Policewomen’s Experiences of Working during Lockdown: Results of a Survey with Officers from England and Wales

Abstract

Policing is a high-stress occupation requiring emotional management when facing job-related violence, threats to safety and well-being, work-life disruption, and unpredictable hours. A national health pandemic coupled with public order and restraint imperatives has compounded the levels of stress in policing. In the UK, new working patterns have been negotiated to manage the constraints of a different working environment during COVID-19. Using a self-administered survey, this article explores the experiences of 473 female police officers working during the first lockdown in 2020. The article shows that the COVID-19 preventative measures forced police services to navigate new and varied working patterns for their employees. Previous resistance to flexible working practices in policing was put aside as police services sought to manage the virus in its own ranks as well as policing the public. Preliminary findings suggest that officers working from home were more likely to feel satisfied with management responses compared with those working on the front line, although negative attitudes from colleagues and management towards those working from home were present. Those not working from home reported higher levels of stress related to their Force’s lack of communication with them about their welfare.

Exploration of individual and work-related impacts on police officers and police staff working in support or front-line roles during the UK’s first COVID lockdown

“…Their results confirm that perceived poor communication and inadequate support are experienced as stressors during the pandemic. In the UK context, (Fleming and Brown 2021a) note rising levels of stress for women police officers during the lockdown, stress that is not just associated with increased home responsibilities and working through the pandemic, but also related to the broader organisational response to employees.…”

Staffing the force: police staff in England and Wales’ experiences of working through a COVID-19 lockdown

“…The most stressed police staff were those working in core policing roles such as custody and detention, response, neighbourhood policing and investigation and who were also most likely to remain working from their police stations. About three-quarters of these public interacting staff had been issued PPE in similar numbers to their police officer colleagues (as reported in Fleming & Brown, 2021). However, they were much less likely to have had training in the 4 Es compared to their warranted officers' counterparts.…”

“…Physical and emotional exhaustion, violent and other traumatic encounters coupled with a long hours culture and stress are formally recognised as harmful to police wellbeing (Liberman et al, 2002;Houdmont et al, 2016;Elliott-Davis, 2018;Bertilsson et al, 2020). This has been particularly the case during COVID (see Sogner et al, 2020;Fleming & Brown, 2021;Frenkel et al, 2020;Mehdizadeh & Kamkar, 2020;Papazoglou et al, 2020;Sadiq, 2020). Papers addressing police staff and the impact of COVID-19 are notably absent.…”

“…In the police service, forces' traditional ambivalence towards flexible working (Dick & Hyde, 2006) is not as pronounced for police staff as it is in the working lives of ranked police officers (Fleming & Brown, 2021). Still, relatively few members of police staff could work at home pre-lock down, with 26% saying this could happen some of the time and 2% most of the time.…”

The impact of COVID-19 on police training academies

“…This includes responding to conventional calls for service and maintaining traditional crime-reduction strategies (Ashby, 2020; Mohler et al , 2020), while adjusting to pandemic-related challenges, including enforcing public health protocols (Grace, 2020; Hartmann and Hartmann, 2020; Jennings and Perez, 2020; McCarthy et al , 2021; White and Fradella, 2020). This constellation of circumstances, which includes changing public attitudes toward police (Perry and Jonathan-Zamir, 2020), places pressure on police and raises concerns about the officers' physical and mental well-being (Drew and Martin, 2020; Fleming and Brown, 2021; Frenkel et al , 2021; Stogner et al , 2020).…”