about transference and counter-transference, and –

Alexis P-H:
Yeah. Love that.

Ian H:
– I think – in the interactions with both public and each other. And sort of where you draw your views or your belief system comes from. And also what threatens that. We were talking about what erodes it. So, you know, we look at things like sleep; and I know you’ve interviewed Yvonne Taylor, who works with us, as well, and, you know, when you look at what’s behind sleep and fatigue, emotional labour, psychological detachment; things like that. Without over-theorising everything, of course, you start to realise why some things end up the way they do.


Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
Especially when we make mistakes; and we make plenty of them. But we’re given opportunity to make plenty of mistakes in policing, because of the sort of – I don’t know, the sort of nature of the incidents we deal with. You know, they’re high-impact the majority of time. Nobody rings us up to say, “We – I’m having a great day, thanks,” you know.

Alexis P-H:
[Laughs]

Ian H:
“Thanks for being there.”

Alexis P-H:
Well, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Ian H:
Yeah. But, you know, this – they are sort of volatile situations.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
You know, I mean that’s – the George Casey research, with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, I mean, that describes the policing world wonderfully, I think. [Unintelligible 00:13:44].

Alexis P-H:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think from having trained lots of different departments in policing, including the people who were in the contact centre and the dispatches through to protecting vulnerable people units, and – you know, people don’t – the people don’t know, often, what they’re walking into. And I think that’s the bit about finding some mechanisms to be able to keep doing that continuously, every day, and – you know, I think part of wellbeing, what you’re doing with the National Police Wellbeing Service, is looking at the context of those individuals. You know, they’re not robots, they’re not walking in without their own experiences, their own triggers, their own traumas, potentially, as well. You know, sometimes people – in my experience, anyway – become officers or members of staff because of what they’ve experienced in their past. So there’s lots of different angles, I suppose, when you’re looking at it from a human perspective, isn’t there?

Ian H:
Well, and I think there’s a lot going on, and there’s – you’ve got sort of two polar sides to it, whether you – you know, you’re like Cool-Hand Luke, where you walk into something that’s kicking off big-time and you just stand and observe, [laughs] like … nothing’s happening. And then, conversely, I’ve sort of people who were that wound up they’ve – flipping running round with their pants on fire, aren’t they?

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
And it’s sort of drawing that happy medium, because the first one, the laissez-faire approach to it, you’ve got to be really careful there, because you can then become really vulnerable, and similarly, if you’re on the higher level of the – running round all nervous, and you’re just panicking your way through the incident, you – that’s going to drain you very, very quickly, those really high emotionally charged things; you can’t stay in that environment for too long. But conversely, being too laid-back, that can catch you out as well, if you’re not careful, you know.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, but also, some of that – you know, sometimes people being laid-back is actually an avoidance tactic, isn’t it –
Ian H:
Yes.

Alexis P-H:
– to avoid what’s going on. So, yes, you might be fairly Teflon – or seem to be fairly Teflon-coated –

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
– but at some points, it can catch up with you.

Ian H:
Yeah, it – and I think – one of the messages we are looking at in terms of the Oscar Kilo work – and that’s a bit complicated, and it’s the College of Policing, National Police Wellbeing Service, Oscar Kilo – guess what, folks? It’s all the same thing.

Alexis P-H:
[Laughs] Just like to have lots of names.

Ian H:
Yeah. Well, it’s sort of our search for identity, I suppose. So, the Oscar Kilo logo, of course, looks like a chevron, and OK seems to be a great message, and it’s certainly lent itself very nicely for Gary Bottrell’s World of Oscar Kilo Nine as well, so –

Alexis P-H:
Oh, yeah, definitely.

Ian H:
– that’s all worked well. And then we had sort of debate whether we were actually a national police wellbeing service, and we came from there. And of course, we sit under the College of Policing, so we’ve got yet another sub-group, subtitle. So – and it’s quite a complicated terrain, really, but it seems to work well now, and I think one of our challenges for this year is to make sure that everybody knows that the national service is part of the College of Policing, that it’s an arm of it. The work we do is part of the national effort to improve policing, to provide guidelines, best practice, etc. So that part of it seems to be working pretty well, I think.

Alexis P-H:
And it’s important, isn’t it, it’s positioned to be in that place as well, because you don’t want it to be a wellbeing as a kind of add-on service to what’s going on across the country.

Ian H:
No.

Alexis P-H:
So, I think that – you know, maybe it is about that – finding that identity and that footing, but actually, it’s about it being representative of all of those different aspects of policing, and being able to influence across the whole force, not just – because I know for – in my experience, the forces all have their own kind of ways of doing things, and – almost like they’re their own entities. But I think what you do really well at Oscar Kilo, and however we’re going to name it, but you’re providing a really kind of evidence-based approach to the themes that you’re hearing in the research you do and in the surveys you do, and being able to kind of make sure that everything you put in place is meaningful and has that purpose, that is going to have that impact on officers and members of staff as well, across the country.

Ian H:
Yeah. I agree entirely, and on that subject, you know, this is where we have – absolutely have to be evidence based. And we draw our evidence now from two extremely good sources; we have the Blue Light Wellbeing Framework, which is in its second iteration now. So that includes the Operation Hampshire stuff, which I know you’ve spoke to Dave Bruce as well –

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
– which looks at – unfortunately, assaults on staff and officers. We also include occupational health standards now within the second edition of the Blue Light Wellbeing Framework. So, like [unintelligible 00:18:29] Liz Eades and the team are leading on that and looking how occupational health can address some of the issues that are quite challenging to the service. And then, apart from the Blue Light, well, we’ve – we also have the Durham University Annual Wellbeing Server, which provides us with some absolutely superb stuff. I’ve just been reading the – and it’s now the third wave we’ve done of that.

And of course, now, we’re starting to get a rich data-set that we can compare to previous ones, we can see directions of travel, we can look at lots of different theoretical things to see what’s going on for people. We can look at relationships between, for example, like demographics like age of officer or staff member location – things like that – and tally that up with things like stress, anxiety, fatigue. You know, the psychological [unintelligible 00:19:23] switching off after work, that sort of thing. And then, that gives us a really good way of both evidence-basing stuff that we do in terms of interventions, and to start to inform our work that we’re looking at over the horizon. So, at the moment we’re concerned with stuff with the police covenant, which again’s looking at sort of how we deal with families, how we deal with grievance, and lots of other different things within the policing arena; things that we’ve not really given much consideration to before. They’ve just been on the horizon, but we’ve not had a real good look at them.

And they’re important, especially to new recruits. They’re really important, you know; what their family’s thinking about things, you know; what’s safe to pass on to their partners, what’s safe to pass on to their children. And the – obviously, with the advent of social media, the kids aren’t watching BBC and Sky News now; they’re on Tik Tok and Snapchat. So there’s some education that needs to go through there, and probably some of our more mature officers need to understand that as well, and the challenges that that – they present.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, definitely. And I think that more-targeted approach, really, you – it’s – you – and some of that is about tackling those boundaries in those roles, isn’t it, and their expectations, and being clearer about them, whereas I think before – you know, especially new recruits coming in, there was the sense of them kind of figuring this – some of this stuff out. And I know for clients I’ve worked with who have been relatively new recruits, they haven’t known enough, almost, to be in that position, you know? And they’re – and what they’re experiencing, as you said, through social media and in their education and just in terms of generally growing up, is very different to how it was 20, 30 years ago.

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
And it’s – I guess part of that research is adapting what you’re offering and what you’re researching depending on what’s coming through with the new trends, you know, as – and I’m sure that COVID at some point will come into that as well, in –

Ian H:
Well, [unintelligible 00:21:25] –

Alexis P-H:
– influencing what you’re doing. Probably already is.

Ian H:
We’ve seen the – I mean, the impact of COVID, it’s like incredible. And I mentioned before the Durham survey. You know, we got – our data-sets are right across the COVID span. So, our first one was pre-COVID, in 2019. We managed to get the survey out before any mention of COVID. The second wave was smack-bang in the middle of it. And then the third wave, we’ve just – we gathered the data just as we were coming out of it. Or some was coming out of it. So, what we – what you can see there is how officers and staff have dealt with things quite differently in terms of, like, working from home, in terms of looking after dependants, in terms of what risks they’re going to take, in terms of isolating, shielding, you know, we’ve got a whole new language now, round COVID. And although we’re only just sort of taking our masks off and I know masks is a good thing for you, Alexis, I remember –

Alexis P-H:
[Laughs]

Ian H:
– many, many years ago going and speaking with you onstage, and you had a lot of masks there.

Alexis P-H:
Did, I did. Had on display.

Ian H:
Are you still doing that? In that [unintelligible 00:22:44].

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, we still do, yeah. Still use it in therapy.

Ian H:
Yeah, so – and again, that’s another thing, because like we say, we’re only just getting back to face-to-face meetings where it’s safe to go to conferences, for example. Or speak to a larger audience than we do have online. So, getting back to that face-to-face is another interesting dynamic, and how people feel about that. Returning back to the workplace as well, so some people have been at home for the best part of two years.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
When we have the dynamic, as well, of our younger officers, that have joined during COVID, and have had very little experience in terms of policing large-scale events or a night-time economy. Because it’s not –

Alexis P-H:
Interesting, isn’t it? Yeah.

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
Not actually having seen it, actually.

Ian H:
So they’ve come through their initial period of training without having done any of that. Through no fault of their won, by the way. But it must be very strange when it sort of all opens up again, and then they’re suddenly dealing with a whole different area of policing to what they’ve done for the last maybe a year, year and a half. And there’s a lot of that now as well. So it [unintelligible 00:23:57].

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, so it’s – I guess it’s the – yeah, it’s absolutely keeping ahead of – or – you know, very much listening to the workforce, isn’t it, and being able to kind of put those things in place that you know will be helpful? And I know, obviously, we’ve been liaising on the film that you’ve done at Oscar Kilo, which – I don’t know if you want to say a bit about that, because I think it’s an incredibly powerful piece of film that will really impact on a lot of officers and police staff.

Ian H:
Yeah, so the film was – we commissioned it … ooh, over a year ago now. In fact, we’d commission it pre-COVID and incurred some extra charges for having to film during COVID. So [unintelligible 00:24:36] actors having screening and things like that, so yeah. And then the – we had to pay to section some areas off where we were filming to make them COVID-secure and things like that. So, yeah, that wasn’t without its challenge, but the film, Purpose, it’s absolutely brilliant at it. It tracks the career of the actor we – who’s called Alfie in it, and his relationship with his tutor con, Janey. It opens up with Alfie as a young child experiencing adverse childhood experiences; his mother’s clearly subjected to domestic abuse. And then it cuts to Alfie actually joining up and having the attestation ceremony. And he’s given his warrant card, which quickly then moves into a street confrontation, with somebody challenging him about his warrant card.

And then it goes through tracking his early period within the police, and the sort of challenges of working night shifts and being disturbed on nights; dealing with vulnerability. There’s a scene where he finds a missing person in a garage; also, he’s subject to an assault as well. An also about the relationship that he has with the tutor constable, and I think that the overall sort of messaging that he gives is that actually, it’s a great, great career.

And the tutor constable’s a really shining example – she’s called Janey – is a shining example of, actually, with good support and a good wrap-round team and some professionalism, that actually, it is a great career, and towards the end of the film – it’s only a short film – he starts to get clear in his mind what his purpose is within the service and starts to deal with some of the things that have cast doubt on his career choice, it must be said, half-way through. So he’s had a period where he’s probably thinking, is this what I was expecting the job to be? And I think at the end he sort of realises that actually, these are just barriers that he needs to get over, and with the good support, specifically from his tutor, that he gets, he comes up – he comes over it. So, very powerful. Very powerful film.

Alexis P-H:
I think so. I mean, I think the – it really demonstrates – I think there’ll be loads of people who it’ll resonate with, it’s that transition, really, from coming into the force and thinking about it in – or experiencing it, or what you – imagine you might experience in sort of dealing with the reality of it, coming to terms with it with the right support, and then coming out the other side, and actually, you know, we can see, he’s more confidence at the end of the film, and at the beginning he’s really not sure.

Ian H:
No, that –

Alexis P-H:
It’s – there’s a real kind of lack of identity, I think.

