Temporal features and personnel risks of police officers during the period of adaptation to official activities

Abstract

The temporal features of police officers, on the one hand, are one of the means of successfully passing through the adaptation period and, on the other hand, can actualise their personnel risks. The purpose of the research is to identify differences in attitude to time and its functional significance for police officers in daily life and in official activities, as well as to show that differences in attitude to and functional significance of time are conditions that activate personnel risks. Research methods. The respondents were 107 police officers with 3 to 6 months of professional work experience after graduation. Psychodiagnostic methods included the questionnaire «Scale of subjective attitude to time», the questionnaire «Personality temporality». Results. It was proved that employees have different attitudes to time and its functional significance in everyday life and during the period of adaptation to official activity. It was found that the dominant type of attitude to time in employees’ daily life is temporal plasticity, where time has a stimulating function for a subject, whereas in the period of adaptation the leading type of attitude to service time is temporal dependence, where time, on the one hand, mobilises, and, on the other, – suppresses activity of a subject to achieve the desired and / or necessary goals. The author reveals that temporal conflicts - the contradictions between the dominant attitude to time in its functional meaning in everyday life and official activity - can appear in professional activity; the successful adaptation to service will also depend on resolving these contradictions. An increase in temporal conflict and time dependency can lead to personnel risks.