In this episode, David talks to Julia Wire and Esther Flanagan from the UK College of Policing. Earlier in the Julia Wire and Esther Flanagan published a really interesting paper entitled, A Behavioural Science Approach to Tackling Sexism and Misogyny in Policing, Interventions for Instigating Cultural Change.
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Listen to Julia Wire and Esther Flanagan talk about – A Behavioural Science Approach to Tackling Sexism and Misogyny in Policing, Interventions for Instigating Cultural Change.
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Dr Esther Flanagan
Dr Esther Flanagan leads the Behavioural Science work at the College of Policing. Her role involves applying behavioural and psychological frameworks to tackle complex issues, including cultural and operational practices within policing organisations. Esther previously worked as a consultant at UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change alongside the founders of the COM-B model (Professors Michie and West), supporting organisations with a wide range of behavioural challenges, from vaccine uptake to bullying in higher education. Esther is also a trained Clinical Psychologist and has spent many years supporting with people with mental health difficulties through therapy, as well as developing evidence-based online and virtual reality tools for people with pain conditions.
Julia Wire
Julia Wire is an Evidence and Evaluation Advisor at the College of Policing. Julia joined the College in 2013. Her work at the College has included extensive research design, data collection and analysis in the area of violence against women and girls, including the development of an evidence based risk assessment tool for domestic abuse. In 2018-2020, Julia was seconded as Director of Evaluation for the national Problem Solving and Demand Reduction Programme hosted by South Yorkshire Police and during Covid, she acted as Legislation Lead for Operation Talla, the national policing response to the pandemic. Julia is currently overseeing the design and implementation of a programme of work seeking to address sexism, misogyny and racism within policing. In her spare time, Julia is a Special Inspector with Kent Police.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] David Wilkinson: Hi, this is the Organisational Success Academy from the Oxford Review, bringing you the very latest research in leadership, management, organisational development, design, transformation and change, human resources and human capital, organisational learning, coaching and work psychology from around the world to make you the most up to date and knowledgeable person in the room.[00:00:26] David Wilkinson: Welcome back. Today we welcome Julia Wire and Esther Flanagan from the UK College of Policing. Now, earlier in the year, they published a really interesting paper entitled, A Behavioural Science Approach to Tackling Sexism and Misogyny in Policing, Interventions for Instigating Cultural Change.
[00:00:45] David Wilkinson: Welcome, Julia and Esther. How are you?
[00:00:47] Esther Flanagan: Thank you. Really good, thanks.
[00:00:50] David Wilkinson: Brilliant. Thank
[00:00:50] Esther Flanagan: you.
[00:00:51] David Wilkinson: Yeah. Firstly, could you just tell us something about your backgrounds, what you do and what kind of led up to this?
[00:00:58] Esther Flanagan: Yeah, sure. I’ll go [00:01:00] first. That’s okay. Okay. I won’t go all the way back, but if I go back 10 years, I had just qualified as a clinical psychologist.
[00:01:08] Esther Flanagan: So I did my doctorate at Yale. So at that point I was in the NHS working with people therapeutically. And I ended up specialising in helping people living with chronic pain. But I soon realized that even though I really enjoyed working at an individual level and doing therapy I really much preferred working at scale.
[00:01:29] Esther Flanagan: So applying that understanding of human behavior and those psychological frameworks, at an organisational or community level. So I moved into that arena and more recently I worked at UCL’s Center for Behavior Change. So they apply frameworks at scale specifically the behavior change wheel and the combi model, which we’ll be talking a bit more about today.
[00:01:53] Esther Flanagan: And at UCL, at the Center for Behavior Change, I really started to learn how to apply [00:02:00] these very theoretical and evidence based approaches for designing and implementing interventions at scale. And I was lucky enough to work alongside Professor Robert Weston, Professor Susan Mickey, who invented COMBE, which is a globally used model and known quite well.
[00:02:15] Esther Flanagan: And they continue to do really pioneering research in the field of behavioral science. Now I work at the College of Policing, which I love. It’s the national body responsible for professional practice for police officers and staff across England and Wales. And my role really is to embed behavioural science into national level programmes and strategies.
[00:02:35] Esther Flanagan: So we’ve been applying the behavior change wheel specifically to a whole range of policing problems over the last few years. And yes, we’re here today to talk to you about how we applied it to the issue of sexism and misogyny in policing.
[00:02:47] David Wilkinson: Brilliant. Thanks, Esther. Julia?
[00:02:51] Julia Wire: Yeah,
[00:02:51] Julia Wire: so my academic background is probably a bit shorter than Esther’s.
[00:02:55] Julia Wire: I did sociology at university and then my career has always been around social research. I’m [00:03:00] interested in kind of what makes people work and tick. So I’ve done that in various different roles, but I’ve been at the College of Policing now for the last 13 years. So I’ve developed a passion for policing since about day one, to the point that I ended up joining my local force as a special constable as well.
[00:03:14] Julia Wire: So I’m a warranted police officer in my spare time. But my role at the college really is about trying to make sure policing policy and practice is underpinned by the best available evidence. So that could be academic research, but also the views of policing practitioners and stakeholders. Most recently my work’s been focused a lot around violence against women and girls, which is where this piece of work we’re going to talk about came from actually.
[00:03:38] Julia Wire: So we’ve seen quite a strong focus and increasing focus over the last few years around the police in response to violence against women and girls. Due largely to a number of very high profile cases, obviously we’ve had the horrific kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard back in 2021. There was also the investigation into the murders of Beaver [00:04:00] Henry and Nicole Smallman, where it turned out that the officers that were stood on scene guard took photographs of their bodies and shared them.
