The Effect of Employees on Organizational Goals

The Effect of Employees on Organizational Goals

No organization can function without a work force. While the size of the work force can vary, all organizations can either prosper or fail due to the employees that make up that work force. The police department is no different than any other organization when it comes to the necessity of its work force to work together in order to produce results. The police department I work for has five different divisions that field most of the work force.

These divisions are as follows: Field Operations Division, Administrative Division, Detective Division, Special Operations Division, and the Internal Affairs Division. Each of these divisions has a specific responsibility. The responsibilities set before them organize what each division is responsible for so that they do not overlap and do each other’s work. The mission statement for the Raleigh Police Department is “In the spirit of service, the Raleigh Police Department exists to preserve and improve the quality of life, instill peace, and protect property through unwavering attention to our duties in partnership with the community.”
Field Operations has the largest number of employees and the greatest effect on organizational goals. The Field Operations Division within the Raleigh police Department is broken into six districts covering different parts of the city; Northwest, North, Northeast, Southeast, Downtown, and Southwest. Within each district there are four squads. Each squad is composed of a lieutenant, two sergeants, and between ten and fifteen officers. I currently work in one of these squads within the Field Operations Division. The main function of officers, like myself, is to answer 911 generated calls for service and conduct proactive patrol when not responding to the 911 generated calls. As a member of the Field Operations Division I am on the front line of this mission statement. Within the department members of the Field Operations Division are referred to as line officers. When the “community” calls 911 it is myself or another line officer that are the first impression of the Raleigh Police Department that the citizens see and experience. The command structure in the Field Operations, starting from the top and working down the line is chief, deputy chief, major, watch commander, district commander, squad lieutenant, squad sergeant, and line officer. Information rolls downhill. The chief will relay information to his/her subordinates until it ultimately reaches the line officer; who is expected to carry out the orders that are deemed pertinent and specific to where the line officers responsibility of patrol is. The line sergeants are the supervisors that are responsible for conveying this information. The way in which they do this ultimately determines the motivation of the line officers to carry out these tasks. Through out the past six years within my department I have had the opportunity to experience supervisors that approach the dissemination of information in a positive and negative way. The supervisors that address this information relay positively and get the most production out of their officers do things very similarly. They praise and reward their officers for their hard work, introduce new information, and explain to the officers that while there is a new focus the officers are still expected to complete the other tasks. While explaining this; the sergeants also stress that if the previous task is not completed, or the same numbers are not produced, that they understand why and it will not negatively affect the officers. It is also important to note that these supervisors are able to keep track of their officer’s productivity without making the officer feel like they are hovering or constantly nagging them. Conversely, the sergeants that are not good at maintaining or boosting morale and relay information in a negative manner also share common traits. These supervisors always seem to be in a bad mood. They tell officers their new tasks by telling them that they are not doing enough of those specific tasks and that they need to step up there “game”. They go on to tell them officers that if the productivity does not increase then the officers will get bad reviews or disciplinary action forms. This cycle perpetuates itself ultimately causing a sense of dissent from the officers because no matter what they do, they continuously get scolded. Anyone who has been a member of the work force can attest that always being told things are be done wrong will ultimately drive down productivity because it gives creates an environment where the employee can never do anything write and there fore is worthless. All the blame cannot be put on the supervisors when it comes to bringing down work force morale. The attitude of members of the work force can also affect the productivity and morale of said work force. Just like the negative supervisor, a negative employee can create an atmosphere of frustration, desperation, distrust, and lack of job satisfaction. These officers will gripe and complain at any given opportunity. They are derogatory when speaking to anyone who is in charge. These officers have and insatiable need for others to feel as they do; the fact that other officers are starting to feel the same brings some levity to the negative officer. While the feeling of levity is brief it bolsters the negatives officers efforts and the negativity becomes more overt than it previously was. The administration, that is the chief, deputy chief, and majors, can set the