Marketing Practices to Build a Culture of Belonging

Some of you might have only viewed the blogposts we had to do as required assignments. I regarded them as opportunities. I was permitted to provide two informational posts and I was allowed to be creative. How awesome is that? I enjoyed the blogpost portion of this course so much that I am submitting a third one that is short, but informative.

Did you know that marketing practices can be used to build a culture of belonging in police organizations? It’s true! Jonah Berger’s book Contagious, illustrates that some products are frequently mentioned because of triggers that are based off other products. “By acting as reminders, triggers not only get people talking, they keep them talking. Top of the mid means tip of the tongue” (Berger, 2016). Environmental input, also known as triggers, drives emotion and creates beliefs, and associates feelings with specific circumstances. That is how triggers work, but the trick is using the constructs of marketing to associate new beliefs systems that surrounding a diverse workforce.

Police officers receive extensive training on implicit bias and racial profiling. Law enforcement agencies that have explicitly used poor judgment regarding acts of racism have been publicly shamed and punished. Police departments are providing diversity, equity, and inclusion training to officers, but there are still repeated instances of racially motivated acts of inequality. I personally have received an enormous amount of training and have noticed one commonality. The training is often reactive to current events and comes across as a punitive lecture. Additionally, the training is often related to public interactions and not internal systems and structures. The training materials and resources are limited when it comes to creating and sustaining a diverse workforce. There are several police agencies that have conducted exhaustive recruiting and onboarding efforts to hire female and minority police officers, but little is done to change organizational values to create a culture of belonging. Why hire a diverse workforce if the organizational culture does not want them? It is no shock that retention remains an issue.

When minorities are hired, they are sometimes viewed as “tokens” and their leadership development ladder is short and does not reach the top. The only way to stop tokenism beliefs is to broaden the diversity in the organization. I have attached a YouTube link to a relevant video and I hope you have the opportunity to watch it (The video has some minor profanity to drive a point in it).

Very respectfully,

Mitch

Berger, J. (2016). Contagious: Why things catch on. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.