Ian H:
We had the metaphor of the dripping tap running through it as well, which – not only is Alfie dealing with his new job in the police; he’s also just got married, just moved house, just had a child. And all the challenges that they bring. So on top of his work-related issues, he has things to deal with at home as well. So – and the dripping tap’s something that we use quite a lot, where it’s just not any one big incident that can catch you out; it’s a lot of the little things that can catch you out as well, and then coupled up with sleep deprivation and fatigue and things like that, or it not going too well at work, you know, that they can really catch you out on that. And then we sort of introduce resilience and social support and things like that, recognising trauma and stress and things like that.

So I think it’s a really – and I think it’s pretty typical, actually. I know we throw a lot at the character, but we do that, really, to make sure that we don’t miss anything, and it’s realistic. So there’s bits of social media in there and all sorts of things. So that – I think we have it down as a huge success, that, and I think everybody that’s actually seen the film – and we’ve done discussion groups after it – they’ve been really taken back with it and said, “Oh,” the officers and staff that have seen it have said, “Oh, yeah, it’s just what I felt like.” Or, “Particular scenes in it were just like what I felt like.” So, yeah, it’s been pretty good.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, and I think it actually – it’s probably – well, it’s the first time I’ve seen something which is representative; it doesn’t shy away from actually demonstrating the reality of the job. Yeah. And I know it’s based on experiences, isn’t it, real-life experiences that officers have had as well.

Ian H:
Yeah. It – we sort of – well, we didn’t; they were – the director, we give him free rein, really, and said, you know, “It – speak to who you wish,” and it’s sort of almost a compendium of experiences that he’s had related to him. And I must admit, he’s sewn them all together fantastically. It really is good. And every time I watch it, I spot something different. [Unintelligible 00:29:37] –

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, and I think that’s the thing. I know from – obviously, I’ve been doing the wrap-around kind of presenting of it, I suppose, the positioning of it, and every time I watch it, I think, “Oh, there’s something else there; something else …”

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
… I could literally talk about it for like an hour, around the film, as to what’s in it. But I think that’s why it’s so kind of powerful, because it’s very meaty, in that everything that is in there – I – you know, at forces we see that all the time in the work that we do, you know, and those conversations and those experiences. And the fact that you’ve – it’s that recognition of a support mechanism that needs to be around people; needs to be – I don’t know, as an acknowledgement that actually, that needs to be there, and supervisors need to be able to pick up those signs and understand what they’re looking for, and all of that kind of thing as well.

Ian H:
Yeah. I think one of the things that director, Chris [Godward? 00:30:28], he captured it that well, when we watched it [laughs], we sort of – we all looked round the room when we first saw it and thought, oh, we need an extra piece of wrap-round here. And obviously that’s why we approached Fortis, for yourselves to just give us a bit more around what might be going in people’s head as they watch it, and how they might be feeling about things, and how to deal with them. So, the film actually even sparked ourselves to think further about what more support could we put for our officers and staff who are – who were just exposed to the film, really, that made – have different memories flooding back, and how they dealt with them. So, I mean, you guys have done a great job with doing that work for us as well.
Alexis P-H:
Well, it’s been a pleasure to be a part of it, to be honest. I mean, I think – I was just thinking as you were saying that; the amount of work you’ve actually covered in the years that you’ve been running this service, and I know you’ve got a lot of people that you’ve brought in as experts who are just as passionate about this as you are. There’s been a massive – massive amounts of progress being made, isn’t there, in what you’re offering, the information that you research, the – picking up on the themes that are relevant and are current as well, because I think that’s the other thing.

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
And – I mean, you must be really proud of what you’ve achieved as a service.

Ian H:
Yeah, we’ve not done every – we’ve had a few hiccups, and we’ve not done everything that we’d like to have done. But I mean, we are constrained by budget, of course, like everybody else is. But I think the subject – people feel sufficiently passionate about the subject that – I’m not saying people’ll help for nothing – but you can engage with lots of academic partners who are more than willing and we – I think we engage at the moment something – it’s getting up around 20-something professors that we engage with that do work in collaboration with us now, around the country, in different areas – and in fact, overseas as well. We’ve got two relationships with American universities that we look at the sleep studies with; I’m sure Yvonne’s mentioned them.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
And relationships like that. So we look for – like centres of excellence for things, and then partner up with them, which seems to work really well. And I think because people feel sufficiently passionate about wellbeing, they offer lots of good stuff up for it, which is really helpful. And it helps us to progress the evidence-base as well, which is really important.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, definitely. So that’s almost systemic working, isn’t it –

Ian H:
Yeah.

Alexis P-H:
– and being quite strategic about those partners and how they feed in. And you’re right. I think everybody who works in this field, it’s a vocation;
it’s something that you’re in it for a reason [laughs].

Ian H:
Well, it’s analogous with policing itself, really, because if you look at – like the role of policing, it’s not great pay, is it, in any –

Alexis P-H:
[Laughs]

Ian H:
– world at all, so you’d not – you would like to think nobody’s doing it for the money; solely for the money. You like to think that. And I mean, we hark back again to meaning and purpose; people that want to do things where they feel like they’re serving or protecting us, as the Americans use as their sort of strapline. But the – like, [unintelligible 00:33:51] doing some good for society. And I think what you – we can do if we’re not careful is that that meaning and purpose can wane if it’s not managed carefully. Or it – certainly if it’s not supported.

So I think it’s incumbent on us to make sure that we keep that meaning and purpose with people, as best we can; I mean, we’re not the sole providers, of course. But as best we can, where we support people, and then support the people that support them as well. So, I mentioned the covenant and the families before. You know, about looking at how we look after families, what sort of information we can give to families, what sort of things that people should and should not disclose to their family members. You know, things that are of upsetting nature, for example. But you need an outlet for them as well. So, you know, where do I go to if I don’t go to my family?

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, absolutely.

Ian H:
What’s the outlet for that? So we – these things you have to think about carefully.

Alexis P-H:
Definitely. Well, it’s been fantastic to talk to you. It’s been really interesting to – you know, the more I talk to all of you who are coming from the National Police Wellbeing Service, I’ve really – I don’t know, I just feel incredibly proud to be a part of what you’re doing, but also, really full of admiration in the way that you’re approaching it, because I know this has been – it’s a bit of a labour of love as well, and as you said, you know, it isn’t always about getting it right, but you learn from that, don’t you, and then put things in place that are effective. And I know that – from the work I’m doing in policing that the conversation around the National Police Wellbeing Service and Oscar Kilo, there’s – that awareness is there, and people are aware that that support is available, and that information. So it’s definitely having the impact that you wanted.

Ian H:
Yeah. And hopefully, it’ll continue to have the impact, as we sort of embark on our new work now in supporting new officers to join, and supporting officers who are coming to the end to leave, or officers that are in the middle that are having a break, or looking at different career paths. I mean, we must support them, because that’s what makes the service so attractive; you can’t have something that you basically can’t get out of. So, you know –

Alexis P-H:
No.

Ian H:
– need to look at things probably through a different lens as society progresses. You know, we’d look at things where officers and staff members might just wish to be with us for five or six years and then go and do something else. And then we make it easy for them to return to it should they wish to do so. And sort of initiatives like that. So, we’ve just done a special issue, actually, of the Policing Journal, where we’ve looked at the state of wellbeing, and we’ve contributions from all over the place, around various aspects. Some are looking at what happened during COVID to officers and staff, looking at vulnerability, looking at units that are particularly vulnerable. We’ve got a piece looking at the therapy dogs, service dogs, the impact that they have, and things like that. So, you know, we are constantly looking for new ways of communicating and engaging with the people that we’re looking after. So that seems to serve us well as an approach, anyway.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, definitely. And I think that engagement, I always think, it’s never one-size-fits-all; you need all those different facets to be able to encourage people to step forward and to – you know, say if they’re struggling. But also, to know what they can do to help themselves if they’re recognising those triggers or they’re starting to go down a certain route where … maybe they’ve been before. And I think that flexibility within the career, as well, all of those things just make such a difference to how you approach the job, I think.

Ian H:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s an evolving career, isn’t it? What I experienced as an officer is certainly not what people joining now would.

Alexis P-H:
No.

Ian H:
And probably what the next generation will. You know, we’re moving into – more into, like cyber, and things like that. We used to have the – problem-oriented triangle, I think we called – [PAT? 00:37:44] triangle. Analysis triangle, that was it. And it looked at place offender and – offence, and things like that. And you piece together your jigsaw in that respect. Well, on occasion now, you haven’t got data on any of those three things; it’s just happening in the ether. And then you’re looking at who’s the offender, who’s the victim, and where has it taken place.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah.

Ian H:
And there’s clearly crimes happening on-screen. But you haven’t got any of that information at the offset, and that can be incredibly stressful as well. And these are the sort of challenges that officers are now facing. And, of course, we’ve got the war in Ukraine and then there’s some aftermath of COVID as well, you know, there’s some big challenges ahead.

Alexis P-H:
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the – I suppose as the force evolves and as these different aspects of society evolve, it’s important that the service, the Wellbeing Service, evolves alongside it, to meet those needs. So, thanks Ian, thanks ever so much for talking to me; it’s been fabulous.

And [laughs] I know I’ll speak to you at some point off the podcast. So, thanks very much for joining me, and I really appreciate you taking the time out to speak to me.

Ian H:
Thank you.

Alexis P-H:
Thank you.




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.

Alexis: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today, I’m really pleased to be joined by Yvonne Taylor. Yvonne has been a police officer for 26 years, serving in both North and West Yorkshire in a variety of roles and is currently seconded to the National Police Wellbeing Service.

Yvonne has a particular interest in shift work, driver fatigue and performance impairment, along with overall wellbeing, and she has completed her doctorate entitled ‘Shift workers, fatigued driving and the impact on road safety – An investigation involving police service employees’.

In this conversation, we discuss the research and the impact of fatigue, as well as sharing where to find further support and information. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, produced in collaboration between Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service, and Fortis Therapy & Training.

Hi, Yvonne, thanks for joining me today.

Yvonne: Hi.

Alexis: Hi. Yvonne, now you’ve had 26 years of service in the police. So tell me a bit about how you became a police officer and what kind of took you down this path for the last 26 years.

Yvonne: It’s something I’d always kind of be interested in, but I did a couple of university courses first and then when I moved down to Yorkshire, I started looking at it again. Initially joined West Yorkshire Police. I served 10 years there before transferring over the border to North Yorkshire, did another 13 years there and then went back again the other way, back to West Yorkshire.

Alexis: You moved around then.

Yvonne: So been doing it for a while, yes.

Alexis: And you’ve done a big variety of different roles haven’t you in that time?

Yvonne: Yes, I’ve pretty much always been in uniform positions, but I’ve done a fair few different roles; patrol, I’ve spent a lot of my time in roads policing. Initially I thought I would just be a roads policing officer for all my service. That’s where my interest was, but then started looking at other things, looked at promotion and worked in partnership roles, in a staff officer role, custody, policies and procedures, you know, trying to keep custody safe for detainees and that sort of thing. So, yes, a few different things along the way.

Alexis: Yes, varied, really varied. Yes, and when you talked about roads policing, what was it about that that you thought you would stick with, you know, until you moved from that position?

Yvonne: I was just really interested in it. My first degree was based around mechanical engineering. My Master’s was in biomedical engineering science, which is biomechanics of the body and wheelchair adaptations and various things like that. So I’ve always been interested in mechanics and the mechanics of humans as well. So, roads policing and the collision investigation side of things and what happens to us, to bodies in collisions is something that’s always interested me. So, yes, I’ve spent a lot of time in roads policing.

Alexis: So a lot of fascination there about what makes everything work, I guess. That’s what it kind of sounds like to me.

Yvonne: Yes, that’s kind of it. Yes.

Alexis: Yes. So you’ve been seconded to the National Police Wellbeing Service. How long have you been seconded for? How long have you been doing [something with them?

Yvonne: I’ve only been with them just coming up for a year now.

Alexis: Right, OK, and what’s your role within Oscar Kilo?

Yvonne: So my role there is mainly to lead on all the various sleep and fatigue projects that we do. My PhD was in shift work and driver fatigue amongst my colleagues.
The national surveys that Oscar Kilo have done have shown that lack of sleep and fatigue are a big problem in policing. So I lead on a number of projects that focus on that area and try to provide some solutions, some mitigation, you know, various services that will help officers and staff to cope with sleep deprivation or shift work a little bit easier.

