Under pressure

It was evident that there were multiple pressures impacting on probation staff including experiences of change fatigue, intolerable workloads and comparatively poor pay and conditions, which were seen by many as contributing to a situation where some of their colleagues had already made the decision to exit the Probation Service, and where others were contemplating doing so.

Researchers shared numerous reasons why people have left or are contemplating leaving the Probation Service. These include wider structural factors, including relentless iterations of significant organisational reforms. While the decision to unify probation services, was universally welcomed, the initial privatisation decision and its subsequent reversal have left staff with a sense of reform fatigue. On top of this, staff described dissatisfaction with their pay and conditions. Respondents highlighted the relatively poor remuneration for their work, particularly in the context of very high burdens of responsibilities.
Some decisions to leave were prompted by comparisons with work in other sectors where the level of responsibility was perceived to be much more minimal.

Their frustration at increased levels of responsibility was compounded by a sense of diminished autonomy. Probation staff recounted pressures to make sure boxes were ticked to meet centralised targets and to avoid the calamity of being held accountable for ‘missing something’ if a serious further offence occurred on their caseload. In this context staff described practices which were driven by defensiveness and a diminution of what they considered to be their core role – the time afforded to work directly with people subject to supervision.

Complicated loyalty

Many staff talked about staying because of feelings of loyalty but these were not about loyalty to their employer (particularly now that employer was now the amorphous civil service), rather they spoke more broadly about loyalty to the people they worked with, the idea of probation work or ‘a vocation’.

The researchers note that loyalty is commonly viewed as a good. Employers value loyal workers, states valorise loyal citizens, retailers promote loyalty cards to their consumers.
Conversely disloyalty is widely as a negative attribute. Many respondents framed their loyalty in positive terms in that it sustained their commitment in spite of the manifold pressures described above. However, they say that loyalty can be more complicated.

In discussing these feelings, staff often rationalised excessive working hours and ‘getting on with it’ as something probation staff do. Some framed this in terms of a vocation, as something necessary to meet the needs of the people they worked with and/or as a means to stave off anxieties. Many talked about how the pressures of work spilled over increasingly into their home lives.

Conclusion

If the recently passed Sentencing Act achieves the government’s aspirations of sentencers make more people subject to community sentences instead of short periods of imprisonment, the probation workload will only increase further. 

The researchers conclude that HMPPS should place as much emphasis on staff well-being and retention as on the ongoing recruitment campaigns and make much more of an effort to listen to probation staff and why they are so dissatisfied with their current vocation.