[00:04:07] Julia Wire: them, refer to them as dead birds. And a lot of other kind of examples of where police have used their position for sexual gains. So this has led to a lot of questions really about sexist, misogynistic cultures within policing. And if policing is like that, can we actually really trust them to respond properly to any kind of violence against women and girls that happens really?
[00:04:27] Julia Wire: So that’s where this piece of work kicked off.
[00:04:29] David Wilkinson: Yeah, interesting, really interesting, and quite a dark background for a piece of research, certainly. And so what inspired you to actually explore sexism and misogyny in policing, and how did you decide and why did you decide to approach it from a behavioral science perspective?
[00:04:49] Julia Wire: Yeah, so
[00:04:50] Julia Wire: I suppose as well as we were having a lot of focus on these public cases, a lot of these speak up Me Now movements and Me Too movements and things like that. But also [00:05:00] within policing as well, we’re starting to hear a lot of stories from women working within policing who’d been subject to sexism, misogyny from their colleagues and also from the wider system.
[00:05:09] Julia Wire: But we know there’s a lot of evidence out there around the positive benefits of inclusive culture. Everybody treated fairly and with respect. So as I’m sure you’re aware obviously it leads to people being Feel like they belong more in the job. Better being they’re more likely to stay in the job as well.
[00:05:27] Julia Wire: And also for public there’s knock on benefits with kind of organisational justice in that you’ll see better outcomes for the public, less misconduct more willingness to challenge colleagues when they’re inappropriate. So all in all, it just seemed like a good area to focus on. It’s something that we really need to get a grip of and do something about.
[00:05:45] Julia Wire: In terms of using the behavioral science approach, so policing is very good at jumping to solutions. They’re very kind of solution orientated, but they don’t always let us step back to think about what is the actual problem that we’re looking to solve here, and are we applying the right [00:06:00] solutions to that problem?
[00:06:01] Julia Wire: Whereas behavioral science approach allowed us to be a lot more systematic, meant that we have to look in depth at what the problem was. So why aren’t people speaking up, challenging when they witness sexism or sorcery, why are people staying silent? From there, it also then meant that we could look at developing solutions that would most likely tackle those problems.
[00:06:20] Julia Wire: Cause again, within policing, we’re very good at jumping to trainings, the solution for everything, or we need more guidance on something. thing. Whereas that’s not necessarily what’s going to shift the cultural problem and something so deeply ingrained as sexism and misogyny. So Esther came on board she joined the college originally on secondment and then came over full time.
[00:06:38] Julia Wire: So it was a really good opportunity to apply this approach to such a serious perennial issue as this.
[00:06:44] David Wilkinson: Brilliant. Thank you. And so how does the behavioral science approach, I just want to contextualise this for people who may not understand the kind of research behind it and the philosophy behind behavioral science approaches.
[00:06:58] David Wilkinson: So how does behavioral [00:07:00] science approach differ from more traditional methods when diagnosing cultural problems like sexism and misogyny, of course, in organizations?
[00:07:09] Esther Flanagan: Yeah,
[00:07:09] Esther Flanagan: good question. So really behavioral science. has a strong focus on behavior from the very beginning of any program or challenge that you’re trying to tackle.
[00:07:20] Esther Flanagan: So with culture and culture change, we very much looked at that through the lens of behavior. So if you have a positive inclusive culture, What does that mean? What are people doing? Or what are they not doing? And the more specific you can be, the more helpful that is to target your strategies for later.
[00:07:37] Esther Flanagan: So you always start with defining and identifying the behaviours that you want to tackle. And then you work backwards. So you say, okay in an ideal world, these behaviours we’d like to see in front of us occurring, if we had a good, positive, inclusive culture. And then you, then the next question you say is why isn’t that happening now?
[00:07:56] Esther Flanagan: What are the blockers? What are the barriers? [00:08:00] And the model we’ll go on to talk about today, make you analyse and look at those barriers very systematically. So they could be motivational, but they could also be environmental, or they could be capability based. So behavior is rarely driven. By one thing, you need to understand the whole picture.
[00:08:16] Esther Flanagan: So having a very systematic framework helps you to understand behavior in a lot of detail. So the key differences that you start with the behavior I wanted to just know, because there’s an often a misconception, I think, with behavioral science and behavior change, but just because you start with the behavior.
[00:08:33] Esther Flanagan: Then it means you’re applying an individualistic approach or you’re inferring that it’s the individual’s responsibility to change. But we’re not saying that. You’re just asking, you’re almost saying the behaviors, the outcome we’re aiming for, this is what we’d love to see in a positive culture. These are the behaviors that we’re aspiring towards.
[00:08:51] Esther Flanagan: And then you say, but then why is that not happening now? And those might be system conditions. It might be support and structure and resources. So it’s not necessarily the [00:09:00] individual skills that and capabilities problem. You’re looking at everything that surrounds that behavior within the system. So when you’re diagnosing something like culture, you look at a range of factors, driving and maintaining behavior in the within the organisation outside of the organisation.
[00:09:16] Esther Flanagan: Including what motivates and demotivates people, their sense of identity, their beliefs, their values, their knowledge, their skills, and the environmental and social factors, so everything really that, that surrounds that behavior. And with the behavior change wheel, which is the framework we’ll talk about today it’s a very comprehensive model.
[00:09:38] Esther Flanagan: So you don’t go in with one particular theory. From the beginning and say, okay, we’re going to use this model to work out culture. It’s already synthesised and integrated dozens of models from across multiple disciplines. So you can be confident that when you are systematically going through that process, you’ve got the basis of human behavior covered and you’re [00:10:00] asking the right questions and identifying the drivers behind those behaviors.
