Policing is used to operating in a world that rarely stands still. Demand shifts and public expectations evolve, with new priorities, technologies, and pressures continuously reshaping the job of policing. But today, the scale of change now facing policing seems uniquely stark. The recent Policing White Paper signals a period of significant structural and organisational transformation, from the creation of a new National Policing Service to the potential merging of police forces across the country.
Debates about reform inevitably focus on structures first. What will the new National Policing Service look like? How should responsibilities be organised across systems and levels within them? Which forces should merge to become larger entities?
But structural reform is only one part of the story. People and culture considerations are absolutely central to any attempt to deliver transformative change effectively. Leadership, inclusion, and workforce can rapidly become major points of failure if they are not invested in properly. If you’re delivering the biggest wave of systemic change in a generation, surely getting frontline staff invested and involved is even more of a priority than ever?
Large-scale reform is even tougher when people and culture are consistently underestimated and deprioritised
Across both the private and public sectors, evidence on major organisational change is remarkably consistent. In business, mergers and restructures often fail to deliver value despite extensive planning and investment. The challenge is rarely technical. Instead, it often emerges when leadership approaches, senior decision-making, and ways of working cannot be aligned or when people do not feel supported through major change.
Public sector reform reflects similar dynamics, often under even tighter political, financial, and workforce constraints. Evidence from the NHS emphasises that large-scale reform is most effective when it is led from within organisations and supported by frontline staff and strong collaborative leadership. Local government reorganisations have similarly shown that taking organisations and their workforces on a change journey requires sustained leadership, communication, and support. So, while strategy and structure matter, leadership and change management methodologies often determine whether reform really succeeds.
Three reasons why people and culture are essential priorities for successful change
As policing enters a period of sustained reform, supporting the workforce to navigate change is critical. This is not simply about workforce morale, it’s critical to true operational effectiveness and organisational resilience:
1. Inclusion sustains engagement and performance through change
For reform to land well, the workforce needs to feel invested in it. When officers and staff feel that change is happening ‘with them’ rather than ‘to them’, they are far more likely to stay engaged and committed to making it work. When officers and staff feel excluded from the process of change, it can lead to disengagement, resistance and operational strain – creating risks for performance, retention, and the success of the reform itself.
This is often framed as a communication and engagement challenge alone, but the reality is often deeper than this. When people across ranks, roles, and backgrounds are able to contribute their perspectives, they are far more likely to support change and can help leaders understand practical risks. By contrast, if cultural issues such as bullying, harassment, or discrimination persist, confidence in leadership is quickly eroded. Without that trust, even well-designed reforms can struggle to gain the traction needed to make them work.
2. Psychological safety helps organisations spot operational risks early
During periods of change, frontline officers and staff are often the first to see emerging problems in new systems, structures and processes – especially where they are working directly with vulnerable members of the people. When people feel psychologically safe to raise concerns and escalate issues, change leaders can receive honest feedback about what is working and what is not. In turn, this enables them to adapt before these become operational failures.
This is a key challenge in policing, with the National Police Wellbeing Survey 2025 revealing that only 40% of the police workforce feel confident to disagree or speak up against the actions or decisions of their line managers. Furthermore, only half of these – just 20% – feel safe to disagree with senior leaders when required. Without psychological safety to speak up, problems can remain hidden until they become much harder to resolve.
3. Supporting people through change enables improvement in service delivery
Large reforms inevitably require people to work in new ways and often place real pressure on officers and staff. Delivering change requires the ability to recognise the impacts it will have on both workforce wellbeing and organisational performance. If people are unsupported or feel disconnected through change processes, it risks increased disengagement, sickness absence and retention challenges.
This approach is particularly important in the context of potential mergers, as forces often have distinct organisational cultures which show up in different ways (from varying emphasis on enforcement versus service orientation, to different approaches to performance management and professional autonomy, and different levels of central command). While none of these approaches are inherently right or wrong, they shape how decisions are made and how officers and staff experience leadership.
If these differences are not addressed deliberately during reform (whether mergers or more limited changes), organisations can end up with new structures layered on top of old behaviours. If change is not well managed and the workforce are not supported through it, forces risk placing further strain on their resilience at exactly the time they will need it most.
People and Culture at the heart of policing reform
When we look across the country, the National Police Wellbeing Survey 2025 shows that most officers and staff eel disconnected from how that change is managed. Only 15% of the police workforce say change is managed well in their organisation, which is worse than in other public sectors such as the civil service (32%) and armed forces (24%). Moreover, only 19% of those in policing feel they have opportunities to contribute their views to decisions made that affect them – once again lower than the civil service (34%) and armed forces (49%).
Our experience across policing and other public services shows that transformation is not only a structural challenge, but a leadership and culture one. For reform to succeed, bringing the workforce along that journey will be essential. Here, culture is not a “soft” issue – it is a practical mechanism to manage operational risk and absorb the scale of reform ahead while continuing to deliver for the public. Building trust, inclusion and psychological safety is crucial to ensuring reforms are shaped by operational insight and can succeed in practice.
To learn more about building leadership and workforce confidence at a time of major change, the key results from this year’s National Police Wellbeing Survey, or other people and culture support, you can reach out to our team at the link below.