Organizational Approaches and Strategies for Managing Stress in the Police Agency (Essay Sample)

Organizational approaches and strategies for managing stress in the police agency
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Institution
Organizational approaches and strategies for managing stress in the police agency
Stress is one of the issues that affect employees who are entitled to provide their services to the wider population. The Police officers are among the employees who have the challenging responsibilities that expose them to stress factors when executing their duties. Several mechanisms have been instituted to manage stress in the police office. This paper evaluates the organizational approaches and strategies employed in managing stress in the police agency. The essay addresses, training, Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing "CISD" (Nygren & Karp, 2010; DeLaMater, 2008).
Training is provided to the police officers, recruits, and their families to equip them with skills for early detection and management of stress (Nygren & Karp, 2010). Training is a preparatory approach applied when the actual event of stress has not happened; hence, it is administered to promote the individual coping strategies. The training programs provide intervention measures such as time management, physical fitness, financial planning, meditation and progressive relaxation. However, some of the training programs are poorly conducted where their intended goals are not met.
The EAPs is a cognitive coping strategy that is applied when the stress event has occurred (DeLaMater, 2008). It is a reactive organizational measure that is meant to reduce or solve the possible effects of stress to the officer. EAP is administered by outside agencies in the police force, or within the departmental units in the police organization (DeLaMater, 2008). The approach, however, is hardly utilized by the officers due to the claims that it lacks the confidentiality of the victims and in most cases, fails to meet the needs of the affected. EAPs in the police agency provide low-quality services since they are poorly funded and managed.
CISD is an organizational reactive strategy to cognitive coping with stress (DeLaMater, 2008). CISD incorporates the elements of training and EAP, where the victim is subjected to a short-term psychological training to alleviate the identified problems of stress (DeLaMater, 2008). The victim is actively involved, and the CISD providers may be internal or external professionals from the mental health. CISD is applied to protect the safety of the victim and other people; unlike, EAPs, CISD is confidential. The approach, however, is criticized for being ineffective in dealing with long-term effects of stress, hence hav...