[00:10:04] David Wilkinson: Yeah, so in a nutshell, if I can summarise, is that unlike traditional research processes that start out with jumping in to see what’s going on, what’s happening with behavioral sciences, what’s the outcome that we want, and then Going back to have a look at what it is that’s stopping that outcome.
[00:10:28] Esther Flanagan: Yeah. Or it might be, it could be stopping a behavior or starting a behavior, but either way, you’re looking at those barriers and enablers very specifically to that behavior that you’ve identified.
[00:10:40] David Wilkinson: Nice. Thanks. And you used what’s known as the COMB model to structure behavioral diagnosis.
[00:10:46] David Wilkinson: Can you just explain a little bit about the model and how it helps to identify kind of key barriers to behavior change, particularly obviously in a policing context?
[00:10:55] Esther Flanagan: Sure. Okay, so COMBE stands for Capability, [00:11:00] Opportunity, Motivation, and Behaviour. And the basic premise is that for any behaviour to occur, you need the capability, which is your, Psychological and physical skills, knowledge, understanding to actually do the behavior.
[00:11:18] Esther Flanagan: You need the opportunity. So that’s everything that sits outside of the person. So that could be having enough time, space, money, resources, equipment, as well as the right relationships, social support, social norms that surround the person. It’s opportunity. And then you also need motivation. So you need to want to do that behavior.
[00:11:38] Esther Flanagan: More than any other behavior that you could do in that moment. So that relates to things like person’s values, intentions, desires, wants, needs and habits. So those are the three broad areas. So if you apply it to a really simple example, like riding a bike, if you ride a bike, you need to know how to ride a bike, it’s capability.
[00:11:57] Esther Flanagan: You need to want to ride the bike, which is your motivation, [00:12:00] and you need to have a bike, which is opportunity. So that’s a very simplistic representation of the model, but when we’re applying it to something complex, like why people might not intervene when they witness sexism in the workplace. There’s a lot more depth to it and there’s not more exploration about those drivers.
[00:12:18] Esther Flanagan: So we, we applied that model to the issue of sexism and misogyny. We looked at loads of different sources, evidence, academic literature, which at force level reports, we spoke to officers and staff. And we found over 120 different barriers to the behavior that are currently operating in policing.
[00:12:34] Esther Flanagan: That’s a lot of barriers to the culture that we’re trying to achieve. To give a quick example again of how they fit into C, O, and M. If we wanted supervisors to call out sexism or tackle it when they see it in their own teams, our research showed that from a capability point of view, they didn’t actually feel that they had the skills to have those conversations and effectively intervene.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Esther Flanagan: Motivation wise, they were worried about the consequences of doing so, so there’s some fear there about potential backlash, potential repercussions from doing so, so that would be a motivational barrier. Opportunity wise, we found that there were social norms that were established within policing culture.
[00:13:20] Esther Flanagan: For example, pressure to go along with what has been tolerated and accepted beforehand, so actually changing those social norms or acting against those social norms was another barrier to behavior. The power of Conv really is to get a really good understanding across C, O, and M of why that behavior is currently not occurring.
[00:13:39] Esther Flanagan: So then when you go on to build your solutions, you’re tackling and you’re tapping into multiple barriers to behavior, not just putting all your eggs in one basket like that. Julia alluded to earlier because there is a tendency to gravitate towards capability sometimes, because it might be easier to say, okay if we build people’s knowledge and skills, [00:14:00] that will help.
[00:14:01] Esther Flanagan: So this makes you really think about the whole picture and that your interventions, if you’re going to change something as complex and ingrained misogyny, the interventions are probably, and definitely going to need to cut across the C, the O and the M if you want the behavior to change.
[00:14:15] David Wilkinson: Yeah,
[00:14:16] David Wilkinson: nice. Yeah, nice explanation with the bike.
[00:14:18] David Wilkinson: That’s really good. Um, in the paper, you talk about the behavior change wheel. Can you just explain a little bit about that, what it is and why you decide to use this for designing interventions for what is essentially a cultural change proposition?
[00:14:35] Esther Flanagan: so the behavior change wheel incorporates the COMBI model.
[00:14:38] Esther Flanagan: There’s layers, it’s a layered model, so you start with the behavior, then you diagnose the problem with COM B, and then the next stage in the layer, which is part of the wheel, is choosing what tactics, what solutions you’re going to select to change the behavior. In the behavior change wheel, there are nine broad intervention strategies that you can select.
[00:14:58] Esther Flanagan: These include education, [00:15:00] persuasion, training, role modeling, incentives, and these can be more or less effective depending on what your diagnosis says. For example, if you said a key barrier to behavior, to the behavior is a skills deficit, then you might think training is a good solution then.
[00:15:16] Esther Flanagan: But the barrier is something like, I don’t believe this behavior is worthwhile. I don’t actually think it’s worthwhile. I should bother doing it. Then you might need to lean into more persuasion tactics. Similarly, if the barrier is about this behavior actually doesn’t even feel good. I don’t like the way it makes me feel when I do it.
[00:15:32] Esther Flanagan: You could look to build in, incentive solutions. So you, the skill the skill is matching your barrier to, The tactic that’s most likely to work, and that’s all underpinned by evidence of what we know drives behavior. But as I said before, in the public sector, often what we do is gravitate towards training and education as the go to strategies.
[00:15:56] Esther Flanagan: And on the face of it, training and education, it might seem like quite a good [00:16:00] solution to loads of challenges. And they can be impactful. They’re definitely impactful for a lot of challenges if the barrier is a knowledge or skills deficit. But because we know behaviours are driven by multiple factors, if we just focus on training and education, we’re only tackling one part of the jigsaw and therefore the behaviour is unlikely to change.