Alexis: It’s a fascinating subject, isn’t it, because sleep is something that we absolutely need on a kind of rhythmic basis to keep us well and help with our recovery. I mean, obviously, I work at it from a mental health perspective and emotional wellbeing perspective in terms of the training we deliver and the therapeutic work, and often, officers, they are fatigued and it’s been a cumulative process that they’ve gone through to actually be so fatigued.
I’m interested in your research, and what came out of that research? Was there anything that surprised you? Was there anything that’s new that came from that?

Yvonne: I was surprised at how much my colleagues trusted me and how much they spoke with me and gave me what I felt were honest answers in some of the questionnaires that I did and some of the studies that they helped me with. No massive surprises really, other than I suppose in the early days when I started asking around collisions that they’d had or near misses that they’d had on their way to and from work. I was quite surprised at the numbers there, and then, very sadly, I’d looked at the figures of officers – there’s lists of officers that die in service, and a lot of them are whilst commuting to and from work.

Alexis: That’s interesting.

Yvonne: So I’d looked at those figures as well, and although not all of them can be attributed to falling asleep or to being fatigued, we know that a number of them are and of course there have been some cases that have been in the media in relation to colleagues that have lost their life in that way. So anything really that we can do to help and to try and educate people about dealing with shift work and dealing with fatigue can only be a good thing, I think, in my mind anyway.

Alexis: Yes, absolutely, and I mean we’ve all been there. When I was thinking about talking with you, I was thinking about the times that I’ve driven. You know, we can kind of go into the automatic pilot approach to driving, can’t we, and not even know we’ve driven there. But there’s something about those waves of fatigue that come over you when you’re driving, because it is quite hypnotic if you’re in that place as well, isn’t it? It’s incredibly scary. It only takes a second and it’s, obviously, either life-change or potentially life-ending, which is terrifying really when you put it in those terms.

Yvonne: Yes, absolutely.

Alexis: So, what impact did you find, or do you find in terms of the shift work? How does that impact on people’s levels of fatigue?

Yvonne: It varies really. I think it depends on the shift patterns and it depends on individuals. Some people have a much greater tolerance for shift work or for sleep loss than others, and I think it depends, probably what else is going on in your life at the time as well. You know, someone might have young children or might be a carer for another relative, and it depends on the demands of everyday life.

So I think it’s different for everyone, but there’s definitely shift patterns that are better for us and help us to cope with it. It’s not natural to work shifts. So we just have to do our best and to try and give people the tools and the advice to try and manage it as best they can.

Alexis: Do you think that officers have recognised the impact of shifts? I mean, it’s something that is expected and obviously needs to happen. It’s a 24-hour-a-day service. I know people that I’ve known who’ve worked shifts often don’t give themselves that chance to recover or don’t think about how they’re going to approach sleep. It’s almost like, “Oh, I’ll either get some or I won’t,” do you know what I mean? It’s not actually thought about that much. Do you think that officers understand the impact of not having the right sleep pattern or not thinking about their sleep?

Yvonne: Probably not, I think, and I’ve been guilty of it, certainly when I was younger. We all just think we’ll cope and we carry on just doing what we do with the best of intentions, and I think they don’t understand the cognitive impact that it has as well on your abilities to drive, your abilities to do your work. You know, you might get short, you’re more likely to lose your temper. Some previous research in the States has shown there’s more complaints when officers are tired.

Alexis: Really? That’s interesting.

Yvonne: Yes, because they’re tired and grumpy and –

Alexis: Less capacity for tolerance.

Yvonne: – less tolerant, yes. Less tolerant with people. So there’s a lot of different impacts, and I think a lot of the time when you're younger as well, you cope with it a lot better, and there’s too many other interesting things going on.
I mean I certainly know, as I got older, I struggled with shift work and I was probably latterly working what I thought was the best pattern that we can use in policing. Even so, I wasn’t sleeping as well as I should have done or for as long as I needed whilst I was working shifts, and then on my days off, I was spending too much time probably trying to recover, and then you’re just straight back into the cycle again when you're back at work. So, I was starting to struggle with it.

Alexis: It sounds a bit like a hamster wheel when you put it like that, that actually, if you don’t stop the wheel and get off and just actually give yourself a chance, you just, kind of, keep going in that way. It has health implications, doesn’t it, longer-term?

Yvonne: Definitely, yes, and there’s acute and/or chronic sleep deprivation. So you might just be sleep deprived if you’ve had an overnight flight and not had enough sleep and you’ll soon recover from that, but if you're working shifts, then that can be chronic and can go on for a number of years where you're not getting enough sleep. So, yes, it’s a difficult one.

Alexis: When you’re putting that into the context of driving and road safety, what kinds of, I suppose, strategies or solutions can officers put in place in order to be able to, I guess, manage and counter-balance the risks of that fatigue?

Yvonne: Yes, I think they need to be aware of it. They need to certainly be aware, you know, particularly if they’re driving at speed or driving for long periods of time through the night, taking regular breaks, preparing for shift work, making sure they’re well rested before they come to work. Getting the opportunity for breaks at work, which is very difficult in policing because it's unpredictable, but the organisation and the employee or the officer both have a responsibility to try and make sure that things work well.

The police officer or member of staff has a responsibility to make sure they’re fit, or as fit as they can be for work, and that includes being well-rested and not kind of burning the candle at both ends. And, of course, the organisation has a responsibility too under health and safety legislation for making sure that everything is safe in the workplace and that shift patterns are suitable and that sort of thing.

Alexis: So one of the things I see therapeutically are levels of burnout, you know, because of that lack of recovery, but also like you alluded to, depending on what else is going on in their lives, if you’re really stressed by something or you’re struggling mentally or feeling really low, it’s a dangerous cocktail, isn’t it, from a fatigue perspective.

Yvonne: Yes, absolutely. I mean, lack of sleep causes mental health problems, mental health problems cause lack of sleep and it can be a vicious circle.

Alexis: So, when you’re looking at the projects that you do, what kinds of things do you put in place or what information do you put out there to support people with understanding this further?

Yvonne: So, one of the projects that we’ve done a pilot of already, and we’ve got a randomised controlled trial going on at the moment, is with some experts at Washington State University. They’ve looked at utilising ActiGraphs, which is a watch-type device, a bit like a Fitbit, to measure sleep quantity and quality. They’ll then deliver a training session, which is fairly brief. It’s only about an hour’s training session in terms of sleep hygiene, health, exercise, diet, those kind of things.

The officers will put that into practice for a period of four to six weeks and then they’ll wear the ActiGraph again, and so they can compare the before and after, if you like. You know, has the education and putting that into practice improved, and certainly, in the pilot study, that did improve sleep quality and quantity, reduced the burnout effects and post-traumatic stress symptoms as well, hypervigilance, those kind of things. You know, there was a reduction in those symptoms, which is great. So we’ve got a randomised controlled trial ongoing with that at the moment as a follow-up, and we’ll see what the results of that show.

We’ve had another study that has just concluded in relation to sleep disorders, which, again has had an educational element to it, and then officers and staff have had the opportunity to go on and complete a series of questionnaires really, validated questionnaires in terms of sleep apnoea, burnout, insomnia, shift work sleep disorder, those kind of sleep disorders to see if they may be at risk. If they are at risk, then a letter is automatically being generated for them to take to their GP for further investigation.

We’ve got some webinars and a better sleep toolkit that’s available via the website at the moment as well, which has been done by Dr Sophie Bostock. This is the second series of webinars that she’s done for us as well, and that’s all based on feedback from the national survey, from her own feedback that she’s received from the first series. So different topics, again, in relation to that, you know, dealing with children, with menopause, with night terrors. Lots of different topics, you know, whatever is relevant and current, and officers and staff have asked for. So there’s a number of things ongoing.

Alexis: Yes. I mean, it’s a huge area, isn’t it? We take for granted that we should be able to sleep, and that is just what we have to do, but actually, in my experience, it’s the first thing that people struggle with when things aren’t going well or if they’re out of the rhythm that they need. I suppose when you're talking about things like sleep hygiene, just for those people who are listening, what do you mean by sleep hygiene?

Yvonne: I just mean things like having a wind-down routine at bedtime, if you’re not a shift worker, having regular bedtime and wake-up time routines. Closing the curtains, you know, having blackout blinds, making sure that the bedroom is not too hot, not too cold. Just those kind of things that just generally help you prepare for sleep and help the sleeping environment be the best that it can be.

Alexis: It’s like sleep training, isn’t it? I always think about it in terms of, like, when you’ve got a baby and you’re trying to [unintelligible 00:16:42] sleep and you put the routine in place, so the baby knows what’s coming next. It’s the ritual, isn’t it, of knowing that’s the next step and then now we do this, and it’s the same for adults. We need that kind of time to unwind, and I think things like shift work, but also things like mobile phones, which are on 24 hours a day.

There’s lots of things that distract us now from actually stopping and just allowing ourselves the chance to just come down a bit from the day or from the shift and put things in place. Also, things like self-medicating, you know, having a beer at the end of a shift and things like that, it’s trying to put in good habits isn’t it, rather than having those habits that they may work short-term, but actually, there’s a longer-term health difficulty with that.

Yvonne: Yes, absolutely, and if you can get that routine, then it’s great, but shift workers will never really get into that routine, but there’s still things they can do in terms of minimising noise and blackout blinds and those kind of things, tell your family. When you’re a shift worker, the daytime world still goes on around you.

Alexis: Yes, it wakes up around you anyway.

Yvonne: So a knock at your door wanting you to take in a parcel for the neighbours, or they’re cutting the grass. There’s all the daily routine that everybody else has that makes it difficult for shift workers, particularly night workers, to try and get sufficient sleep; plus they’re going against the circadian rhythm and it’s just not natural to try to sleep through the day.

So your sleep is definitely not as restorative and, again, research shows that it’s shorter. Usually, night shift workers get about two hours less sleep than regular day shift workers.

Alexis: It’s a lot isn’t it, actually? If you count up how much that is over a period of time, that’s a lot of sleep.

Yvonne: Yes, on a regular basis, it’s a lot to lose.

Alexis: Yes. So, when you're looking at things like drowsy-driving, what kind of tips do you give people or what kind of strategies help to reduce the risk of drowsy-driving?

Yvonne: I think the big thing for me around drowsy-driving is the comparison with drink-driving, you know, and they’ve shown that being awake for 24 hours takes you over what the legal limit is for drink-driving. I think that’s a big eye-opener for a lot of people to realise, actually, they could be as impaired as a drink driver. The vast majority of people wouldn’t dream of getting behind the wheel when they’ve had that much alcohol, but probably everybody has done it whilst they’ve not had enough sleep.

So it’s a tricky one, but again, it’s around the timing of the sleep. If they don’t have to drive, then don’t drive. Granted, that doesn’t work for shift workers. I know that. I’ve been a shift worker for most of my career, you know?

Alexis: Yes, you’ve been there.

Yvonne: So, I do know that, but yes, just being aware of it. I think things like travelling to and from work with a colleague or double-crewing where possible can certainly help to have someone else there just to talk to, because you're interacting with someone, you're keeping your focus and you can share the driving. You know, if you can share the driving, it’s always good, but other than that, just the regular breaks as and when they can. Using caffeine strategically, but we don’t want that to have a knock-on effect to keep you awake at the end of the shift and those kind of things. So it’s those kind of pointers to try and use things like that wisely.

Alexis: I was going to ask you about that actually, because we, obviously, know that we want less caffeine rather than more, and we also know that shift workers use caffeine a lot to keep going, and energy drinks. I always think of it almost as fake energy. It gives you that hit, but then there’s always the down, but the down might not come when you need it to. It might come down five hours after you needed to go to sleep.

Often, when people are struggling, I don’t know if you see this in the same way, but I was just going to ask you. Sometimes when I see people are struggling, they’ll end up using caffeine or energy drinks to keep going and crash at certain times, or just not allow themselves to come off them because, actually, it just keeps topped up to a level. From a mental health perspective, it’s not allowing themselves to come down from that or it maybe comes on as like a coping mechanism that’s just running alongside. Is that something that you’ve found in the research or that you’ve experienced yourself?

Yvonne: Yes, it’s not something that I’ve done a lot of studying on myself, but there is a lot of guidance out there in terms of how much might be too much, and, again, I think it’s probably a bit of a personal thing. I don’t feel that I particularly notice a difference or a hit from caffeine, and I don’t think I have a problem sleeping afterwards, but I might well do. Just because I’m not all that aware of it, I might still not be getting that restorative sleep that I need. So, yes, it definitely has an effect.

