Federation urges officers to take rest days to avoid burn out
Officers must take rest days and their annual leave allocation ‘now more than ever’ according to South Yorkshire Police Federation.
More than 480,000 rest days are owed to officers across England and Wales concerning new figures have shown, meaning officers are just not getting the breaks from work they so desperately need.
It’s an even bigger issue since the pandemic struck which has seen officers’ typical rest day and leave patterns disrupted by differing demands and challenges.
South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said he understood that officers don’t want to let their colleagues down when times are hard, but presenteeism had to be weighed up against the problems not getting adequate rest can bring.
If they can take annual leave and rest days then they should he said.
“There’s a lot of presenteeism in the force; officers don’t get time or don’t feel they can take their leave because they don’t want to let their colleagues down or they don’t want to leave their workloads to have a break.
“But it’s vital that they should feel that they can take a break because if they don’t then, as we know, things can boil over and people can get burned out,” he said.
“It’s a worrying figure because you’ve got so many officers who have got all these rest days in the bank, but they need them scheduled in so they can get some time away from the job to recharge.
“Especially with COVID people probably haven’t been able to take their holidays that they would normally want to do. It’s now more than ever we want to see officers trying to get that leave penned in so at least they can have something to look forward to and release the pressure a little bit.”
If rest days aren’t taken they could be lost forever and it can create a planning problem for the force, Steve said, although he knows taking time off can leave some departments under pressure.
“The force does not like people accruing their rest days, and it makes that clear. It makes it clear to officers within the regulations about how long they can keep their rest days before they potentially lose them.
“That’s fine, and I would always agree that officers shouldn’t stack their rest days up, and they should be using them instead, but the problem we have is staffing in some departments is so short they’re unable to take their leave.
“It’s setting officers up to fail. We have mentioned this to the force, and they do take quite a pragmatic approach when it comes to extending the period you can take your cancelled leave days.
“They’re not as strict as the regulations which is good, but it doesn’t solve the problem. It’s just papering over the cracks.
“We need the resilience in the force staffing-wise to give people the ability to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to take that week off in October because I can take it’. At the minute it’s tough to take leave.”