[00:16:22] Esther Flanagan: And in relation to why we used it for culture change, Cultures have multiple dimensions, which from a behavioral perspective can be understood patterns of behavior, what people are doing or not doing in that system. I think it’d be quite hard to try and describe culture without talking about behavior.
[00:16:40] Esther Flanagan: In my mind, any problem, nearly any problem, not all of them, can be understood in terms of what people are doing or not doing. And the behavior change will helps you to focus it on the most urgent or problem, problematic aspects of culture within the system. So you’re not trying to tackle everything at once because then you might end up with quite general [00:17:00] high level solutions that don’t effectively change the problematic behavior.
[00:17:05] Esther Flanagan: So if people say, oh yeah, we’re going to introduce a new strategy where everyone feels valued and included, and we’re going to help people. achieve those values, I would want to know, okay what does that look like? How would these values be played out in behavioral terms? What would being valued and included look like in terms of how people behave, interact, make decisions et cetera.
[00:17:25] Esther Flanagan: So if we identify and tackle those problematic behaviors within a system, within a culture, it can help to have positive knock on effects across the system as well. But really it is the behavior change will makes you focus. on particular behaviors within that system rather than a broader approach, which would try to tackle culture as a whole, all at the same time.
[00:17:50] David Wilkinson: Yeah, that’s quite important from an evidence based perspective because it enables you to isolate the factors and get feedback on them and see what’s actually working. Yeah, brilliant. [00:18:00] Thanks, Esther. Go to the paper now and the actual research that you’ve been doing, you identified four key behaviors.
[00:18:06] David Wilkinson: Remember the behaviors of the out pods that we want, not behaviors that exist. You identified four key behaviors relating to sexism, misogyny, and policing. They were or are offices and staff not is not exhibiting everyday sexism or misogyny in the workplace that they’re not doing that, that supervisors are addressing sexist or misogynistic behavior within their teams, that colleagues are acting when they witness sexism or misogyny and victims of sexism and misogyny are actually raising concerns.
[00:18:40] David Wilkinson: So why did you choose these particular behaviors and how do they help to affect overall cultural change?
[00:18:47] Julia Wire: We actually identified, I think it was over 220 different behaviours through the work, so that’s 220 different ways that sexism, misogyny play out within policing. So that was everything really from men talking [00:19:00] over women at meetings people sending sexually explicit messages or photographs gender duties.
[00:19:06] Julia Wire: So people Women being put in charge of children or particular roles, all the way up to your sexual assaults. But obviously, we can’t possibly tackle the 220 behaviours at one time to do anything more effectively. We needed to narrow those down. So to prioritise, what we did was ask serving officers and staff, which ones they thought, if we could tackle, would have the biggest impact on reducing sexism and misogyny.
[00:19:29] Julia Wire: So they’re the four, actually, that police officers and staff chose. They were very clear with us that we should be focusing on your more, I don’t like the term everyday behaviors, so everyday sexism and misogyny. So those behaviors often get dismissed or normalised or just Brushed aside but they felt that by focusing on loans, it could really help to reset standards within policing and prevent further escalation in these behaviours as well.
[00:19:56] Julia Wire: But I think what’s most important in terms of overall behaviour change is that [00:20:00] those four different behaviours each target four different groups. As you said, we’ve got supervisors, we’ve got the behaviours, those witnessing it and then we’ve got the and victims as well. So we’re not trying to suggest in any way that victims need to change their behavior, but by including them within one of our target behaviors, it enabled us to focus on why it is that they’re not currently reporting and to get a better idea of what’s going on.
[00:20:23] Julia Wire: But by focusing on all four, it means that we can change behavior across the system. If we’re only focused on say bystanders, so those witnessing the behavior. So they could go and challenge something, call it out, but if that’s not then backed up by their supervisor or their supervisor taking the appropriate portion of action, then you’re just not going to get like completely the whole way through.
[00:20:44] Julia Wire: You’re going to get so far, but not full kind of culture change. Yes, that’s really why we chose those four to prioritise and that kind of set the focus for the rest of the work going forward.
[00:20:53] David Wilkinson: Got you. Nice. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you came up with 12 intervention bundles as [00:21:00] they’re termed, can you just talk us through those 12 and how you design them and how they tackle the specific barriers that you identified from the COM B model?
[00:21:09] Julia Wire: Yeah, sure. 12 areas of intervention. We’ve grouped them into four different pots or buckets, as it were. The first is around creating a safe environment to raise concerns. This is for victims, witnesses who don’t currently feel comfortable in actually reporting when they’ve been subject or witnessed to any of these kinds of inappropriate behaviours.
[00:21:29] Julia Wire: There’s a lot of really good reasons why people aren’t reporting at the moment. We’ve seen a lot of focus within policing on many speak call out cultures, stand up cultures, but if you actually speak to officers and staff, what they’re telling us is you do that, you get further victimised so you challenge, you get ostracised from your team, you get labeled as a grass or a troublemaker, it’s just really not worth the risk to them, and then the investigation process itself can be so bad.
[00:21:55] Julia Wire: burdensome and traumatic that they, somebody will go through it, go back and tell other [00:22:00] people, just don’t bother with this. It’s not going to help you in any way at all. So we wanted to create this environment where there was this more safe space that they can actually then go and challenge. So that involved different stages.
[00:22:12] Julia Wire: So some of what they were telling us is. The decision to report was very black and white, you either reported or you didn’t. But what they wanted was another option where they could go and talk to somebody, ideally somebody independent, external from the force, just get some advice on what they should do, what their options are and whether to progress it or not.
[00:22:31] Julia Wire: And the second area there is around anonymous and confidential reporting systems, which we do have in policing at the moment. Like big increase in those recently, but the problem with those is not everybody does trust them. They don’t believe they’re confidential. They don’t believe they’re anonymous. So how can we actually build that into the systems and get people to believe and trust that they really are?
