Quarterly Summary - September 2011

In June 2010, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released its Second Monitoring Report about how well Police are responding to the Commission of Inquiry (COI) recommendations¹. The OAG found that Police had fully implemented seven of the 47 recommendations and had made progress in implementing all of the remaining recommendations.

In setting its expectations of the change initiatives, the OAG made a distinction made between a recommendation being implemented and embedded; that is, in order for a recommendation to be considered embedded the policy, procedure, system or practice that has been prepared to address the recommendation must satisfy the recommendation's purpose, be implemented, adhered to and be functioning as intended.

The following diagram² depicts the OAG's evaluation process:

Key Achievements

Police commitment to improve the workplace

The Police Assurance Services Group³ conducted a review of activities Police had implemented in an effort to raise workplace survey engagement results from the 2010 survey. The review found:

• significant management activity is occurring to improve both the workplace and employee engagement. This included interactive discussions about the workplace survey results and visibility and approachability of senior management
• improvement in internal communications, and
• managers were tackling issues (including performance management outcomes, improving work processes and roster changes) that have longer-term resolutions and benefits.

The significant effort put into improving workplace and staff engagement is supported by the results of the 2011 Workplace Survey.

Recommendation 51: Organisational Health Audit

The 2011 workplace survey, held between 16 May and 30 June 2011, is the second JRA survey designed to provide insight into the health of the organisation. The overall survey results show a definite improvement over the 2010 results in both employee engagement levels as well as survey scores generally. The results included an overall improvement in:

• respect for employee diversity
• confidence in raising concerns about any inappropriate conduct (inclusive of harassment, bullying or discrimination)
• confidence that any concern raised would be dealt with appropriately, and
• the extent to which employees feel colleagues behave in accordance with Police values.

Footnotes

1. See: Response of the New Zealand Police to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct: Second monitoring report
2. See footnote 1 above and specifically, page 15 of the report.
3. The Police Assurances Services Group independently provides assurance to the Commissioner and the Executive team assessing whether governance processes can provide reasonable assurance that current and proposed initiatives are meeting the organisational objectives/requirements.