With 20,000 new officers due to enter the force over the next few years, questions are naturally being asked about how prepared they are for this influx. After all, after nearly a decade of austerity, it will be a challenge for forces to cope with the demands of this much-needed boost. These new officers will not be entering the same environment their counterparts were enjoying prior to austerity. For example, many police stations have been sold off or mothballed, so where will these new officers operate from? Are there even enough lockers for them to store their kit?
But a much broader question to ask is what will these new recruits expect from their Force and from their colleagues?
It is fair to assume the majority of these new recruits will be of the “post millennial” or “Gen Z” generation (defined as those born after the mid 1990s), however, given the near-ten-year recruitment freeze and the typical length of tenure of many of those on the frontline, the bulk of their colleagues will be from earlier generations – Generations X and Y specifically.
Those hailing from each generation will have their own preferred way of working and skillsets, largely borne from the environment in which they grew up. Those of Gen Z (the post millennials) are regarded as being very tech-savvy, “internet-native” and highly politically active. They grew up with tablets and smartphones. They have never known a world without the internet, they have had smartphones since they were teenagers, and they are used to having access to the world’s data wherever they are. It only follows that they will expect data and technology to be embedded into every process of the workplace, and the devices they use to be intuitive to use and available to everyone. Clearly they are in for a shock when they enter most workplaces, let alone many police forces!
For the millennials who came before Gen Z, technology is still a part of their DNA, but they came of age during the rise of the internet. They are still digitally-savvy, but they can remember a time before tablets and social media, so their digital expectations are a little more tempered. Before millennials we have Generation X, the children of the Baby Boomers. They have lived through a technical revolution like no other. In the workplace they have had to adapt to every change you can imagine – from paper-based working to the introduction of the mainframe, Personal Computers, the internet, and now smartphones and tablets. They have been asked to change how they work more often than any generation before them. They have seen technological changes for better and for worse, and I doubt they enjoy having to learn a new way of working every 5-10 years just to continue doing their job.
Clash of the generations?
To put the new recruits into perspective, once they are all deployed, the 20,000 new officers will account for over 17% of the UK’s total policing frontline[1]. If the bulk of these officers are “Gen Z,” it is not hard to see how much of an impact this will have on the overall makeup of UK policing.
The technological ambition and enthusiasm of these Gen Z recruits will likely clash with the generations of X and Y officers, many of whom will be fatigued by years of interference and changes to their working day; either from failed technology initiatives (such as the poorly executed BlackBerry rollout in the early 2000s) to the inevitable changes to procedures and protocols that are typical of any large organisation over the years.
So, how can technology help?
The only way to tackle this generational divide is for the technology given to the frontline to be as intuitive as possible. There is no point in deploying new technology, no matter how good it is, if only those under the age of 25 bother to use it. Technology must be adopted by everyone, irrespective of their time in the force.
Tablets and smartphones are famed for their ease-of-use; pretty much anyone over the age of 3 can operate them proficiently without any training. This should be the case for all frontline police IT. With a common “working platform” that can be deployed on any mobile and non-mobile device, police officers of every generation should be able to work in the same way. There should be no distinction between working on the PC in the station and working on a mobile device in the car or on the street. Officers should have access to the same data and processes, using a consistent user interface/user experience (UI/UX), wherever they are, on whichever device they are using. So, for example, an officer could search the PNC on a mobile device in the same way as at the station, or file a police report from a mobile device as they would from their desktop.
How can Forces prepare?
Forces should be working towards this goal now, so that they have a clear pathway to deliver cross generational technology that delivers more effective and efficient policing.
What’s more, since officers are the ones who will use these IT tools, they should be more actively involved in their development and eventual implementation. This will not only ensure they are “bought in” to the technology (so are more likely to use it), but that the solution actually meets their needs. We need our officers across the generational divide to be able to complete their tasks in the same way, using the same technology, thereby delivering better, more intelligence-led policing across each force. The days of notepads, personal phone usage and paper forms must be coming to an end.
Finding a way to bridge the digital divide among officers within policing is a major challenge, the other is to ensure these officers can hit the ground running. Simply adding more officers will not bring policing back to the levels identified before austerity because the environment simply isn’t the same. Policing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every other community-facing organisation that interfaces with the police - from social services to healthcare - is smaller too. By handing our new officers a mobile working device with an IT platform that covers everything they need to do in a day, they will be able to work effectively with their colleagues from day one, shift one.
While we cannot get back the many 100s’ of years of collective policing experience of the officers that were lost during the austerity period, we can try to make it easier for the new recruits by introducing intuitive technology to relieve the burden. With that we can ensure that every one of the 20,000 new officers can make an enormous difference to the policing of our communities - even if they don’t have anywhere to hang their hats.
[1] Based on official Home Office workforce figures, “Police Workforce, England and Wales” (31 March 2019 second edition). Frontline workforce calculated as total number of Sergeants and Constables combined (Sergeants (18,460) + Constables (96,070) = Total Frontline Workforce (114,530) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/831726/police-workforce-mar19-hosb1119.pdf