Alexis: I mean, obviously, I guess your passion for this comes from your interest in the biomedical stuff that you’ve studied and, you know, you’ve gone on to do your doctorate and everything. Why have you got that interest? Why are you so interested in sleep particularly? What is it about it that’s really sparked your interest?

Yvonne: It came really from the impairment side of things. As a roads policing officer, I was interested in drink-driving, in drug-driving. I was fortunate enough to go and work with California Highway Patrol and go on a drug recognition expert course with them and it was just the, sort of, next investigative strand for me.

So thinking about impairment, yes, I can rule out alcohol, I can rule out drugs, but when you’re behind that driver that might be weaving across the road, as soon as you stop them and speak to them and rule out the other aspects of it, if it is because they’re tired and they haven’t had enough sleep, they’re straight back with you. They can have a normal conversation. You wouldn’t think they were tired at all because of that interaction. So it’s that side of it, the investigative side of it and ruling things out and just finding out what’s happening that really interested me.

I mean, there were a couple of things in particular. The Selby rail crash where the driver came off the M62 and onto the railway line that really grabbed my attention. I also lost a colleague, not because he’d fallen asleep, but because an HGV driver had fallen asleep. My colleague had stopped to help someone at the side of the motorway and an HGV driver that fell asleep crashed into his car and sadly killed him.

So it’s those kind of incidents that really make me want to just dig a little deeper and investigate into what’s going on and what you can do in terms of the impairment.

Alexis: Yes, and it’s the impact of that digging deeper, isn’t it? I was just thinking, there’s obviously a very personal connection there as well, but a lot of intrigue; and it’s preventable, because that’s the other thing, isn’t it? It’s entirely preventable.

Yvonne: Yes.

Alexis: Yes, and I think that’s the bit we forget, that actually, we’ve all had those situations, as I’ve said, but by putting some things in place, it’s something that is preventable. Part of it is tracking how you’re doing and recognising how you are as an individual because, as you’ve said, yes, the organisation has a duty of care and has to manage these things and put things in place and manage that risk, but also as an individual, the individual has that duty of care too, don’t they?

Yvonne: Yes, and I don’t want a colleague to not be able to hold their hands up and say, “I’m struggling,” and maybe push it too far and for them to either lose their life, to take another life or simply just to end up in court because something’s happened. I don’t want that for anyone when we can do something about it.

So it’s encouraging people to talk about it as well and, well, even just to think about it. Not just to carry on regardless, but to think about what’s going on and to put their hand up and say, “Something’s wrong here. I need some help,” or, “I haven’t had enough sleep.”

Alexis: I guess also not to see it as a, kind of … because I think being tired can sometimes be a bit of a badge of honour as well. It’s like, “Oh, I’m really busy, I’m really tired.” There’s a lot of language around being tired, isn’t there now, I think more so than ever before.

Yvonne: Yes, I think so, and, again, you’ve mentioned mobile phones and that sort of thing already. So, we do carry on checking emails, we do all sorts [outside? 00:26:18] what would have been our normal working hours because we can and because, “Oh, I’ll just have a quick look, and if I can just quickly answer this one, I don’t have to deal with it tomorrow.” You know, things are very different.

Alexis: Yes. So, it’s about putting boundaries in place and actually having that cut-off point and being able to give yourself that space as well, that just because it’s there, you don’t need to automatically respond, you don’t need to actually be checking everything all the time outside of those working hours. It’s having that switch-off time, isn’t it?

Yvonne: Definitely. Yes, we definitely need time away from work to properly recharge the batteries.

Alexis: Yes. So, just before we finish – I’m putting you on the spot here – what would you say are the top tips that you would give people? If they’re listening to this and thinking, “Oh my God, that’s me. I’m trying to keep myself going with caffeine,” or, “I’m absolutely knackered all the time,” or, “I’ve got a busy homelife,” you know, all these things, what would be top tips? I won’t give you a number. I won’t put you under that pressure, but what would be your top tips, do you think?

Yvonne: There’s lots of things. If someone needs some support, then they need to reach out and get that support for whichever strand they need to look at. Whether that’s via a line manager or via someone else, don’t be frightened to put your hand up and say you need help for anything because there’s always someone out there that can help.

Have a look at the services that are available via Oscar Kilo or via individual forces. There’s lots of good practice out there and it’s just a case of finding it. We don’t tend to, I suppose, pay much attention to it until we absolutely need it.

So, ourselves at Oscar Kilo, and also forces are constantly putting information out there, but I suppose you filter it out and there is a bit of information overload as well because there’s so many important messages. If there’s so many important messages, actually, which one is important?

So there’s lots of information out there that can help, and it’s just a case of talking to someone about it, finding things that might work for you. You know; there’s lots of suggestions about what you can try. Not everything will work for everybody, but there’s usually a solution. Yes, lots of things.

Alexis: That bit there about usually a solution, I think that’s really important because when people are really struggling with sleep, especially insomnia, which often happens with shift work, doesn’t it, like you said, circadian rhythm’s all over the place and actually, how do I switch into being able to rest. Being able to find your own solutions and find what works for you is really important. It isn’t the case of one-size-fits-all, because if it was as easy as that, we’d all be following steps one, two, three and four and we’d all be doing that –

Yvonne: Absolutely, yes.

Alexis: – whether you’re working shifts or not. So, finding resolutions and putting things in place, and like you say, that research bit, I think that’s the other thing, is if you don’t actually look for information until you’re at the point of being absolutely fatigued, then there’s probably things you could have done much earlier than that that would have prevented getting to that point. So, I always think that research bit, and Oscar Kilo has got so much about this, that it’s a really great hub of information, isn’t it, this kind of topic.

Yvonne: Yes, there’s an awful lot of stuff out there for a variety of topics via Oscar Kilo, but you know there’s other solutions as well in terms of workplace adjustments, flexible working, lots and lots of different things that can help.

Alexis: Brilliant. Thank you, Yvonne. Thanks for coming to talk to me, and just for the benefit of the listeners, this is a Friday afternoon and we’re both still at work. I did say, “Why did I think this was a good idea when I’m this tired out talking about this subject?”

So, thanks for spending the time with me, and also, it’s a really interesting subject area, and what we’ll make sure when we put the podcast out is that we’ll signpost people to the information so that they can access it, because it’s open to anyone, isn’t it? It’s not just open to police officers and police staff. People can access this information anywhere really on the Oscar Kilo website. It’s not on a hidden area of the website or anything like that, is it?

Yvonne: There’s a lot of information, yes, that’s freely available now. There are some things that are specifically for staff and officers, yes, but there’s a lot of information there that’s available to anybody that goes looking for it or stumbles across it.

Alexis: A good old Google search, that’s what we need. All right, thanks ever so much, Yvonne. Thank you.

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 & Training or Oscar Kilo.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Keeping the Peace podcast with me Alexis Powell-Howard. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Andy Rhodes. Andy was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal and also and OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list this year. Andy is the former Chief Constable of Lancashire Police, and together with Dr Ian Hesketh, who I also speak to in this series, they founded the National Police Wellbeing Service, Oscar Kilo in 2015. Oscar Kilo is now a government funded service supporting over 200,000 police personnel. And Andy has recently been appointed as the Service Director.

In this slightly longer conversation than usual, because we couldn’t stop talking about all the things we’re both passionate about, we’re discussing the importance of the National Police Wellbeing Service, how it began, why Andy is passionate about wellbeing in policing and the impact this is having in changing conversation, perceptions and expectations. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, produced in collaboration between Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service, and Fortis Therapy and Training.

Hi Andy. Really good to see you today for the podcast. Thanks for coming along to speak to me. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. Nice to see you. I know that for people who are in the police force, most people might be aware of you because of the positions you’ve held and everything, but there’ll be also people listening to this who don’t have any idea. So it would be great if you could introduce yourself and a bit of history if that’s OK?

Andy Rhodes: Yes. My name’s Andy Rhodes, and I’m recently retired Chief Constable of Lancashire Police in the UK. That’s a force of about 6,000 people. I’m a Lancashire guy born and bred, and part of my job, because this is what happens in British police, some people may not know this, that sort of national work you get people to do it on top of their day job. So a Chief Constable or somebody who’s a subject matter expert will lead on various aspects of policing or workforce. And I was asked to set up the Wellbeing Service in 2015 because of a range of different things that were going on in policing, and because I’d done quite a bit of work already in that area.

So as well as being the Chief Constable, that’s one of the things that’s led me to our conversation here today I think, because I’ve now retired and I run the National Wellbeing Service, Oscar Kilo, which is something we set up many years – well, not that many years ago actually. I mean, it’s really only been formally launched in 2019.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Right.

Andy Rhodes: So it’s still quite early days for it, and lots has happened in that period of time. We’ve learnt a lot. So really keen to talk to you about it today. Thanks for the opportunity.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Well, it’s – I was just thinking, 2019 really isn’t that long ago, and actually it feels far more established than that as an organisation doesn’t it? And the research you’ve been a part of and the things that you commission, all of the things you’re interested in and involved in, it feels like it’s been going a lot longer than that.

Andy Rhodes: Well, in a sense – I mean, we got the brand, and everything set up probably around 2017. We got a small amount of funding, well, from Public Health England at the time, which was great because that enabled us to develop a self-assessment framework, the brand Oscar Kilo and the start of a website. And that’s literally all we had. So –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Like any good business [chuckles].

Andy Rhodes: Like any good business we started with not very much, but we a band of the wiling, and I think looking back it’s been an iterative journey. It’s been one of those things where we’ve gone with where the need has presented and over that period of time there’s been a significant presentation of what I would call unmet need. It’s always been there in policing. It’s been normalised, but it started to present, which I think’s a very positive thing, and then we’ve ramped up the National Wellbeing Service over the years to take account of that.

And one of the things that we’ve really managed to do is get a seat at the table of where all the big decisions are made, which is difficult for a subject like mental health and wellbeing. But even in critical incident management now we are seen as – or wellbeing and mental health and resilience and the support for the workforce is seen as a critical part of the operation response, more and more, which – you know, it’s at the front of the decision making now rather than an afterthought.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Which is interesting culturally isn’t it? Because it’s quite a brave step forward to almost – well, as you were saying that I was thinking almost rip the plaster off and look to see what’s going on underneath –

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – because as you said, it’s been known in policing that these themes are there and they are unmet needs, but acknowledging them and actually doing something about it is a big step, and it’s actually a huge thing to acknowledge that those things are there in the way that you have done I think.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. It’s very a provocative and has been sometimes quite an attritional journey because it’s cultural. Whenever you’re dealing with culture it’s tough. It can be a contact sport –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: A long process.

Andy Rhodes: – and that’s why you need executive leaders to step up, share their personal experiences and feel comfortable doing it, and other leaders to start doing that. We also need the infrastructure, the wiring diagram, because one thing that we’ve found over the years is, there’s a lot of opinion – you’ll find this in your work. Everyone’s got an opinion about the mental health issue. Not all of it’s based on evidence. Some of it’s based on personal experience, which is fine. But what we didn’t have is an evidence base to say, “Actually, this stuff is not just harming the health of people in policing, it’s really affecting service delivery, operational risk, trust and confidence of the public,” all the things that matter.

One of the things, Alexis, I really focussed on early was saying to people that what really defines in the eyes of a victim or a member of the public who’s called for help excellence in a police officer or a member of police staff? And competence is part of that, but we are obsessed with competence in our organisation, which is fine, you know, if you’re pointing guns. I mean, I’ve run counter terrorism firearms operations. I’m trained to the top level in dealing with firearms command and what have you, and I’ve done all sorts in my career.

Competence is essential, but the real thing that the public value in their hour of need is compassion. And you cannot be compassionate in their hour of need if your mental health and wellbeing is not where it should be, and this job is a challenge for your mental health. End of. So that’s the case I …

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Well, it is, and I think it’s interesting isn’t it, because competency is something you can manage, because you can measure it quite effectively. And one of the challenges I always face is measuring mental health and measuring wellbeing, because it is so difficult to nail that down into something that actually creates data that can then influence where money is spend, where things are allocated, all of that kind of thing. Because it’s a bit like nailing jelly to a tree sometimes. It’s like, you know that sometimes what you’re doing is making a difference, but how do you actually stick that into a diagram?