[00:22:52] Julia Wire: And then finally, it’s about giving a bit more protection when people do challenge Often we’ll see a lot of counter allegations, normally [00:23:00] malicious ones as well, so then the victim ends up being treated as almost the perpetrator or suspect, as it were. So again, we need to put in some better protection for those who are.
[00:23:11] Julia Wire: brave enough to stand up and courageous enough to stand up and challenge. The second bucket of interventions focuses more on supporting and equipping our leaders. So supervisors came up as a kind of real key change agent within all of this work. So it’s about how do we give them the skills that they need.
[00:23:31] Julia Wire: the knowledge, the motivation to actually tackle these behaviors when they get reported to them. People were telling us a barrier to reporting to your supervisor is they didn’t trust that they would keep the report confidential. They wouldn’t make objective decisions. It would largely come down to whether they were friendly with the perpetrator of the behavior or the victim of the behavior.
[00:23:51] Julia Wire: So it’s about how do we actually upskill our officers and also get them to see this as a key part of their role as well. So we’ve got a number of [00:24:00] interventions under that bucket. The next one is around how do we actually go about recognising and rewarding those people who are taking this courageous step to challenge and to report.
[00:24:12] Julia Wire: Some of this links back to supervisors actually. So how do we ensure we’ve got the right people in supervisory leadership roles, the role modeling the behaviors that we want to see. So how can we actually incentivise people when, as it is at the moment, the risks of reporting? Just outweigh the benefits.
[00:24:27] Julia Wire: So how can we increase those benefits, incentivise, motivate people? Some of that could be through the promotion process. So you can only get promoted if you’re demonstrating these behaviors that we want to see. You’ve got the right values. And some of it is just giving recognition back to those who are doing this already.
[00:24:45] Julia Wire: And then the final one is around creating this ongoing learning culture. There was a barrier that not everybody does know what sexism, especially everyday sexism, suddenly looks like or the impact that it can have on people. So how do we [00:25:00] educate and make people aware of this, make people see the consequences of acting in this way?
[00:25:05] Julia Wire: Also provide them some ongoing learning as well, so they can continue to learn. Around this and also have checks on how’s it all going. So can we monitor the teams, their environments and get supervisors again to be more accountable for what’s going on within their teams. They’re the 4 kind of overarching buckets, but what we’re focusing on at the moment is developing.
[00:25:27] Julia Wire: Four of the interventions in particular. So we’re about to run a pilot later this year at start of next, which is very much focused on our supervisors. As I said, they’re a key change agent in all of this. So it’s a program of work that will look to build their capability in. Having those conversations, they are difficult conversations when they witness or become aware of inappropriate behavior.
[00:25:54] Julia Wire: So it’s very much focused on the target behavior. Supervisors are getting them to take action to build their [00:26:00] capability, motivate them to say, as this is a part of your leadership role. This is what you should be doing and given them the opportunity. So to do that, we’re looking to run what we’re calling pulse checks.
[00:26:10] Julia Wire: So regular, very short, very snappy. Surveys with the officers and staff that they manage to give them a feel for what’s going on within that team, whether there are issues, whether the team feels comfortable reporting to them, the idea being that it will motivate the supervisor to then take action. So we want them to look at the results and take action off the back of it.
[00:26:31] Julia Wire: We’re also developing a training programme for them, so that’s the second intervention. So it’s very much an experiential training programme because the behavioural science evidence will say you need to practice, rehearse these behaviours in a safe environment before you actually go out and do it for real as it were.
[00:26:48] Julia Wire: So that would then be followed up by the third intervention, which is reflective forums. So these are ongoing safe spaces, we know a one off training course isn’t going to change [00:27:00] behavior, but if we can follow that up with regular, so these are one hour sessions every month with the same cohorts of people to continue those discussions, continue those reflections, talk about what’s gone what’s not gone well, when they’ve come to challenging and addressing and dealing with some of these behaviors, and just continue that ongoing learning process.
[00:27:20] Julia Wire: And then finally, what we’re building at the moment is evidence based communications for sergeants and supervisors. So that’s making sure they know how to effectively get their teams on board with this. We found there’s a lot of very kind of hard hitting comms campaigns out there at the moment around zero tolerance Not in my thoughts, you need to be challenging all this behavior, but as I said, there’s a lot of really good reasons why people aren’t and so messaging like that can have the opposite effect of what we think it might have.
[00:27:48] Julia Wire: It could raise people’s barriers. People feel blamed for the behavior of others, whereas what we need to do is get everybody on board with this change. And so we’ll be looking at what the evidence says around how best [00:28:00] to do that and supporting supervisors to have those conversations with their teams as well.
[00:28:06] Julia Wire: So that’s what we’re doing at the moment. So we’re developing all, based on the evidence base again, working with those in policing so we can incorporate the lived experience into it all. And then we’ll be looking to roll it out later this year.
[00:28:16] David Wilkinson: Cool. Thank you. That’s really good. Thanks Julie.
[00:28:20] David Wilkinson: So as a police, as a service, I suppose the police is Quite hierarchical, to say the least more sometimes than others and it’s definitely got strong social norms. How do these organisational structures actually impact the effectiveness of these kinds of interventions, particularly the ones that are aimed at reducing things like sexism and misogyny that’s, quite often ingrained within the culture?
[00:28:45] Esther Flanagan: Yeah, it’s a really good question, and one we had early on in the work. I think it’s worth starting off by saying that, and you know this, in some operational policing situations, hierarchy and a command style of leadership might actually [00:29:00] be appropriate and effective. So this makes it complex because in one situation that type of leadership is needed, and in others it might be less useful.
