Reason for Service

Entering the service role does not, in and of itself, render a connection between the individual and the service role, instead it provides the environment within which a connection may be formed. Contrary to the literature (Brown & Rana, 2005; Ford et al., 2014; Maley & Hawkins, 2017), the reasons the participants gave for joining their service organisation were surprisingly pragmatic. They were reduced to job security, helping the community, job opportunity and variety (see Figure 2). A propensity to serve is largely patriotic in nature (Ford et al., 2014; Faris, 1995) and did not influence these participants, except for some similarities drawn from their desire to help the community. Except for two participants, there was no reference made by the participants to economic factors such as wages as a reason for joining the service organisation, but this did present in discussions about post-service job satisfaction, where some identified that the security of the wages is missed. As such, wage security is considered as a factor in job security. Only one participant identified joining the service as a long-term goal. Each identified reason will be addressed individually. 

 Figure 2: Reason for Joining 

 Job Security 

Income insecurity is the condition employees are trying to avoid when seeking job security (Wilczynska, Batorski & Sellens, 2016). Skye confirmed this when describing the service employment option as ‘…it is very secure’. Barry described the job choice as ‘a good, stable career path, it was a way of life and it was something I was going to be in from the moment I joined to the moment I retired’, and Conrad explained that ‘…you joined it as a career for life’. But Julie stated ‘…that you had security, what I thought was security.’ Their perception of security when choosing to join the job was different to their perception of the security when they left. As the individual starts to learn which past career choices they would elect to choose again (Lévy-Garboua & Montmarquette, 2004), a change in the understanding of the perception of job security from the earlier job choice is to be expected, when looking back from within a post-service environment. Job satisfaction comes not just from the job experience but from the differences between earlier experiences that highlight the preference between jobs (Lévy-Garboua & Montmarquette, 2004). Many participants entered the service anticipating a long-term career and secure job that would take them to retirement, and the impact of having that career cut short is greater than anticipated. 

For some participants the idea of a long-term secure career in a government role was a good reason to choose the job. Job security is a basic factor when measuring job satisfaction (Clark, 2005). Interestingly, however, whilst job security was a reason for choosing the career it was rarely, if ever, a reason for enjoying the job or even an important enough reason to stay in the job. It was considered that if family connection influences propensity to serve, then it is a likely influence in seeking job security. That is, role modelling of those who have government employment that is seen to be secure in any economic climate and requires significant bureaucratic procedures to afford redundancies, is a motivation to seek similar employment. But the participants did not describe the family connection that way. In fact, those who did not have family connection also described job security as a factor. This suggests that a propensity to serve is less of a motivating factor than the basic economic factor of job security that influences this group as it does the wider labour market. The descriptions were the same across all three services. Whether it can be concluded that these participants are motivated by economic factors to seek a certain employment over a propensity to serve would require further research into an Australian population and what drives them to enlist or join. However, this group demonstrated the former under this line of questioning. 

Helping the Community

The second reported reason for entering the service organisations was helping the community. The desire to help the community was a strong factor for several participants across all three services (n=7). Public service motivation is characterised by altruistic aims to serve the public interest, help others and contribute to society (Bright, 2011). There is little evidence of a connection between public service motivation and the occupational choices of public service employees, however Bright (2011) suggests the connection does exist. The participants did not indicate that their motivation was for public service organisations but they were vocal about their desire to give back to the community. For example, Tom summarised ‘… at the end of the day, it’s serving your country and it’s making your country what it is really’ whilst Kyle explained ‘you could actually help people’. Lucy described entering service as ‘a sense of serving and giving back and doing something for others, more to the point, I suppose’, and continued on to explain that from start to finish, the service job was ‘still a role in which I feel like I can contribute’. Many participants described feeling as though they were important because of the job they were doing, including Kim, who stated that ‘it felt like being a useful part of society’, and Natalie, who said ‘it gave me a sense of contributing to society, of doing something that was bigger than me, being able to help people and put myself second’.  

The desire to help the community and serve their country is not linked to any family connection and arises in the individual propensity to serve. In the work of Ford et al. (2014) and Faris (1995) the connection between patriotism and familial connection was strong, indicating a generational desire to serve their country. This was not apparent here. No participants indicated that they wanted to help the community because their family had done so in the police, military or emergency services; however, there was a small number of participants (n=2) who could relate family connection to volunteer behaviour in other organisations, such as surf lifesaving, that stimulated their own desire to help others. Importantly, the participants who indicated that helping the community was a factor in their choice of career were very passionate about it and spoke positively about their willingness to contribute through their employment in ways that are outstanding when compared to other jobs.  

