After the Webinar: Establishing Organizational Success – Understanding the EAC Factor. Q&A with Bobby Kipper

Webinar presenter Bobby Kipper answered a number of your questions after his presentation, Establishing Organizational Success: Understanding the EAC Factor for Criminal Justice Organizations. Here are just a few of his responses.

Audience Question: Do you think the current state of the workforce with short staffing, makes these principles hard to enforce for fear of losing the staff that you do have?

Bobby Kipper: That is a great question, and the answer is I do think it’s more difficult. However, I think that you know, a good example would be, as we hire new people, especially in today’s job market, there’s a lot of inconsistency on what’s expected of them. And the turnover rate is just so incredibly high in all of these organizations. And part of it is because we’ve done some really deep dive on why people can’t keep —- and why people don’t want to come to certain organizations. And a lot of it has to deal with the way they’re treated inside the organization itself. We try to make it and I think you sort of a cop-out, when people say, “Well, people don’t want to come and work here because it’s not enough money.” We live in the age of information. People realize when they apply to your organization, what they’re going to get paid. They apply understanding that pay, or they won’t go with it. But once they go there, it’s how we treat them. We’re doing a lot of work on retention, and for the person that asked that question. I will tell you that every organization ought to really pay close attention now to its retention efforts, and we loved to talk about retention at all times. But, I have a phrase that I’m going to use, and maybe it will help answer the question. Retention begins with recruitment. It’s how you treat people coming in and how you treat them while they’re there, as to whether they’ll stay or not. So, why I think it may be a little bit more difficult because you don’t want to run people off at the same time. Failing to do some of the things we talked about, will run them off anyway.

Audience Question: What do you think of law enforcement agencies using AI, Artificial Intelligence, to review body-worn camera footage to help identify great behaviors, as well as to hold officers accountable for how they complete their duties in the field?

Bobby Kipper: What a great million-dollar question. I will tell you that. I’ll take it from a personal or professional perspective, when I was in law enforcement, especially in patrol division when we had body-worn cameras. I really think that if we’re going to start really guarding people’s behavior based on a camera or a film, one of the things that really concerns me is we’re not out there, it’s very easy on a Monday morning quarterback on behavior that maybe look bad on film. But I think that unless we’re in a situation where we’re abusive towards someone, and it’s obvious in the film, we need to stand in the gap for people. I think sometimes we’re not doing that. We’re just sort of letting the camera almost indict officers way early in the process. And I think the other thing we need to understand is there’s not only that body-worn camera. But remember, everybody with a cell phone is taking a photo. So, I think that’s important. I don’t think that I really agree with organizations. Really, nip and tuck in every action that an officer makes simply because of the body-worn camera. I think we really have to go a little bit further and get more information than just what’s there.

Audience Question: Can you repeat the name of the behavioral psychologist that you talked about when you’re talking about positive consequences?

Bobby Kipper: He’d been with me on several webinars. Dr. E. Scott, Geller

Audience Question: You mentioned managing remote workers early in the presentation. Are there emerging trends you can share regarding managing remote workers, especially in measuring their impact and accountability?

Bobby Kipper: Yeah, there is. One of the things I’ve talked about in the webinar is coaching, and I think that there are coaching strategy sessions where no, we have to up our contact with our employees when they’re virtual. And part of that is there are coaching strategies we can present at the time —- talk to this person. There are coaching strategies you can use. It really talks about some of the things we’ve talked about here today. I think what it demands is more of a team aspect and team meetings, and in that, in that process, we have to really understand, you know, what our goals and objectives are in bringing the team together. And part of that is the accountability for the work that’s been done. I think that for supervisors in remote situations, it puts a lot more pressure on them today. Surely, make sure they’re keeping up with not only what work is being turned in, but interacting with their employees in a virtual world. To really realize, you know, are you really comfortable with that? I mean, it’s time to ask more questions. Some time to get answers is in the virtual world, and I would really promote that.

Audience Question: How do you suggest that we submit requests to change practices regarding consequences?

Bobby Kipper: I think that what needs to happen is there needs to be some dialog, there’s no dialog with leadership. I always tell people when they come up with suggestions, give examples. You don’t have to make those examples personal to someone else on the job, but you may give a model example of what you feel like would be appropriate to really broaden people’s scope of really feeling well and feeling emotionally healthy as it deals with consequences. And so, if there are times when you feel like that people should be rewarded, you should let people know that. If there are times you feel like a certain behavior is getting a little bit out of line. I think leadership needs to know that too. Figure out some way to do it. But I think that, what is the slogan we call, throwing people under the bus, I don’t think we have time for that in organizations. But I think to let people know, some concerns that you have on behavior, or ways that you really see that the organization can benefit through positive consequences. I see nothing wrong with approaching leadership on any of that.

Audience Question: How do we apply EAC to ensure our organizations are teaching wellness and mental and spiritual health?

Bobby Kipper: Wow, you’re talking my language. I think part of it is it has to be done in structural training. And I think one of the things that we have to do, even in our, in our orientation of employees, is to make this a priority, and I don’t think we do that. I don’t think employee emotional, social, and physical wellness should be an add-on. I think it should be part of the focus of an organization going in, And I say this, because, again, I truly believe it’s the way people are treated determines whether they stay or not. I mean, they can go for a little bit more money somewhere else. But in most organizations that I work with, if people are really treated the best and they really are really believing in their leadership, They’re not going to go anywhere. So, I think part of, what I would say is it should be done in staff development, But that staff development should be on the front end. Instead of waiting until our employees are showing some signs to really have a physical or emotional illness. We need to make sure there’s an —- going in and I think it should be part of the employee orientation or employee training from the beginning.