tone for how organizational goals will be carried out. Not long ago my department’s chief decided that he would come up with a new way of evaluating officer’s productivity. Prior to this change it had always been incumbent upon the officer’s sergeant to keep track of the individual officer’s productivity and perform a performance review on that officer annually. What the chief had intedned to do was to use several different databases and quantify an officer’s job performance by comparining one officer to another officer. To grasp how this would work you must first understand the organization structure of the department. Now we have already reiviewed the chain of command for field operations. However, we have yet to describe how the areas of patrol are broken down. The easiest way to understand this is to think to lay a map of the city flat on the ground. Now imagine that the city is broken down into 6 different segments. Each segment is given a monicker like a compass. The six different segments are called districts. So the six districts within my department are the North District, Northeast District, Southeast District, Downtown District, Southwest District, and the Northwest District. Each district is broken down even further into beats. There is an officer that is assigned a beat and that beat is to be there specific area of responsibility Now the Field Operations division is responsible for providing 24 hour service to the city. In order to provide this service the department set up four squads A, B, C, and D, squads. The different squads are work different schedules. However all of the schedules overlap each other so that while one squad is heading home from work another squad is already on patrol. The beats are permenantly assigned numbers and the only thing that changes within them is the officer that is assigned to patrol that area. For example in the Southwest District there are eleven beats, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 621, 622, 623, 624, and 625. So there are 4 officers assigned to each beat, one for each squad. Tying all of this together; what a former chief tried to do was to compare each beat officer against the other officers that were assigned that beat. In order to this the chief had to come up with what he called “priority performance measures” these “measures” were activities which he felt officers should be doing on a daily basis. It measured things like traffic stops, security checks, calls for service (911 calls), DWI’s, and warrant services. By tracking these items the chief felt like he could determine who the good performers were vs the under performers. These comparisons were also going to be used to determine the officer’s yearly evaluations. By doing this the chief inadvertently dcreated a quota system and took the officers work from being quality and turned it into quantity. This happened because officers feared getting a bad review. If the officers got a bad enough evaluation it could prevent them from getting a promotion in the near future. So what officers would do is perform the job task as fast as possible, but not give each task the time it necessarily required. The measures were compared quarterly. After the first quarter officers were able to see where they stood compared to the other officers assigned to their beat. When officers reviewed these numbers they could see where they were deficient compared to the other officers and could then work to make up the lacking numbers. While in theory this may sound like a good thing, it is not. What it did it is it kept officers from concentrating on the task at hand and focused them more toward how many things they could get done in a 12 hour shift. For anyone that cares about and takes pride in a job well done, having to worry about quantity over quality every single day makes that person start to harbor feelings of frustration. When frustration sets in so does resentment to those in charge. When this resentment sets in the goals of the department do not get completed because the officer starts to feel a sense that no matter what they do, they will never get ahead and are always behind the perverbial eight ball. On the other hand when a chief approaches his employees with transparency and explains to them his or her expectations, but does not associate these tasks with negative reenforcement. He or she is able to get the maximum potentioal from his or her work force. This type of chief is quick to praise and reward the hard work of the officers under her command, and when forced is fair when it comes to disseminating punishment when officers happen to do something wrong. In conclusion, it is incumbant upon all members of a work force within a specific organization to strive to maintain a high morale and high productivity atmosphere. In my humble opinion this needs to be a trickle down effect. It needs to start at the top and work its way down. If the top of the todum pole can create an atmosphere that allows the underlings to know where they stand at all times and encourages them to seek out the things they enjoy doing then it fosters an inviting and stress free atmosphere. While stress is not always a bad thing, "No one reaches peak performance without being stressed, whether an athlete, an office worker or a manager", the wrong type of stress can be a huge detriment to productivity. If an employee enjoys what they are doing and are trying to reach a deadline, the stress can bring out the utmost potential of that employee and allow them to feel a sense of satisfaction and gratification once the job is complete.