UK 
United States
“You never forget seeing your first dead body,” says a reflective Chris Britton, People Experience Officer at Reward Gateway.
Perhaps – at this stage – we ought to correctly be referencing Britton as Special Constable Chris Britton. For while HR is sometimes mocked as standing for ‘human remains’ – in this context Britton is very much talking about his time as a part-time bobby with Sussex Police.
His parallel career as a special constable sits very much outside of his normal corporate HR life, and it has been a passion he’s pursued for the past ten years (he was only recently awarded a ten-year service medal). The commitment sees him devote a minimum of 16 hours a month (typically two, 8-hour shifts). But if he’s anything like his other HR peers, having a second identity is almost par-for-the-course for many HRDs now – and it’s something they claim makes them all the better in their HR lives for it.
“My role in the police probably goes all the way back to growing up during the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland as a child, where my dad was a prison officer, and we even had to move house a few times because of it,” says Britton. “As a young man later at Brighton University, I studied criminology and psychology, but it was all far too theory-based for me, and I got into HR. It was some time later that I saw an ad for special constables, and thought ‘this could be for me’.”
That was back in 2014/15, and after a period of 12 weeks’ basic training, Britton was finally able to pound the streets – although at this point he was carefully chaperoned by a regular officer, until he’d personally experienced 30 different ‘scenarios’ – the tackling of which then saw him become fully qualified.
“These scenarios include things like dealing with conflict, making a spontaneous arrest, doing a planned arrest, and – yes, how to deal with deaths,” he says. “At all times, you have to explain your decision making calmly, whilst also acknowledging that you’re dealing with often distraught people.”
Clear parallels with HR
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see exactly the parallels that exist between being a special constable and being a CHRO.
“Being in the police has absolutely given me a better understanding about having perspective,” says Britton. “While you may not be dealing with quite the severity of things an officer does – I’ve been assaulted and had a bloody nose being a police officer – you’re very much still dealing with people’s frustrations, and - like in HR - you’re always looking to find a solution to a problem. Sometimes you’re doing this under extreme pressure.”