[00:29:09] Esther Flanagan: Similarly with social norms, I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re stronger in policing than other sectors or organisations, but they may be different and unique in some ways to policing. For example, it might be less common to challenge a decision made by someone of a senior rank. in policing because of that hierarchy.
[00:29:29] Esther Flanagan: So yes, those social norms and hierarchies certainly exist in policing. I think it’s also useful to recognise that it isn’t always the senior ranking officers though that get that power and influence. Obviously with rank does come power, but from the conversations and research we’ve done, the person sitting next to you of influence as well.
[00:29:50] Esther Flanagan: And your peer group. So we were really conscious to, to build that into our thinking as well. Yes, and linking back to what Julia said as [00:30:00] well regarding fear of speaking up and percussions that fed into this social norm of just keep your head down. It’s easier not to do anything. And that was also linked to a sense of loyalty, don’t jeopardise somebody else’s job or opportunity by calling them out.
[00:30:14] Esther Flanagan: Just keep your head down and carry on. So we’re directly targeting these barriers around hierarchy, social norms. With the hierarchy, we were obviously building this experiential training, so they practice having these difficult conversations and that will include thinking about challenging up as well as challenging down.
[00:30:34] Esther Flanagan: And as Julia mentioned as well, we’re developing this sort of feedback tool. Which shines a light on problematic leadership in particular parts of the organization whilst protecting the identities of those feeding back So in reality, there still is this social risk of speaking up So until we can guarantee that risk isn’t there anymore, we need to provide systems so that victims and witnesses can confidently express their [00:31:00] concerns and feedback.
[00:31:01] Esther Flanagan: In terms of social norms, we’re tapping into social norms in multiple ways, for example, through social comparison, thinking about What other leaders are doing in this area, how well people are performing against others, but in a positive way, make sure we don’t go too punitive because if it’s perceived as another performance metric, then that, that won’t change behavior either.
[00:31:23] Esther Flanagan: And providing these spaces for supervisors to understand what their peers are doing and normalise talking about sexism. So that tapping into social norms, again, it isn’t normal to have these conversations out in the open in the police station. It’s becoming more normal, it’s becoming more part of the language, but there’s ways that we can accelerate that and build that sense of normality around these difficult conversations.
[00:31:48] Esther Flanagan: And so hopefully through those interventions, leaders become more comfortable and can demonstrate that they will take concerns seriously, they are approachable, and that people should come to them if they have any [00:32:00] concerns. yeah, hopefully that answers the question.
[00:32:02] David Wilkinson: Yeah. Brilliant. And actually answers the next question about leadership as well.
[00:32:08] David Wilkinson: because there’s this issue about leadership and what leaders can actually be doing particularly helping to foster a culture that rejects sexism and misogyny. And I just wondered what your thoughts were about that from a leadership point.
[00:32:22] Esther Flanagan: Yeah. So it does build on what I’ve just said in terms of if we want leaders to Eliminate, ignoring, and tolerating inappropriate behavior if we want them to do something.
[00:32:31] Esther Flanagan: And we’re not suggesting that what they do is take action immediately. in the moment that they see a problematic behavior, because we know that’s not appropriate always. So they might want to seek advice, they might want to come back to it once the situation has changed and they’ve got the right space and time to do that.
[00:32:51] Esther Flanagan: But a response is needed at some point if we’re going to Demonstrate that consistency across the organisation, but [00:33:00] I think it’s just worth saying that this is really hard. I think often it’s portrayed as well. Just call it out. Just say something. Just do something. And actually, when we’ve talked to officers, they’re saying, yeah, we want to, but it’s really difficult to do this and they’re worried about getting it.
[00:33:15] Esther Flanagan: wrong because there’s due process to follow as well and those protocols and policies actually vary across forces as well. That makes it more difficult. So if these, Leaders go into harshly, people might end up feeling ashamed that won’t encourage learning and reflection and worst case scenario.
[00:33:37] Esther Flanagan: If we go into harsh to shaming, people might seek to continue that unwanted behavior out of sight so that won’t be full, but then if leaders don’t react at all, it implies that behavior is okay and it’s going to be tolerated. So we’re trying to support leads to strike that balance. I have the confidence to know when and how to act.
[00:33:58] Esther Flanagan: But yeah, it is difficult. It’s definitely [00:34:00] a difficult thing to ask people to get right.
[00:34:03] David Wilkinson: Yeah, definitely. And in all organisations, not just the police. These kinds of things are really difficult problems to try to solve and move along as well. One of the things that the paper does mention are emotional barriers like fear and embarrassment or guilt.
[00:34:21] David Wilkinson: Yeah. Addressing things like sexism, how can these emotional barriers be addressed effectively in an organisational setting, do you think?
[00:34:29] Esther Flanagan: Yeah, that’s a good question, and I think We rarely develop solutions that are directly trying to change emotion. We often say, Oh, if they attend the training course, they’ll feel more confident and then there’ll be less worried about it.
[00:34:41] Esther Flanagan: But that isn’t, that logic doesn’t always stack up. So it’s natural to want to avoid discomfort, having sexism. Having conversations about sexism and all forms of discrimination, they’re difficult, as we’ve just said, it raises difficult feelings of fear and embarrassment, guilt. So [00:35:00] these are effectively addressed really by giving people opportunity to experience those emotions and reflect on them in a safer setting, so that when they come across it in the real world context, they’re more equipped and prepared to do so as a clinical psychologist, You could compare this to exposure therapy. So in the sense that if you approach the discomfort in a slow and structured way, you help the person to realize that the thing that they feared doing is actually less scary than they thought it was going to be and that they can do it and it doesn’t have the consequences that they feared.
