Six ways a police department works with their organizational culture in practice

At Sydsjællands og Lolland-Falsters Politi, they wanted to work with their organizational culture and make the encounter with citizens even better.

Under the heading 'Organizational Culture 2.0', we helped them in a comprehensive process with feedback and psychological safety as the focal point for all managers and employees from November 2021 to August 2023.

But how do you create a common language for feedback and psychological safety in an organization as diverse as the police, which includes emergency responders who work three shifts and caseworkers who primarily work at a computer?

The answer isn't simple, but it starts at the top. Without the support of top management, organizational change is not going to happen in the long run. In this case, we had a brave management team that dared to put in the time and resources to get the new concepts and habits implemented in the organization. This included steering committee meetings with senior management, leadership training with other management levels and a total of 17 employee seminars to get the new knowledge into the organization.

As Natasja Bundgaard Thomsen from the project unit at Sydsjællands og Lolland-Falsters Politi, explains:

"The police are a public authority that is politically top-down. This sets clear legislative frameworks and conditions for the work. At the same time, we at Sydsjællands og Lolland-Falsters Politi have a strong focus on working with the culture in the workplace so that we can help other people who are or have been victims of crime in the best and most proper way. With this project, we also want the South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police to be a good workplace for employees and managers."

And the results of their efforts?

They have managed to keep the number of complaints at a low level despite a general increase throughout the Danish police force, and the organizational culture has evolved.

Here at Feedwork, we believe that culture change is the sum of all the small steps we take in everyday life. Here are six examples of the steps they have taken at Sydsjællands og Lolland-Falsters Politi:

1) Increased awareness of communication when interacting with citizens

One of the most important aspects of police work is the encounter with citizens.

At the employee seminars, they have become more aware of the special conditions that apply to this communication situation:

"Among other things, we have worked with preconceptions and body postures. In other words, both the communication itself and the hidden communication that you bring with you when meeting citizens."

The exciting challenge in this project was to make the toolbox common to everyone in the organization, while at the same time anchoring the tools locally.

For example, in the outdoor emergency response, they might focus on one thing that didn't make sense for the emergency operators in 112, because they had a different context. Here, each individual unit worked on which specific tools made sense for them - to ensure that they were actually used in everyday life after the seminar.

2) How do you give difficult feedback to your colleagues?

"Another important thing we've been working on is: If we overhear a colleague say something that is inappropriate, how do you give that feedback to the colleague? We also had procedures for this before, but we've become more systematic about it now that it's also more legitimate to interfere."

3) Check in with each other for meetings

One concrete initiative that many departments have integrated systematically is checking in with each other during meetings.

It involves the leader of the meeting making a short round to hear how people are feeling.

"Everyone can have a bad day once in a while. Now we can share: Where are we today? What's bothering you? If a colleague isn't quite at their best, it gives another colleague the opportunity to suggest that you take the citizen contact that day instead."

The point of these check-ins is that the manager can better manage the room in question. And that colleagues can make better decisions with each other internally.

4) Leaders are more likely to seek feedback

In our experience, it can be difficult for even good managers to get honest feedback from employees - no matter what organization you work in.

Here are two examples from Natasja on how managers in the police district are now succeeding in getting more and better feedback from employees:

"In the SDD concept, we have now incorporated questions related to feedback and psychological safety, for example, there is a question that reads "How do you experience the psychological safety in the department?" These are the very low-level practical measures that allow us to work with the concepts in practice. And we really want to do it, so we adapt it so that it makes sense for the organization we have."

Another option for gathering feedback that managers in the police district are now using is the interactive program Mentimeter. It can easily be used to collect feedback anonymously during a meeting. "The managers could really see the benefit of this, even the managers who don't have the greatest IT knowledge," Natasja says.

5) Common language in the organization

When we gave managers and employees the tools for feedback and increased psychological safety in Feedwork, it was important to us that they used what made the most sense for them to use in the here and now.

This has given the entire organization a common language to talk about the focus areas. And it is specifically mentioned to new employees: "When you sit with future colleagues who have applied for a job with us, we tell them that we work with this - and ask if they can see themselves in it. And when new employees have started, the concepts are also introduced on the circle's intro day".

In this way, the language becomes common for both new and experienced employees in the police district. And it provides an opportunity to share experiences with the different tools across the board.

This is how they do it in management, for example:

6) An internal leadership network launched

Managers are role models and have a great responsibility for ensuring that psychological safety and feedback are a natural part of practice, and after this project we have become even more aware that managers need to spar more with each other across departments. This helps to maintain awareness of psychological safety and feedback. Managers are given the space to talk about when it's difficult and share experiences about what they each do to work with it in their departments.