Andy Rhodes: Well, because, as you know, the main return in investment is in prevention, and how do you measure and put a financial pound sign on something that doesn’t happen? Are you with me?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. Good luck with that.

Andy Rhodes: So we get this in policing a lot. The answer to policing isn’t actually catching people when they’ve done something, it’s stopping them doing it in the first place, but of course you can’t measure what doesn’t happen. And so that’s a really interesting point. I think what we’ve learnt over the years is that – two big things for me. One is that there’s got to be a good balance between the person, individual’s responsibility to see their mental health and wellbeing as important to them and their families, and if you’re choosing this career you really do need to be on top of your game with it. And more and more people are doing that, which is why we’ve got a lot more need presenting. People are more aware now, and the new generation coming into policing are far more aware. There’s no stigma with them.

The second thing is the organisation taking responsibility for the things that we can prove now, on top of the type of work people do are actually the things that are avoidable stressors. That’s really difficult for the organisation to look at itself and say, “I’m creating a lot of this stress myself.” It could be behaviours, it could be unfair promotion processes. We’ve got all the evidence for this now.

In our survey this year, the third national survey – this is the biggest survey of police workforce in the world, right? We can prove that. 36,000 responses, independently done and what hindrance stressors are absolutely screaming off the page. This survey can now prove the hindrance stressors are drive and fatigue, intention to quit, not feeling valued, inability to psychologically detach, etc. etc. etc. right? That’s you, your family or a victim of crime, you can’t ignore it. So we’ve moved, I think, from a conversation to the data and where we’re at now Alexis is that we’re really interested in proxy measures for mental health that can be collected as data, live time using technology. And we’re really excited about some of the research we’ve done about sleep and fatigue as a precursor issue to mental health.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Without a doubt, yes.

Andy Rhodes: So we’re taking a step back from the metal health thing and saying, “Well, what’s driving the mental health issue? Is it actually mental health or is it just emotional distress caused by things that are happening in the work or in life? Is it a passing thing?” rather than knee jerking to labelling people.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. And to me – I mean, for me one of the things – obviously, we provide a lot of therapy, we’ve work with a lot of offices in lots of different sectors, and we work in schools as well and all these different places. And I think therapy isn’t the answer to this ongoing problem. It absolutely – you know, and you know I’m passionate about it, but it’s the systems that need to change because you can’t keep trying to put support in place for people and therapise them as a solution.

Andy Rhodes: Or medicate them.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Or medicate them, yes, absolutely.

Andy Rhodes: It’s what’s happening.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. As a solution to a response to a system that’s not working for people.

Andy Rhodes: Exactly. And as you know I’m married to a psychotherapist –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, [unintelligible 00:11:44] [chuckles].

Andy Rhodes: – and I often say to her, “You are not going to counsel your way out of this problem.” And it’s not just in the police. This is in every organisation. It’s in sight, as you say, in the developed world anyway. All the data’s there to show it. And it’s in the education system. And I think that’s something, that’s a sophisticated conversation about mental health we need to be having. We need to move away from this sort of – not having a stigma around it is not the endgame. That’s the means to an end.

What we’ve done is, we’ve taken the lid off, but the system has not adjusted to meet the need. And as an employer, that is going to cause you problems if your culture, your support systems, your [unintelligible 00:12:32], whatever it is that you need to have in place is not where it needs to be, because unusually what we’re finding – normally in a big organisation you’ll find the transactional side of the job charging ahead and then the culture’s ten years behind. When it comes to this issue, the culture is changing faster than the transactional side, and that’s causing pressure all over the place.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, it’s interesting that, isn’t it? Because if the nuts and bolts of the system – always think of it in terms of like a car engine or something like that. If those things aren’t – if each of those components aren’t ready to be upgraded into working in a different way, you’re almost dragging that weight behind the new data and the new processes.

Andy Rhodes: I think it’s potentially even worse than that, because I think what we’ve done for the right reasons is reduce stigma. The need’s presenting, and because the system isn’t geared up to meet it there is almost a backlash back towards people who are now talking about their mental health. So I often say to people – so by another two years 40% of all police officers will have less than five years’ service. It’s a whole generation of new people who’ve come through an education system where they’ve been told, “Speak to us about your mental health,” not always with great outcomes, of course, but –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: We do our best.

Andy Rhodes: – they’re more diverse, they’re more inclusive, they’re more open minded as a general rule. And I’ve met them. I met all my new recruits, and they are phenomenal human beings, I think, the vast majority, but their expectations about what they’re going to get in the organisation are up here. The bar is very high, and it’s not there yet to meet them. So what’s happening is, there’s almost a cultural backlash going, “Who are these snowflakes that are joining? You know, as soon as they see a dead body they [unintelligible 00:14:33].”

So I had this from a lot of my [unintelligible 00:14:37]. I got them together in their hundreds, serjeants, inspectors, and said, “These people have stepped forward to do one of the toughest jobs that there is out there. How many of your kids could do this job?” I said, “Because mine certainly couldn’t. I would not expect them to do it because they just couldn’t do it, and it’s not what they would – the challenge is maybe something that they’d find daunting. Our job is to help them, not criticise them, and actually if you knew as much as you should know about personal development, the fact that they are aware of the stress, the anxiety, and they’re talking to you about it is the Holy Grail of resolving mental health issues.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. This is what we’ve been looking for.

Andy Rhodes: Your awareness is the key, so don’t bottle it up. And the culture’s trying to bottle it back up I think and say, “Put your shoulders back. It’s a tough job. If you don’t like it, leave,” which for some people, it may be too much for them, because of the amount of trauma and all that sort of stuff that’s experienced. But what we want is compassionate, self-aware people who can hold onto that kindness and still do this incredibly tough job.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And recognising that officers are human. You’re absolutely right, those new recruits – and we work with some in therapy. You know, the expectation, the sheer joy of being a police officer and actually getting in and going through all the training and everything else, you don’t want to snub that out. You want it to be something that drives them forward in their career, but there is that vulnerability. And we look back – years ago, I used to run a fish and chip shop, and I used to work with the police quite closely because we had lots of young people who were smashing windows and all the rest of it, and we used to have meetings quite regularly. And it was a very different vibe, and I didn’t know anything about it then, than the officers that I work with now. We used to meet in the bar at the police station.

That’s where our meetings were and stuff like that, where you had a different way of processing some of these things. It was almost like you don’t discuss it here, you discuss it there, and recruiting these young people, who as you say can be incredible people, lots of ideas, very open minded, so that’s exactly what the organisation needs, to move it forward in the way that especially Oscar Kilo’s promoting, but it’s challenging for the remainder of the officers who are in there. And also recognising the challenges of the job and how to support those people effectively so they’re not going off work and they’re not sick or suffering with stress load and all of those things as well.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. I mean, I’ve written a chapter for a book for a university. Don’t ask me how I did it. Somebody asked me [unintelligible 00:17:45]. The book was entitled Lived Experience. It was all about law enforcement, blue light. And I put a lot of work into this and a lot of self-reflection because – and I brought in a lot of sort of therapeutic concepts, and I think we’ve missed this one Alexis. You know, the process that people go through when they assimilate to a culture but also start to experience things they’ve never experienced before is quite well-known in therapeutic practice.

So you have to have supervision to maintain unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence, right? I know this because I’m married to a version of Alexis you see. And I find this a fascinating concept, because it’s to avoid judgemental pejorative behaviours moving between clients and therapists, right? I will guarantee you that very soon after you join the police and you go operational, you start to form pejorative, judgemental views of people and places and types of incidents. And it’s not all because the culture’s assimilating you. Part of it is that you’re lived experiences that you – the way your brain responds to those experiences, we’re finding more and more out about that now aren’t we?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: You know, how this can create a belief system, fight or flight. You know, it’s a scary job on your own. You know, in some of the places how people police, it takes courage, and when you’re in that situation your brain is firing up fight or flight, and it’s forming belief systems that then start to become the way you see the world. I’ve experienced this in my first marriage, and what happens is, by going to the police bar and only talking about it there is that all of a sudden you think you’re living in a parallel universe to everybody else, which I still think now. Because [unintelligible 00:20:00] and speak to people who are bothering about what sort of car they’re going to get and all this sort of thing –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: You’re like, “That’s not important.”

Andy Rhodes: I’m thinking, “You don’t even know what’s going on around the corner.” Are you with me?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: And so you start thinking – you’re all in a bubble and even your own family and close friends. So you start and tighten into your culture, and you sort of bond with your colleagues because –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It becomes a family in its own right, doesn’t it? It becomes a family of choice.

Andy Rhodes: It does, which is great. It’s great because you rely on each other and you understand each other and you get each other, but for other people who’ve been close to you, it starts to exclude them sometimes. And I see this happening a lot. It certainly happened to me, and I wish I’d known what was happening. Are you with me? I didn’t even know it was happening to me, and of course there’s this great culture that’s just waiting with you with open arms to jump in and go, “Yes, I’m just like you. I see the world like you see it.” And I think this is fundamentally not just an issue for police in this country but across the world.

We link in with Oscar Kilo with law enforcement across the globe, and I was listening the other day to Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers. I didn’t realise it had so much stuff in about policing, but he hits on all these areas. How those interactions, Alexis, under pressure can go very badly wrong because of all these different things we’re talking about.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, and I think when you’ve been in that situation and it’s happening daily, it’s happening relentlessly as well, you don’t get chance to change your perspective or think or recover, and it’s having – you’re absolutely right. I mean, in my sector in terms of therapy we have peer support, we have supervision, we have reflective practice, we have therapy if we need it. The whole culture is set up to keep yourself well, because we can’t listen to what we listen to and help people with the deepest, darkest worries and traumas and shame if you’re not making sure that you’re looking after yourself. And then you look at things like policing or social work or NHS or whatever it might be and think those people are dealing with the reality of it happening right now in front of their very eyes and those support mechanisms haven’t been in place.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. It is exactly what you’re saying, and you know the damaging side of not doing that, I’m starting to try to – we’ve tried to promote it by doing debriefs. So call it check up from the neck up in our house. Are you with me? So let’s make it normal that a team sits around and says, “How’s everyone doing? Alexis, you’ve been to a couple of tricky jobs recently. OK,” and the team is a really good starting point for that, but you’ve got to have the right leadership in the team, the right culture.

We had in my force people who were trained in basic counselling skills, coordinators, who would basically jump in at the back of a team briefing and impromptu do that. My occupational health team went out to parade rooms and just hung around with people and gone, “I’m a therapist. It’s not scary you know.” And they all say that they started to have more conversations than therapy sessions because their breaking the barriers down.

Nobody wants to drive to headquarters, park their car in the occupational health unit that’s got a big sign saying, “You’re having problems basically.” I mean, our occupational health unit at my old force, the front entrance was opposite the professional standards office. And these the things that if you’re already struggling and you’re walking onto the headquarter’s site, you’re thinking, “Everybody’s looking at me.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Even if they’re not, that’s how you feel isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Yes, and it’s like we’ve got to just start empathising a bit more with what it’s like to struggle with your mental health, because it’s incredibly difficult if you start struggling with your mental health, and it’s very difficult for other people to understand as well, because it’s complex isn’t it? It’s very unique.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It is, and I think – I mean, there was some research done years and years ago. I think it was Leicester University, from memory, and they talked about things like you’ve just described. You know, the environment and thinking about what the environment says about the service you’re providing, where it’s positioned, how people access it, what it feels like when you’re in it. You know, all of these things which for me, I’ve got obviously therapy spaces and things and think about it all the time, but if you’re not somebody – if you’re just thinking, “We need a service and we need to set it up,” and you’re not someone who’s ever thought about mental health or ever struggled with your mental health, those intricacies, those layers aren’t things that would necessarily cross your mind. You see there’s a building, and you think, “We’re going to do it there because the space is there.”

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: But it symbolises so much to other people who are using it.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. We had 6,000 people. So on a year we’d normally have around 200/220 referrals for talking therapies, of various kind. This was before we started the wellbeing agenda. I heard that just before I left, we are not topping 1,100/1,200 a year.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Wow.

