Implementing the Daily Report Emails
If you’ve been following along, in my previous post I talked about how my team realized that our method of communication between shifts needed to be improved. The current process was either to have one Sergeant pass along information to the next shift’s Sergeant, or have one or two officers take some time after their work day to sit in on the next shift’s daily briefings and relay essential information. We were in need of a more powerful communication method.
It was after this realization that the department instituted the “Daily Report” email as an attempt to fix the communication breakdown and promote a more effective and consistent way to share incident details. The email, authored by the Sergeant, detailed all of the noteworthy events that occurred during that particular day or night shift. It also included items such as reports that needed to be followed up on, any information the next shifts needed to be aware of as well as shout-outs to any officer who did an outstanding job handling a situation.
Now all of the on-coming shifts, and even the off-duty ones, had a way of being notified when important information was available. At the beginning of each shift briefing, Sergeants would review the previous shift’s daily report with his or her officers. This way, everyone knew what was going on at all times and with every shift.
This small change significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of communication between different shifts. These daily report emails provided a way for each officer to have an all-encompassing view of the goings-on in the department. This was also a great benefit for me as an Intelligence Officer. I no longer found myself overhearing details of an incident from other officers and having no idea what they were talking about. It also allowed me to proactively distribute informational alerts to surrounding agencies when necessary. No longer did I need to wait for a request to come through to have certain information shared with others. This powerful communication method certainly made my job much easier.
These daily reports allowed us to not only perform our jobs more efficiently, but also helped increase officers’ situational awareness when responding to calls. Being able to review information from the previous shift meant the team could now act on that intelligence throughout the day. We were also now aware of how the previous shift responded to a certain call and better equipped to respond if we received the call again.
Thanks to this new communication method, we no longer had to worry about important details being missed or miscommunications due to relying on word of mouth alone. Overall, the solution to our communication problem, or lack thereof, was fairly simple despite it taking while to actually implement it. Once in place, though, I noticed immediate changes in our response to calls and overall communication between teams and other agencies.
You can discover more communication resources and information on how to unlock the power of your public safety data here.
