That's not a problem. I understand. I have the rules.
I think I thank you for inviting me. I'm not sure. We'll wait and see how I feel at the end of the process.
I am an academic, and how I first got exposed to the RCMP was when we did a very big national study on work-life balance and stress. Thirty-three thousand people, 100 organizations, and the RCMP participated in that, because at the time the commissioner was Murray, and he was very interested in understanding about his people.
We then had several thousand people from the RCMP volunteer to participate in follow-up work. We interviewed 300 people who participated in the time one study. We surveyed them and we interviewed them at length about various things. So my observations are based on looking at the same individuals over two points in time, the first just after the change in leadership and the second several years after the change in leadership.
Before talking about our findings, it is really important for me to emphasize that in fact the majority of the RCMP are wonderful individuals who care about their country and really want to make a big difference. It is important to emphasize that, because members of the force I talked to feel, in many cases, that we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We're painting everybody in a negative light when in fact the majority care about the job. They care about what they do, and they are doing a fabulous job.
That being said, my report indicated that there were some pretty significant issues. For example, we found that almost 40% of people in the lower two ranks of the RCMP at time two said very bluntly that they would recommend that their own children not join the RCMP. And almost half of our sample said they were planning on leaving early and working somewhere else and not even collecting their pensions because of certain situations within the RCMP.
I had to read my report, actually, just before I came, which is why I don't want you to have to do it, because I hadn't read it for a long time. There are only a few things that I think are really important. Well, there are a number of things. You should all read it. Nevertheless, there are a few things that I want to emphasize.
The first is that I pointed out in the report that the culture of an organization--which is the way we really do it around here--as opposed to the policies that are on the books can be the greatest strength of an organization or it can be its biggest weakness. A real problem arises when an organization that has been hugely successful in the past doesn't recognize how the environment has changed around it. It keeps its culture the same and does not change its culture to adapt.
I note in the report that there has been tremendous change in Canada. There was 9/11, which affected the RCMP. There were very big demographic shifts in terms of there now being dual-income couples, increased family demands, labour force shortages, and so on.
The problem in the culture that I noted was a huge focus on work, not family, if you work for the RCMP. This increased over time. There was nothing more important to you than the force. Workloads increased phenomenally, and people put in phenomenal hours. People said that they didn't think the policies of the RCMP were supportive. They didn't feel comfortable. They thought they would be punished if they used the supports that were available. They disagreed that there were open and respectful discussions within the organization, and they all agreed that the RCMP in fact discouraged the use of the policies that were there that were supportive. They said that the culture emphasized work or family, and they thought that if they said no to more work, they would be punished or it would be a career-limiting move.
What was very interesting was that the interviews identified another facet of the culture, which I labelled at the time “playing the game”. It was about 15% to 20%. But if you looked at the constable, corporal, sergeant, and staff sergeant ranks, it was a much higher percentage who said they were irritated with the politics that went on in the organization. They really liked their own immediate work area. They liked their own bosses. How they were really buffering themselves was by staying where they were and concentrating on the job. They wanted to stay where they were because they were less likely to have to deal with the politics of the organization and less likely to have to play the game. A significant group perceived that a promotion within the RCMP was based on who you knew and how you played the game rather than on competencies.
The other really very interesting difference was that our research really shows that people don't work for an organization; they work for who they report to. We did see a dramatic increase in non-support of management and a decrease in support of management over time. That was most profound at the sergeant and staff sergeant level, who would be reporting directly into the top level. They went from 80% liking their managers and saying their managers were supportive at time one, to about 40% at time two, so a very significant drop.
What they were frustrated with was the top-down style of management, non-supportive managers who don't trust or respect their members, managers' inability to communicate effectively with staff, politically driven agendas, managers who are perceived to be careerists who are governed by their personal agendas, and managers who did not walk the talk. They also indicated that managers made it harder for them to be productive, because they had poor people management skills, used command-and-control style of management, made decisions with incomplete information, were not effective at communicating what was to be done, micromanaged their people, etc., and reduced innovation.
That basically is what I wanted to say.