How to Spot Mental Health Red Flags in Real-Time with Guardian Tracking

Public safety professionals are frequently exposed to traumatic events. The toll these exposures take can be immense, but the unfortunate reality is that it can be hard to spot someone struggling until they’ve already reached a crisis point. To truly provide the support law enforcement and emergency telecommunicators need to maintain their mental health despite their exposure to trauma, agencies need to be able to spot indicators of mental illness much sooner.

In a recent webinar – “How Guardian Tracking Helps Supervisors Spot Mental Health Red Flags in Real-Time”– we discussed how Vector Solutions can help agencies better support their personnel and get them the support they need when they need it.

Presented by Vector Solutions, the discussion was moderated by ret. Sgt. Doug Kazensky, Senior Solutions Engineer at Vector Solutions and featured Leslye Harrell, Product Manager at Vector Solutions and a former Operations Manager for Training at Hendricks County Communications (IN).

What are the challenges associated with mental health concerns and burn out in public safety?

The common perception is that the longer an officer or telecommunicator is on the job, the more likely they are to experience burnout or mental health concerns. While that is often true, factors like staffing shortages and increased public scrutiny are causing personnel to experience these issues sooner than in years past.

“It’s happening a lot sooner,” Harrell said. “We have new people that are coming in and just can’t handle the stressors and pressures of the job.”

As shared by Harrell, beyond the immediate impact on staffing levels, an agency that loses a recently hired employee due to burnout or mental health concerns also takes a hit financially.

“Retention is extremely important. The amount of money, time, and effort that goes into training a new person to fill that position is significant,” she said. “If we can keep an eye on what’s going on with our employees, we can make sure they’re happy and healthy, and that they’ll stay.”

At agencies dealing with staffing shortages, the stressors on the personnel are compounded. Not only are they experiencing the inherent stress of the job, but they are also dealing with additional sources of stress, like mandatory overtime and constantly devoting time to training new hires.

“It’s Band-Aids and baling wire to keep things together while we’re getting people through that [new hire] process,” Kazensky said. “It exasperates that problem where people feel like there’s no end in sight.”

Unfortunately, knowing that your personnel are at an increased risk of burnout is not enough to keep them from experiencing it. As shared by Kazensky and Harrell, burnout is also not a one-size-fits-all sort of problem. Every person will experience it differently, making it even harder for agency leadership to address it.

According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, there are many common signs of burnout, including:

• Drinking too much alcohol
• Feeling frustrated, irritable, down, or overwhelmed
• Feeling like your work is not valued
• Lacking motivation and feeling like you do not care about your work
• Having difficulty sleeping
• Experiencing changes in eating habits
• Experiencing physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, or muscle pain
• Withdrawing from family or friends

“It’s important, as supervisors, that we start to look for these,” Kazensky said.

How does Guardian Tracking strengthen wellness and fight burnout?

Because burnout is so specific to the individual, it can be very difficult to spot the red flags early. However, addressing burnout and other mental health concerns before they start to negatively impact the individual’s professional and personal life is imperative for reaching positive outcomes and supporting long-term wellness.

To help agencies spot those indicators sooner, Vector Solutions offers Guardian Tracking, an early intervention, conduct management, and wellness solution purpose-built for public safety. By utilizing a software solution like Guardian Tracking, supervisors can more easily recognize patterns of behavior that may indicate an individual is experiencing mental health concerns or burnout. This can be especially beneficial when personnel are working mandatory overtime or covering shifts and are not being supervised by the same person all the time.

“There may be things that you’re picking up as someone’s direct supervisor but that may only be 25% or 50% of the full picture. There may be additional things that you don’t realize are going on,” Harrell said. “You might think this person is doing great but really they’re burnt out.”

In addition to making it easier to spot individuals who may be in need of extra support, having a more comprehensive view of each person’s performance can also help ensure that both positive and negative conduct is addressed more fairly. By documenting tangible examples throughout the performance cycle, leaders are better equipped to provide helpful feedback that leads to positive improvement and avoid slanted input that just recalls the most recent or egregious events.

“Consistency across recognition and corrective action is one of the biggest things you can do to create a culture of positivity for your employees,” Harrell said. “We’re human, we like recognition. We’re in public safety because we want to give back to our communities and we want to make a difference, but nothing can stifle that more than not seeing some of that recognition.”

How can you get buy-in from your personnel?

While public safety professionals will often downplay their own achievements or say they were “just doing their job,” it’s still important for agencies to celebrate those accomplishments.

“It’s something that we often shy away from, but I think it’s important as an organization that we reward those employees and also share [those achievements] with our communities,” Kazensky said.

Consistently providing that recognition can also help agencies get buy-in from their personnel, which is an extremely important aspect of implementing any new process or tool.

“Once we started recognizing people in Guardian Tracking, we started getting more buy-in because they could see they were actually being recognized,” Harrell said.

Kazensky agreed, adding that once that buy-in is established, positive recognition becomes a part of agency culture for current personnel and new hires.

“When you bring those new hires on, they see that this is the culture and they absorb and model that behavior,” he said.

Utilizing the consistent and comprehensive documentation in Guardian Tracking to support holistic annual performance reviews, improve transparency, and avoid unpleasant surprises is another way to garner buy-in from your personnel.

“When I ran a shift, I had 8 fulltime people underneath me that I had to do annual evaluations for. There’s a bias towards recent events but you’re not getting that full picture,” Harrell said. “[Guardian Tracking] helped me get that full picture of everything they did for the year. It made a huge difference and saved me a ton of time…and my employees appreciated it.”

The customizable nature of Guardian Tracking also makes it easy to incorporate feedback and adjust intervention thresholds, which helps agencies adapt the system to meet their respective personnel performance needs. .

“Getting that feedback from shift representatives, supervisors, and managers can help shift the culture [around Guardian Tracking],” Harrell said.

Learn more about how Guardian Tracking can benefit your agency

While stress and exposures to traumatic events will always be an inherent risk for public safety personnel, agencies can and should implement tools and strategies to mitigate the impacts and support the wellness of their people.

By partnering with Vector Solutions and utilizing Guardian Tracking, agencies can stay on top of wellness concerns, boost morale, and recognize high performers, all in one easy-to-use solution.

To learn more about how Guardian Tracking can support mental wellness at your agency, request a demo today!

Vector Solutions’ suite of industry-leading software solutions includes training management systems, online training courses, FTO and live skill evaluations, academy automation, equipment and inventory management, shift scheduling, and an early intervention and conduct management system.