[00:35:34] Esther Flanagan: So we’re trying to build that into the experiential training that we’re developing and getting it as realistic as possible. It’s easy to design a training program, which is just knowledge transfer, And it might be even scenario based, but they’re saying, Oh, I think. In that situation, I would do X, Y, and Z, but they’re not feeling the feel, the feelings that they would, so it’s easy to say what they think they might [00:36:00] do, but without that authentic emotional reaction, it’s really hard to know actually what they would and could do in that situation, so as much as possible, you want them to practice the actual language and words that they would use.
[00:36:14] Esther Flanagan: In a situation where they feel that sense of apprehension or discomfort. As well as the training, they’ve got these reflective forums. Again, that’s going to be a space that actively explores difficult emotion and seeks to normalise having those emotions and expressing them and encouraging officers to think about coping strategies and plans to manage that discomfort.
[00:36:35] Esther Flanagan: Can you take action even if you feel discomfort. Can you do the thing that you want to do even though it doesn’t feel good? Those are the conversations we need to start having.
[00:36:46] David Wilkinson: Yeah. And intention and behavior are always different things.
[00:36:49] Esther Flanagan: Exactly.
[00:36:49] Esther Flanagan: Yeah.
[00:36:50] David Wilkinson: Anybody who’s joined a gym will know that.
[00:36:52] Esther Flanagan: Exactly.
[00:36:55] David Wilkinson: Unless you’re particularly motivated. Okay. So here comes the challenge. Getting people to [00:37:00] report sexism in any organisation is not an easy task. And in the police, where police officers depend on each other for backup when they’re facing violence develops a form of kind of reciprocal loyalty.
[00:37:12] David Wilkinson: Add to this a sense of being continually on defense and not quite part of society, a form of kind of tribalism which is a deep cultural phenomenon and kind of part of the work that I did. Years ago, part of my doctorate in this paper, you mentioned trust in the process of reporting sexism. And you’ve talked about it here as well.
[00:37:33] David Wilkinson: And that it’s crucial for victims and weaknesses. Two questions really. Given the unique nature of policing and its culture, is trust in reporting procedures enough? And secondly, how do your interventions help build that trust and ensure a safe environment for reporting in such a culture? And I think One of the things that I’m getting at here is a criticism that’s been leveled at the behavior change wheel and COMB [00:38:00] processes is that whilst the behavior change wheel and COMB models do consider environmental factors under the opportunity component, some critics argue that they’re not, they don’t fully account for the broader societal and cultural context that influence behavior.
[00:38:18] David Wilkinson: In effect, that this limitation could lead to interventions that are not sufficiently tailored to specific populations or settings like the police and different cultures within different forces and things like that. So I just wondered what your thoughts are about this as a limitation to what you’re doing.
[00:38:34] Julia Wire: Yeah. So
[00:38:35] Julia Wire: it’d be interesting. point actually about tribalism because policing does see itself as a family. They are very loyal. There’s a lot of group solidarity within it. But I think that is part of what makes policing effective. It’s just. what makes them good at what they do. You want to be part of that family sometimes, but then as the issue comes, when it becomes about protecting colleagues above anything else, even it’s when the colleague’s done something wrong.
[00:38:59] Julia Wire: So [00:39:00] staying silent then becomes the norm because you want to fit in. You want to know somebody’s got your back. If you ever have to press your red emergency button, you want to know people are going to be there for you. And if you don’t, you get cast out. So I think that’s some of the reasons why sexism, such needs.
[00:39:15] Julia Wire: Does go unchallenged. I think you’re right there in the People aren’t reporting because of this solidarity, loyalty, you want to be seen as loyal, and so it stops people reporting, and yeah, so anonymous confidential reporting lines, they’re only going to go so far. They’re only ever going to go so far.
[00:39:31] Julia Wire: If you don’t have trust in the wider system So I think it goes back partly to what you were saying about social norms earlier, in that we want to turn things on the head so that the norms now align more closely with policing identity. I think policing is a family because a lot of people join up for the same reason, they want to help people, they’ve got the same motivations, the same drivers.
[00:39:53] Julia Wire: on the whole, not everybody does. So how do we actually tap into that and get people to see that this is what a police officer [00:40:00] means. It means protecting those who are most vulnerable, protecting people that need us. And that includes internal members of policing as well. It’s not just the public.
[00:40:08] Julia Wire: So we want them to see people who, go against that, don’t protect colleagues as to be seen as though they’re the ones that are actually the threat to solidarity. They’re the ones that are disloyal, that those that are treating their colleagues badly are the ones that are disloyal and not, shouldn’t be part of this group as it were or they need to change.
[00:40:27] Julia Wire: But I think Esther, do you want to pick up on the part about the misconception around Combee?
[00:40:31] Esther Flanagan: Yeah. Combi it does take into account the wider societal factors, as you mentioned in, in relation to the opportunity part of the model. And this opportunity part of the model does seek to understand wider social, cultural norms, narratives that exist out there, and think about how they feed into, organisation.
[00:40:52] Esther Flanagan: So you wouldn’t just be looking at what’s the narrative internally, you’d be think, you would be thinking about the wider societal issues that relate to that and how they feed in. [00:41:00] And that part of the COMBI model, the O part, opportunity, is treated with equal weight as the other two parts. And as mentioned earlier, the behavior change it’s been derived from a whole range of disciplines.
[00:41:10] Esther Flanagan: So It actively encourages the exploration of social and cultural influences which drive behavior and misogyny work. So whilst we were looking at how this plays out specifically within police cultures, we were also keeping an eye on what was happening in wide, in the wider society because police officers and staff, understandably, are representations of that society.
