Separating from Service

The participants were able to articulate their reasons for leaving through direct questioning, although clarifying information was obtained in the answers to other questions. Each participant, across all three services, identified the catalyst for the end point of their service career and the motivation and/or reason for leaving. The reasons given by the participants for leaving the service employment included medical reasons (both physical and psychological injury), seeking a sea change, spousal pressure or family reasons, losing passion for the role or burnout, work/life balance, and organisational issues including frustration with management. For some participants, it was a combination of these six main reasons.  

Of the total 32 participants, 25 separated from their service organisation for medical reasons, resulting from either physical and/or mental health injuries. Some participants suffered physical injuries, which prevented them from continuing in their job roles. Vanessa suffered a shoulder injury that resulted in medical discharge, stating that the workplace insurer ‘…accepted it yeah’. The distinction between resignation for medical reasons and medical discharge must be made, however, for the participants, both result in the same outcome and therefore are not viewed differently as Kim explained: 

I had a, well had a back injury that the AFP was not supportive. It was, the work-related injury. And I just didn’t feel that they were supportive, and I just got put in a desk job, and no one would really tell me what the future held, or did me any sort of plans of how to progress, and I just got frustrated and I ended up resigning. I just had enough. 

Diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and/or other related mental health issues such as anxiety or depression were the primary reasons for mental health injury related medical discharge. For example, Natalie stated: ‘I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder back in February 2016. So I started making attempts to get out, because I was scared of what I would do if I had stayed’. Some participants explained they had not been diagnosed with mental health issues but became aware of their own coping abilities (or lack thereof) and this prompted their decision to leave. Conrad explained ‘I went to a psychologist and he said [Conrad] I think you’ve reached your expiry date as a police officer’ while Donald reflected 

I was becoming quite expectant that I was just going to be cutting people out of cars and dealing with the reality of the tragedy. And I was starting to feel a bit burnt out from that. I mean yeah so that was definitely, I didn’t mention that earlier but that was definitely a major reason why I was leaving.   

In total, 22 participants identified this sort of mental wellbeing issue as a reason for leaving service. Although not necessarily formally diagnosed with a mental health illness, these participants still felt the burden of the psychological and emotional strain and consider themselves to have left because of mental health issues. This has a significant impact on their post-service wellbeing, their access to treatment options, and their post-service employment satisfaction. 

For some participants, it was not mental health issues (or not just mental health issues) that prompted them to resign. Seeking a complete change in lifestyle was one reason, and doing this whilst employable enough to move on was a consideration. Henry explained that he had almost reached the end of the rank structure, and unless he wanted to swap over to officer ranking and start again at the bottom of the next rank structure, it was time to leave. Succinct in his explanation, ‘I hit 30 and I thought I’m either going to be here till I die or I need to get out and be, do something to be employable still, that was my mentality…’. With a different mindset, Matthew confirmed that he ‘loved his job’ but wanted to get out of the State he was living and working in for a complete ‘sea change’ and police do not allow any interstate transfers. Barry also had a complete sea change, when he ‘went and managed an over 55 lifestyle village’ in another State. However, the reason for Barry leaving was not the sea change, but the need to support a friend. He explained:  

it came to a head where she [a friend] was actually sat in the carpark one day before her shift crying her eyes saying I can’t do this anymore. So, the long and short of it is I was sort of getting to the point where I’d had enough anyway. So, we both agreed that we would do a complete different change.  

The sea change was the result. 

For Paul, it was spousal pressure that forced the decision to leave the police and he explained ‘Yeah it was, my former wife didn’t want me to stay in the police force so I left. So that was the telling feature because she said I’ll take the children and leave you’. This is not an expected result given the lack of family influence to join the service. That is, although family connection to service played little to no role in the motivation to join or enlist, family members could and did influence the decision to stay or leave the service organisation. Jasper experienced similar influence, explaining  

you sign up for three years at a time and then you get the option to sign up again. But at the time I’d met my first wife who wasn’t very military orientated and it would have caused trouble through there. So sort of sacrificing one for another really,   

and Warwick stated ‘I’d just reacquainted with my previous fiancée that I had before who said she didn’t want to marry a sailor’. Warwick also referred to becoming ‘disillusioned’ with the job, so the spousal pressure was more a contributing factor than a deciding factor for him. Warwick also disclosed ‘I got out so I could get married and strangely enough six years later I joined back up again’, reporting that he left the second time ‘because my father was extremely ill’. Similar reasoning was provided by Donald who had to work a second job more consistently because ‘my wife had breast cancer so she wasn’t able to work as much as what she was’ but he also explained that he was ‘getting quite fatigued of constantly going to you know major accidents, like a car accident’.  