Of interest, however, is that being able to move from these service organisations to other employment that involved helping the community did not ensure job satisfaction amongst the participants. Three of the participants indicated they were now in roles that still helped the community. Whilst a reason for entering service, this factor did not automatically result in job satisfaction post-service for these participants, nor was it a direct factor in forming the connection between the individual and the service role. 

Job Opportunity

The third reason for entering the services, primarily reported by military and police participants, was a job opportunity at the time. Natalie described ‘I left high school quite unsure of what I wanted to do, sort of stumbled across the police’. The longer serving participants, like Paul, who entered at a young age, around 17 years old, recalled that it was about a job opening at the time, and they had no initial preference as to what that may be. For some, it was a time in life when parents told them it was time to stand on their own two feet. Walter explained: 

No…I come from a family of seven, seven kids and you know so it was pretty much I just knew… by the time I left school, I needed to have a job and as soon as I got a job I needed to be sort of out of the house so bit different times then but yeah that was pretty much…the expectation. 

 Gaining a job gave Walter the opportunity to contribute to the household and ultimately leave home. The job opportunity was about availability for work that he, and other participants, were deemed eligible for, and explains the reason for his service. Opportunity, in this sense, is about gaining any job, rather than a job in the police, military or emergency services. 

Therefore, the opportunity for employment as it is available at any point in time is tied to a certain extent to the desire for job security. A number of those participants who described job security as a factor also made reference to job opportunity. For many participants, the entry into the service organisation was simply because the opportunity presented, and it was the most attractive job option at the time. This was more apparent amongst the participants who were recruited in the 1970s and 1980s and/or were in more rural or remote locations of Australia. In that instance, the employment choices were more limited. Some of the younger participants also expressed that opportunity was a significant factor in their job choice. Older participants identified that they felt it was easier to gain entry to these service occupations when they joined, given the differences in the population and streamlined entry processes.  

Having said that, few of the participants overall indicated that they had any problems going through the recruitment process. This experience was the same for the men and women, and the same across all three service groups. It was hypothesised that if an individual had to work harder to gain entry and therefore was more disappointed when leaving, this may have contributed to attributing job opportunity as a reason for an enduring connection to the service organisation, however this did not present at all amongst the participants. Further, it was assumed that familial connections make entry easier for individuals to follow in those footsteps, as family members may be able to influence recruitment, but that was not indicated by any of the participants. In fact, some participants who had family connections to one service, but chose to enter another service, made that decision as a direct result of the recruitment opportunity at the time.  

Mael and Ashforth (1995) found that individuals could develop a sense of professional identity in preparation for entry to employment, and in particular for organisations such as the police (Carless, 2005). However, this relied upon the development of career commitment and attitudes prior to employment that were conducive to long-term success in that chosen career. Contrary to this, the participants who chose to serve or join because of the opportunity for employment did not indicate any pre-entry career commitment. They did not demonstrate any commitment to the service before entering and therefore had no identity development before joining or enlisting. Any connection to the service role was developed after entering. The job opportunity was the reason for service but did little to contribute to the connection between the participants and their service organisation post-service.  

Variety and Excitement

The final reported reason for entering the service organisation was variety and excitement. Many participants who explained that this was their reason, also identified one of the other key reasons as well. For example, Barry explained that the excitement was the ‘initial draw’ but ‘it’s a career path, you know?’ and Paul recalled that the ‘Commonwealth Police were recruiting…and it looked as if it would be something interesting to do’. Only a small number of the participants (n= 3) identified excitement and variety as the sole motivation for joining the organisation.  

The reasons for choosing to join this employment type are less important as isolated factors and more relevant to the overall employment experience of the individual. Alone, they offer little explanation about the connection between these participants and their former service roles. There is little to no family connection that would explain disappointment in leaving the police, military or emergency services. The reasons for service distinguish the motivation of the individual participants to join the police, military or emergency services but are available for post-service employment as well. Therefore, they offer little to no explanation for the ongoing connection with the service role, nor offer any explanation for the lack of connection with the new post-service employment. A line of questioning was employed to further explore the connection between the participants and their former service employment. This questioning investigated the period after entry and starts with their training.