Andy Rhodes: That’s out of 6,000 people, and a lot of those people are police staff who are not going to be at the frontend of the organisation. So there’s only 3,500 police officers there. You’re talking 18% a year are getting talking therapies. Now, people go, “Oh, it’s a tsunami.” Well, no, we’re geared up for this.” We did gear up for it. I got a good person in who’s a phenomenal person in this space, and got the capacity there, got the right approach, as you say. Very much an outreach approach to this, and what we did was hold the line with it. We didn’t become overwhelmed and start kicking back at it. I was very clear, “This is what I’ve asked for.”

And if this was a bad back or a bad knee and we had 1,200 people a year coming in for physiotherapy we’d be going, “What’s causing the bad knee?” Are you with me? Get some new boots in or whatever it might be. Are you with me? The car seats aren’t good enough. But we don’t do it because mental health seems to be something that people struggle to grasp as a real issue sometimes. And I said, “I’m glad they’re sticking their hand up.”

Honestly, I got emails from people with 20-odd years’ service in, road death investigation, and he said, “I thought all this was corporate bullshit, wellbeing. I don’t even like the word. It’s like management guff. And I’ve been fine, and I have seen some bad stuff,” because they do, and they do the lot. They do the scene, they do the coroner’s stuff, they do the family, they do the court, don’t they? One of the toughest jobs in policing. He said, “But this job I went to recently just broke me. Never saw it coming.” He said, “It was just like a shock to me. And I went back to the road policing base at three in the morning.”

He said, “The serjeant was great, the inspector was great, the superintendent checked in on me, and the head of my psych unit was there at three in the morning.” And he said, “That’s when I knew you were serious.” That’s what it takes to prove to a culture as tough as the one in policing, because sometimes it has to be tough, that you’re serious about it. You’ve got to walk the talk. You’ve got to back it up with the right people at the right time when people need it, because if we’d have missed his open window, well, we’d have lost him.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, and he’d have been off sick.

Andy Rhodes: And he is probably one of the most dedicated people that you will find in policing, and so we won’t give up on it because I think we exist in the wellbeing service to show people what works, because we’ve got a strong evidence base around this, and we’ve got the research and the data, and how to get there. So we’re here to help. We’re leading horses to water. They’ve got to drink. But we’re also here to provoke the culture and avoid it snapping back, because we’ve got the argument, we’ve got the business case for it so to speak, which every global organisation, as you know, is trying to create this mental healthy workplace, and that’s all we’re asking for.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, and it’s about getting it right in terms of – you know, we talked about congruence. It’s the authenticity, isn’t it, behind what you’re doing driving this forward, and trying to – and you recognising that actually we can’t – and I see it all the time, and I know you will as well in terms of different businesses where there’s big groups of people, is that incongruence between what we’re saying and what we’re doing.

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: You know, we talk a good game, but actually there’s nothing to back it up and then –

Andy Rhodes: Yes, it puts you under pressure.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. And so you lose the trust of the people, especially those old hands who’ve been there for a long time. You lose their interest, their engagement, their motivation to be involved in something like that. And, you’re right, you get one shot sometimes at that, which sometimes you hit, sometimes you’ll miss, but recognising that more and more in terms of the way we are culturally in terms of society as well and what we expect of ourselves. We’ve got to get it right as something that actually has purpose and is impactful within an organisation. We can’t tick boxes anymore, because we’re seeing the impact of that. It looks lovely on the intranet, but actually if there’s nothing there behind literally what you see on that screen or the bit of information you’ve been given, it’s literally a – well, it’s a waste of money for a start but it also means you miss those opportunities doesn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Well, there’s a couple of things on that one that spring into my mind when you’ve said that, because you’re right on the money with it. First of all it’s like, because I think in a lot of organisations they deal with things that have a start and a finish. Particularly men, and I’m a man, right? I like to deal with everything like it’s a football match, starts –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: [Chuckles].

Andy Rhodes: It’s like men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, isn’t it?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: What’s your problem? Oh, I’ll fix it for you. I don’t want you to fix it. I just want you to listen. I want you to listen –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Have you been talking to my husband?

Andy Rhodes: Right, this is work in progress, believe you me and it is a default position for a lot of people and a lot of cultures to want to see a problem and fix it. See, fix. See, fix. You can’t fix this problem. It’s not about fixing it. It’s about acknowledging it, recognising it, listening and, no, people are not expecting you to change the world. They want to see that you are listening and you’re doing your best at an organisational level. And I think the work that we get involved in now, we see – and I see it, because I do other stuff outside of policing as well. It’s like the Wild West of mental health out there. It’s like people are just desperate to throw something at it without stopping and going, “Actually, most of what we need to do is free, because it’s about treating each other with more respect and fixing the bloody printer.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. Well, when you said it earlier I was thinking we did a survey in one of the police forces, a wellbeing survey, and put in it about stressors and all that kind of stuff.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: The things – some of the main things that came back were, “My computer doesn’t work properly. My chair’s really uncomfortable. I don’t like the blue in my office and there’s no windows, and the temperature’s not right.” They’re stressors, aren’t they?

Andy Rhodes: It’s the oldest one in the book, right? It’s the oldest one in the book this, right? There’s books going back centuries on this, logistics matter. Then morale, motivation and discretionary effort.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, absolutely.

Andy Rhodes: And it is unforgivable to get logistics wrong, because it’s within your control most of the time.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And mostly they’re quick wins as well.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, that’s right. This is the hinderance stressor thing now that – you know, we are looking at technology to help us solve this as well as a new way of leadership. This is what’s being progressed by some forces now that we’re working with, which is great because technology has got the solution to improve work quality, and remove non-value work. We were talking about this the other day about CRM and the like. It is out there, and yet we are still holding onto quite traditional ways of working, and data is overwhelming us. Demand is overwhelming us. Are you with me?

And so I think there’s real opportunities to catch up quick frankly with some other sectors that the pubic are used to dealing with big organisations around certain things in a different way now aren’t they? As long as it’s good and it works, it’s fine. So I do think that’s the sort of – I think it’s a positive. I’m an optimist, and I look at this and I think, “Well, if we’re having this conversation now, we’ve progressed from 2015 when all we had was a rubbishy website.”

We’re having a conversation now about the purpose of work, work quality, leadership style, hindrance stressors, control the controllables. And I think that that is also about when you are a leader of an organisation, it’s extremely tough. Staff engagement, if you do it properly, is the toughest thing you’ll do because it’s humbling. And you leave work every day thinking, “I’ve gone two steps backwards today.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It’s not working.

Andy Rhodes: “I’m trying my best.” So it’s a lot easier to be command and control.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, it is. Yes.

Andy Rhodes: It’s a lot easier to come to work and say, “I’ve told you, turn left, turn right, red springs, fill it all in. Right, I’m not interested in listening to your opinion quite frankly.” So I know it’s tougher, and I know for some people it’s not what they signed up to. So I also take a very supportive, non-judgemental view sometimes of people who are finding the leadership piece around wellbeing and mental health difficult, because it’s a very personal agenda. Very personal.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It’s also a very personal investment, isn’t it? Because you have to model it as a manager or as a leader and I think if you’re protecting yourself or if you’ve got those different personas that you use in order to protect any vulnerability, it’s very difficult to then create a culture within your team where that’s OK if you find that hard.

Andy Rhodes: Absolutely.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And I think it’s the context of the individuals, isn’t it, as to what’s that resistance about, or what’s the avoidance about, what’s motivating that? And I think for me I always go in with curiosity. Like, I’m really curious to understand, I want to understand your perspective, or why that’s a struggle, because I can help from that perspective. I can’t help if we’re going in there as kind of almost like a disciplinary conversation about somebody’s approach.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Do you know what I mean?

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Nobody wins that actually.

Andy Rhodes: No, no. No, that’s right, and that’s what happens a lot of the time, people default to process policy.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: Ironically, we’re the people trying to improve this, but we’re the ones who attract fire from people who are really upset, they’ve had bad experiences, some of them are unwell and it can be quite unpleasant on social media and the like. And it’s difficult when you’re a leader and when that’s happening as well because you feel as though you’re getting accused of failing when actually quite a lot of people are doing their best. But if you take that as a personal thing, if it’s an ego thing for you, you’re going to back away from it I’m telling you now, right. You’re just not going to bother.

So you’ve got to be able to understand your own vulnerability, you’ve got to maybe have struggled yourself on occasion, and you’ve got to read, study it, apply yourself to it like you would – so when I got trained as firearms or whatever, I had to study, train, be tested, deep dive into all this stuff because I knew I had to be good at it. And so few people spend any time reading about this subject, and it’s like the most important thing in life really when you think about it. Are you with me?

But it’s like people – you know, I’m not saying everyone should sit at home every night reading deep meaningful books about psychology. What I’m saying is that they need to – if you want to be a leader in an organisation in 2022, you need to be competent around mental health. You need to be comfortable having a conversation, and if you’re not naturally empathetic, you need to be able to acknowledge it and work with people who are and be open and honest about it and do your best. Are you with me?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: So it’s a humbling area of work for a lot of leaders, and I think we push everything to line managers on mental health, and those are the key – you know, 50% of your wellbeing is your line manager. Well, you at most line managers – and mine was saying to me, “I’m just glad all these kids are back at ten o’clock at night.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: [Laughs].

Andy Rhodes: [Unintelligible 00:38:41], “You want me to have a conversation about their mental health while I’m at it?” [Unintelligible 00:38:46].

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, yes.

Andy Rhodes: It’s like, “Give me a break.” You know, you can’t ask line managers to do everything.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, and it can’t be their fault when it isn’t happening either, because it’s the blame isn’t it? I always think of it like a beach ball, like the blame gets – “Oh, you can catch that blame because you’re supposed to be supervising.” And you’re right, you said earlier about how we look after ourselves, and I know we talked before about the duty of self-care which is kind of how I see it. Like there has to be a balance between what we do as an individual to take responsibility, what we expect from the organisation, what we expect from our leadership and managers and the systems and processes and everything. It’s a multifaceted thing. You know, but actually if we recognise and we know ourselves well enough to know what helps us and what works for us and what we need to do in order to keep ourselves well, that’s a big part of the pie isn’t it? It’s a big chunk of it.

Andy Rhodes: Well, I got to the age of 40 with two kids, and I didn’t know any of this stuff. Are you with me? And the consequences were disastrous, and I was a superintendent. God knows what it was like to work for me. I dread – you know, people sort of laugh about it when the harp back to those days. I wasn’t a nasty person, but I was blind in a sense to my impact on other people, including my family. I was in debt, horrendous debt. There was so many negative –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Indicators as well.

Andy Rhodes: – behaviours, yes, that as you say, that was my responsibility. It wasn’t the job’s fault that I was doing that. The job was paying me a superintendent’s wage and I was nearly bankrupting myself. Are you with me? So it’s not always the individual’s fault. People can fall on hard times. Things can happen to you, can’t they, that are beyond your control?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: But, you know, looking after your physical health, how much alcohol you drink, trying to get good sleep, these – nutrition, all these things, focussing on your relationships. All these things are positive contributors towards your mental health, and I think that’s where we can help. What I want to do, Alexis, with this is, I want to – and I think all organisations need stop throwing money at interventions and first aid or whatever it might be. Are you with me? I get it, right. People feel like they need to be seen to be doing something about this problem. Stop –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. But the language around it also keep it safe. It keeps it at an arm’s length, doesn’t it? Like interventions and –

Andy Rhodes: Yes. It looks like I’ve done something.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: So duty of care, “I’ve covered myself.” Right, stop spending money on it for a minute, ask your people what they think is causing stress and how much of it’s avoidable. And then start working with them to chip away at those things, and you’ll get a bounce off your people straightaway because they’ll think they’re being listened to once. They’ll believe they’re being listened to. But I want to do, is with policing I think – you know, when we get – when you’re joining up as a cop, you go to clothing stores, and you get all this kit. You get a pair of big boots and a stab vest, PAVA and your baton and then we give them a taser and all this sort of stuff.

And what I want them to get is wearable technology that monitors key indicators of their health. Hand that to them, train them in it, give them the equipment, get data from that that’s anonymised at the organisational level, so we can start seeing where we need to do work organisationally to help people. And the individual is then equipped to understand the sleep, the diet, fatigue, how heart rate goes up therefore cortisol when you’re responding to certain incidents or when certain things – are you with me?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: So we help them interpret that data, and we’ve got like – we’ve got the right balance then between individual and organisational.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, definitely.