It became a common theme amongst the participants across all three service groups that whilst one factor might be the context for the decision to leave, there were other contributing factors that were just as significant. Most often, some form of emotional or psychological affect was identified. Skye explains that family issues influenced her decision, but the factors appear threefold, when she stated:  

Yes, my dad passed away. He passed away in 2009 and it, I was going through a lot of grief and I just, one, I wasn’t functioning properly and two, I was so pulled in the maternal way that I just could not dedicate… I was a submariner so I was an elite force where you constantly go to sea so I couldn’t dedicate 100% of my time and efforts so I didn’t want to do a half arsed job, so I thought it would be best if I found a new career path… So it was a big decision maker, I had to make a decision whether I was going to parent or I was going to have a career and parent or you know.  

Not only was the functioning at work difficult, but the loss of a family member together with the demands of being a parent, made the service employment more difficult. For Julie the family issue was quite unique, but again a direct result of the psychological harm suffered in the service. She explained: 

…I was obviously, you look back over time and you see that you’re getting your PTSD and you’re wearing out but the, the last year before I got out, I ended up actually my last shift was the [date removed] and everyone gets their nightmares and that’s part and parcel of it all but I had my new, oh well he wasn’t my husband then, my new boyfriend so I woke up one morning and looked at his arm and saw bruising on his arm. And I went I said oh what’s that and he said oh you grabbed me last night. And I recognised the same finger mark bruising that I’d had on my own arms and I sort of just hadn’t paid attention to. So then I went this isn’t good, you’re not only having the nightmares, but you’re actually acting it out in your sleep… So yeah tidied up that week and went off completely sick then. And so it was from the August and I was discharged completely in the March.  

Some participants were quick to act when family or friends were affected by their service role. Whilst literature suggests that family and friends can influence whether an individual stays or leaves employment this is based in seeking approval or avoiding disapproval from family for employment decisions (Maley & Hawkins, 2017). However, this was not as straightforward for the participants. The family element of their decision was not dependent on family approval or disapproval but rather occurred because the family members needed them to make the decision to leave. This is often grounded in family or spousal concerns for the service member’s own welfare, or for the sake of family cohesion.  

Other participants were not as quick to act to save relationships that were impacted by their job. There was a definite negative impact on relationships for most of the participants across all three service groups. The common cause was not being home very much, which occurred frequently in the emergency services due to the need to work multiple jobs or, for the paramedics, long shift work hours. For the police, it was shift work, operations and training that kept them from home, and for the military it was deployments and training that kept them from home, as well as the postings that put stress on relationships. There was a pattern of broken marriages, with many participants on their second or third marriages; but there were also a number of participants who were still in the same relationship they had when they joined the service and were still together and fine. This was indiscriminate for both male and female participants.  

Several of the participants decided to leave because they had ‘just lost the passion for [the job]’ as described by Kyle. He elaborated, stating ‘I thought, you know, I’m probably being more a burden to me workmates than anything else. I just lost my, lost the zeal you know’. For the participants with this catalyst for leaving they cannot specifically identify the reason why they lost their passion for the job, but it appears to be related to the emotional and psychological pressure of the roles. The difference for Kyle is that he was close enough to retirement age, in his pension scheme, that he could leave and then have the opportunity to ‘go and get another job so I’m getting two incomes’.  

The final reason for leaving reported by participants was organisational issues. Conrad described ‘frustration’ as a contributing factor to his leaving the police and Warwick described being ‘disillusioned at the time, I just didn’t seem to be going anywhere’. Harry echoed this sentiment, stating  

look, at the time, which was just prior to all the different deployments and conflict, at that time I wasn’t going anywhere, the unit wasn’t going to go anywhere and I was basically sick of doing pointless busy work, sweeping carparks and that other sort of bulldust that they get you to do.   

And Walter stated that he did not ‘miss the politics of the job’.  

The six main reasons for leaving as reported by each of the participants were not unique to any one of the three service groups, nor were they gender specific, with both male and female participants sharing similar reasons. Identifying the reasons why each individual participant left the service employment surfaced a deeper understanding of factors that may contribute to their job satisfaction in post-service employment. In particular, the factors that contributed to the moment that they decided they were no longer satisfied in the service employment, and acted upon that lack of satisfaction, are key to being able to pinpoint the presence, or lack thereof, of the same or similar factors in their post-service employment. Unfortunately, the emotional and mental health issues continue to be a resounding factor for most participants. These are factors they report carrying with them to their new employment.