Introduction
Let’s start with the premise that a healthy and supported workforce is generally likely to be more effective and productive and that the wellbeing of our workforce should rightly be a priority both legally and morally for employers.
We are committed to gaining a greater understanding of the wellbeing needs of our colleagues up and down the country as evidence to inform improvements.
General benefits
Workforce analytics through large scale data, can highlight key wellbeing issues and trends. It may also provide insights into the cause and effect of other workforce issues.
Wellbeing analysis can be crucial in developing a positive and healthy work environment. By understanding employee wellbeing, we can identify potential issues and implement targeted initiatives and interventions. The options are varied but this could include improving local wellbeing provision or addressing specific concerns highlighted by the data before they escalate. It can also serve to identify leadership effectiveness, quality and people focus trends.
Impact and insights
As the National Police Wellbeing Service, we have the potential for significant reach into a range of police wellbeing issues. Our services directly and indirectly lead to thousands of contacts with officers and staff. This engagement, when effectively captured, can evidence the real issues affecting the workforce, across a range of issues including trauma, sleep, fatigue, injury, sickness, mental wellbeing, exposure to violence, health care provision and sometimes general post incident support.
Harnessing the data that falls out of these interactions and services has significant potential. On a wellbeing provision level, there are the obvious benefits in developing insights for wellbeing trends and themes and an evidence base for improvements. On a broader workforce basis, it could also prove useful in assessing the health and wellbeing issues that affect resilience, attrition and abstraction all of which affect effectiveness and productivity in policing.
Looking at force level sickness and abstraction, overlaid against how our services are utilised could expose the need for better engagement, promotion of services, areas for further development and investment and of course best practice.
Converting data into information
The data collected will be injected into Tableau, a powerful industry leading analytical tool to identify trends, themes and good practice. This technology is already being used in the NHS and the product of well managed data is impressive in targeting intervention.
Hypothetical insights
If we understand more about the people who are injured, traumatised, burnt out, unable to receive treatment and stressed, we should be able to identify the support needed to mitigate or reduce the impact and causes of those issues. This should lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of wellbeing provision and an overall productivity through reduced attrition.
It will help us answer some hypothetical wellbeing questions so that we can be more targeted in our improvements. Things like:
- What are the main issues causing stress or trauma?
- At what point in their career are people more vulnerable to these issues?
- Where do we need to invest to be more effective?
This is evidence for change and these insights will be used to influence our stakeholders and leaders. When we know the who, what and how of a problem we can drill into it more effectively. We will be providing detailed information back to forces so you can see the product of your efforts.
Data protection and protocols
The information being collated will be processed in compliance with the UK GDPR under Article 6(1)(e) public task and Article 9(2)(g) substantial public interest, with the necessary schedule 1, Part 2, Appropriate Policy Document in place.
The National Police Wellbeing Service have a formal Data Sharing Agreement with the National Police Chiefs Council and our Data Protection Impact Statement has been approved by the College of Policing. We will not be collecting personal data. All information will be stored on College of Policing databases and will only be accessible for the purpose of NPWS analytics.