Andy Rhodes: We’ve got to get it almost as like issued kit this, are you with me, rather – because most people are wearing technology on their wrist now.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Well, yes, I was going to say, I’m wearing one, and I think – I mean, there’s been things over the years where people have tried to develop something to monitor that, and have done, but the idea of it, and I’ve never agreed with this, is to have it and then for that to be sending information to, say, their line manager.

Andy Rhodes: No, no.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And I just think – and I’ve always thought – we did a project actually in a group of schools and part of the project was that we could have had our own App that could have done that, and I said, “No, I don’t want to be in a project where that’s involved,” because you’re kind of saying, “I’m feeling terrible today. I’m going to tell my boss I feel terrible today and then they’re going to do something about it.” I was like, “That’s not helpful.”

Andy Rhodes: Nobody will trust it.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No.

Andy Rhodes: It’s your body, your data.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. You deal with it. It’s your responsibility. You are your responsibility.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. Your body, your data. I mean, there’s loads of people going to doctors, getting antidepressants, not telling their job. Loads of people. They’re getting sleep tablets. They’re getting all sorts of stuff. But, you know, you speak to people about their health issues if you get to that point of trust with people, and people don’t even know what health issues they’ve got with people they’re working with every day of the week. Because people are very reluctant to share that stuff, understandably, and the last thing they want to do is give it to the HR department so that when you go for your advanced driving course, “Hold on a minute. You said you got stressed when you drove fast recently off your wearable technology. You can’t get your dream job.” Well, of course you’re going to get stressed if you’re driving a car at 110mph. That’s your body switching on so it can function at that level.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: The issue is, is it coming back down? Yes. Are you having negative coping strategies to deal with that? What’s the impact of that on your life and the work that you’re doing, etc. etc? So I think there’s some fascinating stuff now that’s being looked at Alexis that is on another level to even ten years ago. And it’s not just in policing, the armed forces. We’ve worked with, as I say, people all over the world actually, and there’s more and more sophistication now and an understanding that nobody’s just going to give you their health data. No way. You know, they’re not going to wear this thing if you say, “It’s got to go to the HR department or occy health.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It would literally just be in the bin in the car park as they walk out.

Andy Rhodes: It’s for you. Do you know what I mean? It’s for you, and I think – you know, I look at it like you mentioned it before, on a – Ian Hesketh and I did a paper of this called Managing the People Fleet, because early doors I had to get across to senior people that how much you spend on your vehicle fleet compared to your people fleet, and how much infrastructure you’ve got around that vehicle fleet – first of all it’s got a dashboard to tell you when it’s not very well. You’ve got a load of BMW technicians ready to wire it up, fix it, get it back out there. What have you go for your people? You haven’t even got a dashboard.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No.

Andy Rhodes: You have not got a clue what’s going on with their health, yet we insist on doing a bleep test with them once a year, which isn’t an indicator of anything other than I can run backwards and forwards for six/seven minutes, or whatever. And I get that people need to be fit, but I think it’s the – you know, the answer to it is a more sophisticated approach where we treat people like adults, we work on the assumption that people are very interested in their own health, and then we encourage and support them to get there. And then we have organisational data that tells us what we need to fix.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: What’s causing stress in the organisation that we can then hone in on, instead of carpet-bombing people with big programmes where they get sheep dipped into things around health? It’s a very unique thing your health, and therefore the only person who can understand your mental health is you. I’m telling you this. You know this better than I do, but do you know what I mean?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, but, yes.

Andy Rhodes: But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that we could find an indicator that’d tell us that everybody’s mental health’s a certain way every day when it’s not possible?

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No. No, and accepting it’s not possible, but finding different creative ways of being able to get as much information and data as you can, I think, is so important. I think one of the things with Oscar Kilo is, it’s not a project, it’s an ongoing investment in data and making sure that interventions are evidence based, and just information is evidence based. You know, like the fatigue stuff you’d done, the sleep, even the wellbeing dogs. I was talking about that the other day. You know, all of those aspects are opening up the conversation, they’re opening up the thought processes around some of these themes that we’ve been seeing in mental health services consistently for years and actually now more so. The complexities of what people are coping with and struggling with is even higher.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, and you know the – I look at contact, right. So when we first started it people said, “Well, we don’t want a strategy that sits on a shelf.” “Fine.” Because they’re very mobile the 24/7 staff. They’re in buildings away from headquarters where all the wellbeing events are on and all this sort of stuff. All the wellbeing events are 10am until 4pm on a Wednesday when most people who are on nights are in bed. So we bought one van, because one of the forces had got a van they’d kitted out. So we bought one van. We’ve got ten vans now as you know. And these vans are all booked out this year. They rotate around forces doing health checks.

We have had people – you’ve got to park these vans between the back door of the nick and the response vehicle, put tea and coffee on and donuts, which aren’t very good for your health, but they lure people in.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, just one.

Andy Rhodes: They lure you in, yes. And get your blood pressure checked. All the vans are kitted out with health equipment. They’ve got counselling rooms in them some of them. And we’ve had people with blood pressure so high on the way to the job they’ve had to go to A&E.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Really?

Andy Rhodes: We’ve had people do a psych risk assessment with the right support around them and they’ve declared suicidal ideation, and they’re on the way to a job. And it’s 20,000 contacts plus we had at those vans last year, and that’s in COVID. We had them at G7, COP26. We send them to funerals of colleagues. We send them to major incidents to forward deploy them. And that is the tip of the spear for us. The dogs are even more of a success story so far, because they’re out there and what they’re doing is – you know, somebody I saw somewhere accused the dogs of being a publicity stunt the other day. It’s an insult to intelligence that. These are volunteers.

If they knew what they were talking about, those people, which they clearly don’t, they’d know that that – the dog – it’s not about the dog. It’s about walking into an environment and everyone stopping and feeling OK to talk about something that previously they didn’t feel OK to talk about. That’s what’s happening with the dogs. We’re not just stroking dogs here, we’re creating a safe space, a psychologically safe space for a conversation, and that is what’s happening. And that’s preventative, it’s positive and it actually shows people who work in our organisation that we actually give a toss about them, and we’re actually backing up what we talk about around mental health with physical assets.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Well, it’s that taking to them, isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Yes, it is.

Alexis
Powell Howard: You could have your website and you could have your research –

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – and you could be doing podcasts and everything else that you do –

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – but actually physically going out into the forces and positioning yourself in the – when you’re needed, but also being on that rota basis so that there’s always a continual kind of presence, I think’s so important. It’s a visual thing as well as anything else isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: It is, yes. And we’ve had things where we’ve had a murder of a colleague, and a funeral. We’ve sent the vans down, and somebody’s come in the van and they say, “I just want somewhere out of the public eye where I can be on my own. It’s tough this. This was a colleague of mine, and I’m on a point for the funeral and I’m here to pay my respects, but I’m on duty, and I don’t want to show my emotions in front of a newspaper reporter particularly.” So it’s like –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: A safe haven isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Yes. I mean, I – you know, I’m somebody who’s seen a lot of things, and I feel I’ve coped with it quite well because I’m from that generation quite frankly, but it doesn’t make me immune to the needs of other people.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And that’s the thing. The thing for me is, I always think, that – even in my family and my children and things like that I think, “They’re not me.” You know, how I would respond to that –

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – [unintelligible 00:52:16] if I were to respond to that in a certain way, they aren’t me. With all my experience and all my conditioning and everything else that comes with –

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – you know, you have to kind of think they are their own entity in their own right, and actually their response, there’s a reason for it. And that does put you into that more compassionate, kind of what’s happened to you, the trauma informed idea about rather what’s wrong with you, what’s happened to you, it changes your position, doesn’t it, on being more opened and empathic to somebody else’s responses, even if – you know, we’ve all been in situations where we go, “Really? Is that – what is that reaction all about?” you know, in comparison to what’s just happened. But it isn’t about what’s just happened.

Andy Rhodes: No, it’s not, and I think that’s the thing with it, just accepting that people are different. And we’re seeing turnover rates increase and people going, “Oh, it’s because these lot can’t cope. We’re recruiting the wrong people.” Right, OK, good luck with that one because you recruiting – society – there’s a great saying, and it’s police are the public, the public are the police. We recruit from society. So whatever’s in society ends up in the police, right? That’s the way it is. That’s the way it should be.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes. There isn’t another supply coming from anywhere else.

Andy Rhodes: But we’re not a military force like in some countries. We’re a civil police service that works on the basis of consent, and that’s fundamentally quite different about British policing. It’s one of the things that we all talk about as being great. So when there’s people sit down and then they go, “It’s not for me this. I saw the job. I thought I wanted to be a cop. Maybe I was a PCSO before,” this happens quite a bit, “Can I go back to being a PCSO because it’s more me?” “Yes, of course you can.” There’s a big guilt trip with this, and it’s like a walk of shame for some reason that you haven’t cut the mustard. I’ll tell you what Alexis, I say to people, “I wish some of the people that I’ve had to work with for 30 years had walked out the door in the first year –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: – because they’ve robbed a wage of the taxpayer quite frankly, some of them.” And we all know those people exist. They weren’t cut out for the job. They shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and I wish they’d left. So I’m not saying that the people who are leaving now are like that. I’m saying, “Feel confident to decide this isn’t for you, like any other job.” And that’s going to happen anyway because people are more likely to move around jobs now.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, just culturally. Yes, absolutely.

Andy Rhodes: They don’t want a job for life. They want a life for jobs, not a job for life. So stop beating yourself up about it. But on board them properly. So give them a fighting chance, and find out if they walk out the door whether there’s anything we could have done differently. And then say, “Fantastic. Go and be happy doing something else.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Andy Rhodes: Like the great organisations that are up there, the top performing organisations that you’ll see, they say, “Fine. If you’re going to move off from us, there’s something better that you want to go and do, and that’s fine.” And they reflect themselves then on what they can do to improve.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, and it’s actually recognising that there isn’t one size fits all is there? You’re not going to be able – people coming into the organisation, into policing, for some the fantasy of what it is sets them up to fail, but also the processes, like you say induction and everything else, if that’s not right that also sets them up to fail, if a mentorship’s not right, if all those different kind of roles around them aren’t the right people or aren’t set up in the right way. But you’re right, in other organisations if it’s not for you, much more now so than ever before – you know, it used to be quite punishing if you were going to leave a job, but now people are kind of like, “It’s OK, we don’t expect you to stay for 30 years.” It’s not the expectation anymore.

Andy Rhodes: You’ve got to blame TV for some of it Alexis, let’s be – you know, it’s like you watch some of these TV programmes and you think, “If that’s what you think’s going to happen when you land.” I mean, it makes for great TV, doesn’t it, but – you know, everybody marching around in [unintelligible 00:56:25] stuff all the time, and all the corruption stuff. I mean, I’ll tell you what I did like, that Martin Freeman one, Responder.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, I don’t think I’ve seen it.

Andy Rhodes: Well, I liked it to a certain point, then it got sort of dead over the top.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Drama-y.

Andy Rhodes: Drama-y, which it’s got to be exciting hasn’t it, but some of the things that were depicted in there made me feel very uncomfortable because it was spot on in terms of how it is. There’s a scene where he deals with a sudden death, and honestly I felt quite sad after watching it actually because I thought, “That was me.” I’d become so, I don’t know, numb to this. You know, where I worked you’d do three in a Sunday morning. You just become numb and desensitised to it, and watching an actor do it, and he did it brilliantly. It was – the script’s been done by an ex-police officer –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Well, there you go then. It’s what you know.

Andy Rhodes: – from down there who’s – so it’s well-informed type of thing, and it really did. I wanted it and I got like a bit of a shiver. It made me sort of reflect on, “Oh my God, that was me.” It’s not nice to watch.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, no.

Andy Rhodes: And I didn’t even realise it was happening at the time. It’s just something as we talked about earlier that develops as almost a defence mechanism.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: You’ve got to survive haven’t you? Numbness is a great way of surviving actually.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, but if it’s – you know, the deceased people’s family, Alexis, it is not great. Do you know what I mean? And I used to use this analogy when I was talking to new recruits and stuff, and I’d say, “Compassion is discretionary. You can’t make somebody compassionate. You can’t measure it. You can’t capture it anywhere, but if someone comes knocking at my door with some news, the sort of news I’ve knocked on people’s door with, I want compassion. I do want competency, but I want compassion because one of the privileges of being in the police is that you are there at that moment in people’s lives quite often that’s their one moment, awful moment.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, and it’s captured. It’s a polaroid or a video.