[00:41:36] Esther Flanagan: They are people who live and work in those societies. So but when you’re implementing change initiatives, you are operating in one part of a big interconnected system. So that does make it more difficult. But if you if we can effectively make change in one part of the system, it’s still worthwhile because that can permeate and spread throughout the system.
[00:41:56] Esther Flanagan: So I think you can look at it [00:42:00] an organisational Level and that be useful in itself within that. If you were concerned about it not being tailored enough or not being specific enough to maybe subcultures or groups within that you can segment organisations into different actor groups in different areas and doing even more focused analysis on a subgroup, for example, within that organisation.
[00:42:23] Esther Flanagan: So really, it can be Okay. It can be honed in on a really small group of people, it can be applied at a macro level as well, so the model is really flexible in that sense that it could be pitched at multiple levels from individual to group to organisation to community to global, if you wanted to.
[00:42:39] Esther Flanagan: So yeah, I don’t know if that, answers your question well enough.
[00:42:42] David Wilkinson: Yeah, really nice.
[00:42:43] Esther Flanagan: Okay.
[00:42:44] David Wilkinson: Yeah. Great. Thanks. And I just continuing this kind of given that sexism and misogyny are actually societal issues. Do you believe that the findings and interventions that you’re deriving from this research could [00:43:00] actually be applied?
[00:43:00] David Wilkinson: to other sectors facing similar cultural challenges?
[00:43:04] Esther Flanagan: Yeah,
[00:43:04] Esther Flanagan: I really hope so. And if our evaluation shows a positive impact on policing culture, we can start to think about how can this be applied or generalized to other sectors. We’ve got to be careful, haven’t we? Because we’ve done such specific analysis on police culture.
[00:43:18] Esther Flanagan: We don’t want to just assume that would work for everybody. But you could do a process of comparing your diagnosis and thinking about, okay, how relevant is this police diagnosis for the NHS, for example, and then you could see whether there’s ways to adapt your interventions based on a comparison.
[00:43:36] Esther Flanagan: But really what drives sexism is misogyny. There will be lots of factors that are the same regardless of what sector you work in. Like you say, it’s a societal issue, so there’s certainly going to be common behavioral drivers. Therefore, some of the solutions should, in theory, work across. But I wouldn’t want to say until we’ve got really concrete evidence of what works, whether that would be a good idea.
[00:43:58] Esther Flanagan: And it would certainly need some [00:44:00] tailoring before you do it. Want to do that.
[00:44:02] David Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks. I given that I’ve got a daughter in the job as well So what are the next steps in terms of implementing and evaluating interventions? And what long term impacts do you hope to see from this research?
[00:44:16] Julia Wire: So we’re at
[00:44:17] Julia Wire: the finalising the development of the products at the moment, so we’re finalizing the development of the package of four interventions at the moment ensuring they align with the evidence base, the lived experience of people actually in the job, in the service, but also that they’re likely to survive contact with reality. It’s all well and good. I’ll stop there.
[00:44:35] Julia Wire: Sitting in our offices designing these things, but when they hit the ground, that’s obviously when you can get implementation issues and so on. So we’re working closely with a handful of forces who are looking to pilot this from the later this year, early next year. We’re going to wrap around that. Quite a rigorous evaluation.
[00:44:53] Julia Wire: So we want to test whether this works or not work. We’re confident that we’re building it on the best available [00:45:00] evidence, but still we need to test it out. So that’s going to be the form of a randomised control trial, hopefully. But also with a process implementation evaluation so that we can actually see if it does work, why if it doesn’t, why not?
[00:45:11] Julia Wire: Who does it work for? Who doesn’t it? And how can we best, if we then look to roll it out? Why is a. How can we best go about that? I think in terms of long term changes, obviously in the short term, we’re looking to change the behaviour of supervisors. Longer term, obviously, we would really love to see reductions in sexism and misogyny across the board for people like your daughter joining the service and for everybody within it.
[00:45:36] Julia Wire: We also hope that then it would have a knock on effect into high levels of retention of women as well. So it’s greater diversity within policing, improve well being for those within policing. And also ultimately greater confidence and trust among the public in policing and their response to violence against women and girls.
[00:45:54]
[00:45:54] David Wilkinson: yeah. And I think that’s important that confidence in policing certainly given some of the cases, cousins and [00:46:00] things like that. It’s become a really serious issue and that there and it goes back to something Esther was talking about this idea of policing from a policing point of view.
[00:46:11] David Wilkinson: And whilst I was a police officer a long time ago, 25 odd years ago, it was this kind of sense of policing out. Not policing in, and I think there are issues there as well. Thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed it. And it’s really important work that you’re doing. How can people get hold of you if they wish to about your work?
[00:46:36] Julia Wire: We’re very happy for anybody to get in touch. So email addresses will be our names and at college. police. uk. So junior. y and esther. flanagan at college. police. uk. But yeah, anybody’s feel free to reach out to us.
[00:46:49] David Wilkinson: Brilliant.
[00:46:50] David Wilkinson: I’ll put all of that on the web page. I’ll also put a couple, a copy of the Combee model and change wheel for people as well.
[00:46:57] David Wilkinson: That’s been fantastic. I’ve, as [00:47:00] I say, I’ve been really enjoyed this. It’s been great. Thank you very much. Thank
[00:47:03] David Wilkinson: you. It’s been really good.
[00:47:05] David Wilkinson: Thanks a lot
[00:47:06] David Wilkinson: Thank you for listening to the Oxford Review Podcast. For free research briefings, audio and video research briefings, research infographics, and a whole lot more, visit Oxford-Review.com That’s Oxford dash Review. com. And please, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. It would mean a lot to us to have your feedback, so that we can make this podcast even better for you.
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