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Police Personnel are they Gainfully Employed


Dr. Asha Pahwa, Aman Kumar, Yadav Ateet Pal

Healthy Physical environment is a part of happiness at work where it is obvious that management cares about the welfare of workers. An employee always seeks energy and value greatly from gainful activity. Gainful employment nourishes energy. This concept of positive psychology helps to explore the importance of employment and work. Employees work to fulfil their needs in life. “Gainful employment is the most reliable means of obtaining the fundamental benefits, privileges and satisfactions such as economic, security, social status, family and social prerogatives, medical benefits, recreational and educational opportunities.” Most of the research findings indicate “if people have positive experiences at work, their overall job satisfaction will be higher even if their overall life satisfaction may not be high”. The present paper explores Gainful Employment among police personnel. The study was conducted on 300 police personnel posted in Delhi. Gainful Employment Questionnaire was administered to all the research participants. The data has been analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results indicate a significant difference among the higher and lower rank police personnel.

Introduction

In today’s competitive business environment, human resources management has become a challenging job as the technology ischanging day by day. Organizational environment plays an important role in gaining competitive advantage. Work environment should be of such type that one should maintain balance between work and non-work life. It should enhance the health, wellbeing, job security and job satisfaction of employees. To have a meaningful work life on daily basis, Work life balance serves as an essential factor, maintained by the employees of a business organization.According to White & Bednar (1991) work in any organization should be designed in such manner that employees’ leisure and family time should not be hampered on regular basis by the work schedules, career demands, and travel requirements of the job. Hodgetts & Luthans, (2000) defined job design as, “a function of the work done in the way as the management want”. A good job design is thatin which the workers have the opportunity to achieve high levels of job performance.

Findings also revealed that alternative work schedules should be used according to the needs of the employees.

Present time, life is full of challenges with minimum time frame to complete the task. Such time bound tasks cause stress. Sometimes stress motivates a person but constant stress creates pressure on both mind and body causing inability to live a normal life. Hence, in order to get relief from prolonged stress people use different type of coping methods like overeating, smoking and other bad habits. It has been observed that chronic level of stress and lack of social support increases cardiovascular risk. Overall stress symptoms affect not only the body but also our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.

Police services are one of the most challenging and stressful services in India. Study on Police officers done by Siwach(2000)observed that “Police Officers play a very significant role for maintaining law and order in the society. They are supposed to implement all the criminal laws for which they work round the clock, and also without any leave or break. It causes remarkable mental pressure and physical exertion on them. As a result, sometimes a few of them may have violent outbursts and take leave without any prior notice. Even they are at high risk of being exposed to psychologically straining situations and potentially psycho traumatic experiences.”Study by Sharan(2009) also observed that “police officers sometimes work under pressure and are stressed”. Studies in majority of Indian and international Journals have found high stress levels in police leading to many physiological and psychological problems. Therefore, to do justice to their duties, they have to be both physically as well as mentally fit.

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