Andy Rhodes: Forever.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, absolutely.

Andy Rhodes: And we talk about this Alexis because in that highly sensitised emotional experience, these things have the biggest impact. You know, people are very, very vulnerable at that point. You know, victims of crime, victim of exploitation, vulnerable people, death messages, this type of stuff. We’ve got people who are on the frontline for 15, 20, 25 years and they still maintain contact with a deceased person’s family long after we’ve asked them to. That isn’t something we’ve told them to do or we’re measuring them on or we’re ordering them to do. They do it because they’re a thoroughly decent human being, and more people do that than are bad people in the cops.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, yes, yes. And you have [unintelligible 00:59:51].

Andy Rhodes: So –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: That’s the other thing, you have to [unintelligible 00:59:53] –

Andy Rhodes: – you know, this is the thing that gets us fired up in Oscar Kilo, because I constantly bring the team back to the human interaction that’s at the end of all this stuff. Do you know what I mean? And that’s what matters. It’s the why question. All the other stuff is the what and the how.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: The why question is that very human element of policing that requires the police officer or member of police staff health to be as best as it possibly can be.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, completely.

Andy Rhodes: And mental health particularly, because that determines attitude, behaviours and all that sort of stuff. So we’ve come a long way in a short period of time, and we are well-established. The police covenant’s been – the vast majority of stuff that’s in the police covenant is around mental health and wellbeing. That is going through the legal process now. It’s almost there to be enshrined effectively in law that the health and wellbeing of police officers, their families and retirees is a priority. We’ve never done much with families in UK policing, so we’ve got a lot of work to do there which we’re working on. And we’ve got a seat at the table for what is quite a small little function in a £16 billion sector. We’re here to sort of lead horses to water, help people get better at things. We’re also here to remind them what this is all about.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Definitely. And I think – I mean, on that note, it’s been fantastic to speak to you and to – because I know how passionate you are about this, and that really comes across just how embedded you are in this whole sector, and you’ve embedded yourself personally and professionally in it, and I think that really, really comes across. And I think it’s what’s needed as well in this sector because it’s not a quick win, and it needs to be something that’s constantly brought to the forefront, doesn’t it, and like you say put into the covenant? And things that make sure that it can’t go away, it will be centre stage if you like for the future, and that legacy that will be a result of that as well.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. It’s not the new garlic bread as Peter Kay used to call it. It’s not the flavour of the month and a trendy thing to say. Wellbeing’s not a great word actually I don’t think, but anyway, I mean, it’s there isn’t it? I think it is – people originally said, “Well, it’s all pink and fluffy this. We’re going to have tofu bars and Indian head massages and all this sort of stuff.” I said, “I’ll tell you the reason you’re backing off it chum, is because this isn’t pink and fluffy. It’s too tough for you to deal with.” So that’s the reality of this area of work.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And that’s an absolute 180 on how it’s usually seen isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And as I said to you before, I’m far from pink and fluffy, and it always amuses me when people expect me to be because of what I do for a living. But you can’t be pink and fluffy in this – you know, you’re dealing with people’s lives. Ultimately that’s what this is about, and their survival as well in some cases.

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes. Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: So to avoid it and put it in that category of being something that’s just a bit of foo-foo really, just shows you the level –

Andy Rhodes: It’s like therapy, isn’t it, with all the – everyone in America’s got a therapist, but if you were on the receiving end of a very good therapist, it is the toughest personal experience. And I can’t have an argument with my wife, right – I’m not in therapy with her, but everything leads back to me –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: [Laughs] Woman after my own heart.

Andy Rhodes: – you know, “Where is your anger coming from? Where has that comment come from? What’s the source of it?” So the reason people don’t want to do personal development, want to call this stuff pink and fluffy is because actually it’s a failure to recognise most of it’s a human thing and it’s about you taking personal responsibility a lot of it. Having said that, I’m passionate about the organisational side of the deal as well. We talk a lot about that now, rather than pushing it all back to the individual. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, but it’s a balance, as you’ve said, even with the technology isn’t it?

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It’s a balance between the two and I think you can’t focus on one without the other, and it isn’t all the fault of one area [unintelligible 01:04:47] –

Andy Rhodes: No.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: So you have to get that balance right, and it is – you know, I talk to a lot of people, and they talk about doing the work, “I’m doing the work,” and you hear that a lot in podcasts as well. I’ve listened to Steve Bartlett’s podcast, Diary Of a CEO, the other day and he was – you know, they talk about doing the work. And I think the work never ends.

Andy Rhodes: No. No, that’s it.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Whether it’s in an organisation or whether it’s personally, it never ends. And actually that can be quite daunting, or it can be quite exciting. It depends on where you position yourself with that I think.

Andy Rhodes: Well, I heard a talk from a – it was a podcast I was listening to actually from somebody from the States and they said, “Organisational wellbeing and organisational development is like making love to a 500kg orangutan. You only stop when the orangutan tells you you can stop.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: [Laughs].

Andy Rhodes: I thought, “That is a great – that’s exactly what it is. There’s no end to it.”

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No.

Andy Rhodes: It’s a constant process, but you can have indicators and measures of progress.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: And I see a lot of good stuff in the indicators about people feeling more confident. You know, so new recruit surveys on the uplift, 80-odd percent, “I feel confident talking to my line manager –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Brilliant.

Andy Rhodes: – about my mental health monthly.” I wouldn’t have spoken to my line manager about mental health monthly when I joined the police.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Per decade.

Andy Rhodes: So there’s some positive stuff. I think there’s always going to be a tension in an organisation where cultural change is happening, and a new generation’s coming in with expectations, and other generations having to deal with it, which isn’t easy because everyone’s busy and we’ve got challenges of our own, haven’t we? It must –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It’s always evolving.

Andy Rhodes: – not be easy.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: It’s always evolving. I think we are always evolving, society is, the needs are. You only have to look at the last two years to see how much we’ve had to evolve and adapt to what’s going on. And if we don’t – you know, services need to evolve. Everything needs to be moving as that evidence comes through, as we’re seeing the patterns and themes that come through from the next generation. I see it in my three children, the breadth of what they – just the lack of judgement that they have, the acceptance they have around people. Almost those –

Andy Rhodes: Yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – all the difference and the diversity that they accept without question –

Andy Rhodes: Yes, yes.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: – blows my mind, because obviously I work with people every day and those restrictions are in every conversation just about, you know judgements and fear and everything else. So you can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result when you’ve got different people and different needs coming through. It just doesn’t work.

Andy Rhodes: Yes. And the world class organisations know this.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes.

Andy Rhodes: They’re on the hunt for talent. Retention is a big thing for them. Advocacy is a big thing. It’s a performance issue as well, and it’s a bottom-line issue, and it is hard for the police service. The amount of recruitment that’s coming in, which is a good thing, is putting real pressure on that on boarding and that learning process, and you are throwing people in at the deep end of a really tough job. So we’ve got to accept that the more experience people in the workplace are under massive pressure because everyone’s relying on them. If you’re the experienced person on a team and everybody else has got less than four years’ service in, you’re going to be thinking, “On top of what I’ve got to deal with, they’re all looking to me,” because that’s what happens. We learn the job on the job quite often.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: I was working with someone yesterday, a police officer, and she was the most experienced person in her team with four years’ service, and, “Well, I’m the experienced one,” and I was thinking, “I don’t class four years as experienced, obviously more experienced than the people in the team,” but it’s that kind of expectation on that person then. And if they’re a relatively young person as well themselves, and all that stuff that we’ve – it’s just taking into consideration, as you’ve said, that wave of where the organisation is going and what that means in terms of younger, newer recruits and then also the dynamic with the people who’ve been there for longer service and how they feel about all of that. You’re managing all of those different expectations, aren’t you? It’s just being –

Andy Rhodes: Yes, which is fine, Alexis. You know, wellbeing holds the key to a lot of this as an agenda, as a conversation. Staff engagement is the – it’s the bedfellow of wellbeing.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yes, it is.

Andy Rhodes: You’ve got to get a voice and lived experience. You’ve got to sit in the work with people and watch them and not think everything’s got to be fixed by five o’clock, you know, it’s enough to listen and recognise, yeah it must be tough for you with 15 years’ service in, when everybody else has got three years’ service in. I’m recognising that, I’m acknowledging it, you know, we respect you for it. What can we do to help you?

And most people will walk away thinking, well, that’s great, somebody’s actually listened to me, and acknowledged that this is tough. And say listen, there’s not a lot we can do, because that is the way it is at the moment. They can’t do anything about the service profile, what we can do it listen to you and acknowledge and recognise what you’re doing, and hear your voice. And genuinely take an interest in it. Which I think, you know, some people find quite hard to do because of the reasons we’ve been discussing. I think it’s a massive sort of mock paradigm shift for a lot of people to listen without judging, listen without fixing in the right way.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: And to make promises that can’t come to fruition, you know, it’s not that it isn’t possible, because I think that’s the other thing –

Andy Rhodes: Well, I say to most senior people that it’s like the least worst impact you can have on them trying to get the job done, because we’re terrible for it, managers, of putting things in that don’t add a lot of value quite frankly sometimes. But it looks like we’re doing something.

Alex
Powell-Howard: It’s because it makes us feel better.

Andy Rhodes: Yeah, well, I’m a manager so I’ve got to manage type of thing. Well, there’s a friend of Ian and I, Celine Schillinger, who’s a real sort of global thought leader, and she’s just done a book called Dare to Un-Lead.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Oh yes, I saw that.

Andy Rhodes: Yeah, because she’s like, you know, actually the best thing you can do is let go. Do your job, stop trying to do their job for them type of thing. Yeah, it’s a very provocative book. The thing with the police is, every now and again, you do need somebody just to get a grip of things and go right, this is what we’re doing. And so you know, it’s not an either or –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: No, but it’s boundaries, that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s the difference. It’s a boundary – I was talking about leadership today with somebody, and I was saying it’s getting the balance between listening, supportive but also knowing when you have to say no. knowing when you’ve got to [unintelligible 01:12:14], knowing when you’ve got to be authoritative. And actually, if you’ve got a leaning towards, as you said, kind of commanding, and that is your only thing you’ve got in your toolkit, and you lose all those other options, and that’s where it starts to cause stress for the person doing the managing, but also for the people in the team as well.

Andy Rhodes: Yeah, there used to be a certain point at Preston North End football ground called Windy Corner, for obvious reasons, it was just an horrendous place to stand the whole match, particular when it’s –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Freezing.

Andy Rhodes: Yeah, and I remember a new recruit coming on, “why are we standing here?” And the Sergeant saying, “This is the trouble nowadays.” You know, you’ve got people saying why are we doing this –

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Just stand there.

Andy Rhodes: I actually said to her, “There is no point whatsoever in you standing here, but we just have to do it.” And she went, “OK.” I’m not going to pretend there’s any fun to what you’re doing today.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: I’m not going to make something up.

Andy Rhodes: We’re all getting paid, you’ll get a pie at lunchtime, and a cup of soup, and that will be the end of the match.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Jobs a good ‘un.

Andy Rhodes: Let’s not pretend there’s any point in what we’re doing today. So I think that sort of thing is quite well received by people actually. Rather than telling them off and pretending there is a point to it.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Yeah, exactly, and just justifying it no matter what. Thanks ever so much for coming to speak to me, I really appreciate it. It’s been great. And we’ll probably do this over two episodes I think, because we’ve covered such a lot of ground, it would be great to do it that way I think.

Andy Rhodes: OK, it’s been a pleasure.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: So if anybody wants to know any further details about Oscar Kilo, I’ve said this in every podcast, it’s just really heading to the website, isn’t it, to see what’s available. And if the wellbeing vans are around, then accessing those and being able to –

Andy Rhodes: All the podcasts are on there, there are more and more courses now being made available. We’ve got Sophie Bostock, the sleep doctor. One of the leading experts on sleep and fatigue, all her stuff is on there. And there’s more webinars that we’ve commissioned from her this year. So there’s all sorts on there. And a lot of links to other things as well that are going on.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: Brilliant. That’s great. Thanks Andy, thanks ever so much for your time.

Andy Rhodes: Nice to see you. Have a good weekend, bye.

Alexis
Powell-Howard: You too, take care. Bye.

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