More members of Calgary’s police service believe they are doing a better job of delivering services to Calgarians, up from a pandemic and all-time low in 2022.

That number, at 80 per cent of surveyed members, was up from just 70 per cent two years ago, returning to the same level that was observed between 2017 and 2019.

During the regular October 2024 meeting of Calgary Police Commission, Illumina Research Partners delivered their annual employee survey which touched on the delivery of service, among a variety of different topics that reflect the morale of the Calgary Police Service.

Overall, said Illumina’s Vice-President Angela Storozuk said that a globally challenging environment for staffing, along with increased demands from the public has led to perceptions by officers that they no longer deliver services to the same levels as the past.

“Police strength per capita is continuing to decline, while at the same time, there are increasing service demands and workloads due to evolving crime patterns. All of this impacts police police services with higher mental health issues and burnout among officers, many police services feel understaffed and under resourced to deal with the challenging police environment,” Storozuk said.

Staffing was identified as a major reason for the level of engagement that CPS staff and officers had, with that percentage rising from 12 per cent for highly engaged employees to 22 per cent for low engagement employees.

“Inadequate staffing continues to be a top concern among all employees. However, the percentage of employees mentioning inadequate staffing has declined slightly this year across all three engagement levels, and furthermore, we are not seeing any concerns in the top mentions about heavy workloads,” she said.

Calgary is perceived by police employees as being safer

Other major findings from that report indicated that members of CPS also believe Calgary is becoming a safer place to live, at 80 per cent, which remains down from results in the low to high 90s that were in place from 2009 to 2019.

Engagement by both sworn and civilian members of the service has also improved, but polling by Illumina showed that gaps between the perceptions of the two bodies of employees remain apart.

Civilian employees continued to report higher levels of engagement at CPS than their sworn officer counterparts—with this year's latest figures showing 70 per cent of civilian members being moderately to highly engaged, while sworn officers were at just 46 per cent.

Overall perceptions of morale have also seen slight improvements, with an increase from 50 per cent in 2023 to 54 per cent in 2024 with moderate to high agreement for personal morale. For overall morale, that number has remained lower and saw a smaller gain, going from just 23 per cent in 2023, to 25 per cent in 2024.

Storozuk said that morale at CPS was highly connected to the level of engagement by staff and that overall levels of morale have been lower than when Illumina began surveying on the topic in 2019.

Among the performance metrics looked at by Illumina, the overall employee engagement by CPS has shown upward trends in 10 of 12 areas of engagement, including emotional connection, workload, training and personal development, and internal communication.

The area that was trending downward was in regards to supervisors at CPS, and the feedback they provide.

"There is only one measure in the entire survey where performance is not moving in a positive direction," said Storozuk.

Results similar to last 2023

Chair of the Calgary Police Commission, Shawn Cornett, said the survey results were overall very similar to last year, and there was movement towards long-term improvement.

"We can see that progress is slowly being made through recent budget and staffing increases, as well as the services efforts to address members concerns," she said.

"While we wish progress was faster, we know that the workplace challenges many experience took years to create, and it will take a sustained effort over several years to change them."

Among the initiatives noted by Illumina, and included in the report towards that improvement, was the Pathways to Engagement Action Plan.

"They're also working to deal with service delivery challenges, including collaborating with other agencies to deal with issues like public transit safety, addictions, homelessness and mental health, understand the police environment, globally, nationally and locally, and then how CPS is responding, and help us better understand the 2024 results that we're going to go through now," said Storozuk.

The full report, including survey methodology and questions asked, is available through the Calgary Police Commission at www.calgarypolicecommission.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Oct-2024-CPC-5.1.2-Employee-Survey-Results.pdf.