Recruitment and retention

Report: 08
Date: 25 July 2002
By: Commissioner

Summary

This is a regular report to inform members of the progress, and related issues, of police and civil staff recruitment and retention against budgeted workforce targets for 2002/2003. An end of year report, including analysis of data, for 2001/2 is included in the appendix.

A. Recommendations

That Committee Members note the content of this report.

B. Supporting information

1. A report on the recruitment and retention position is attached at Appendix 1, covering the progress and related issues of police and civil staff recruitment and retention against budgeted workforce targets for 2002/2003. It also incorporates an end of year report analysing data for 2001/02.

2. The main points of particular interest are:

Civil staff recruitment

3. During budgetary constraints, there was a temporary suspension of the recruitment of some non-key civil support staff. With effect from 1 June, the suspension has been lifted and recruitment for all bands of civil staff will resume appropriate to service needs.

Metropolitan Special Constabulary

4. The strength at 30 June 2002 was 650. In June, 24 applications were received, of which 8 were from women (33%) and 9 from VEM (35%). There are 58 applicants at interview stage and a training course started on 19 May 2002 for 40 new officers.

Traffic wardens

5. Traffic warden strength at 30 June 2002 was 618. The 2002/2003 recruiting target for traffic wardens has been set at 276 wardens. (MPS BWT for traffic wardens is not yet available).

Police Leavers

6. Total leavers

• June 2002: 201
• Women: 21 (10%)
• VEM: 11 (5.5%)
  • Resignations: 60 (30%)
  • Transfers: 42 (21%)

Conclusion

7. The police budgeted workforce target has been finalised, and the expected recruitment target for the MPS this year is 3439 officers.

It should be noted that the end of June figures have not yet been confirmed. Consequently, there may be some minor changes in the final data, particularly with the current transfer to MetHR, the new computer system for HR.

C. Financial implications

There are no direct financial implications arising from this report. Many of the matters referred to are subject to their own reports and financial implications where applicable.

D. Background papers

None.

E. Contact details

Report author: Jenny Deere, Director HR Selection, MPS.

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: Report on recruitment and retention 2002/03

Workforce strength

1. Annex A (table A) shows the current strength of police, civil staff, traffic wardens and special constables against the budgeted workforce targets for 2002/03. The growth for police recruitment from 2001/02 is 1,681 officers. Spread over the year this would equate to 140 additional officers per month.

2. (i) Police target BWT at 31/3/03 28,357

2. (ii) Police strength 30/6/02 26,906 variation 1451 (5.4%) year end

2. (iii) Target VEM 7.9% 2,240 variation - 926.

2. (iv) Strength VEM 30/6/02 1,314 4.9% of workforce.

2. (v) Target women 17% 4,816 variation - 478

2. (vi) Strength women 30/6/02 4,338 16.1% of workforce

3. The June intake consisted of 286 officers of which 19 (7%) were VEMs and 56 (20%) were women. Of these 36 were transfer/rejoiners. The intake for July 2002 provisionally consists of 259 new officers, 41 transfer/rejoiners, 22 VEMs and 72 women.

Police recruitment

4. Annex A (table B) shows the number of enquiries made and the number of applications received for police officer recruitment during June 2002.

5. Annex A (table C) shows the number of police officers joining on a monthly basis.

Civil staff recruitment

6. Due to budgetary constraints that were imposed there was a temporary suspension of the recruitment of some agreed non-key civil support staff at both senior and junior levels. With effect from 1 June 2002, this has been lifted.

Senior civil staff recruiting

7. Senior Civil Staff recruitment and selection is a continuous process according to the needs of the MPS. The team is currently handling 31 recruitment/selection campaigns to fill 125 vacancies. There are approximately 140 applications at various process stages, which relate to live campaigns.

C3i recruitment

8. Recruitment of Communication Officers and Supervisors is an ongoing campaign. The target for Communication Officers for the MPS by 2005 is forecast at 1,744. The target for 2002/3 is 450 and between 1 April and 30 June 2002 925 applications had been received. Of these, 485 (52%) applications have been from women and 279 (30%) have been from VEMs.

9. Currently 678 applicants are awaiting an interview and 155 have passed an interview and are subject to checks. Since 1 April 2002, 99 have commenced training and been posted to OCUs and 62 have been placed on courses from June onwards.

Other recruitment

Metropolitan Special Constables (MSC)

10. MSC strength as at 30 June 02 was 650. As at 31 May 2002, 287 application form enquiries have been made to the call centre at Beak Street. Of the 287, 78 were female (27%) and 138 VEMs (48%) (June figures not yet available).

11. In June 2002, 24 applications were received, 8 from women (33%) and 9 from VEM (35%). 26 candidates were interviewed on 22 June and of these 16 have passed the interview. A further 58 candidates are awaiting an interview.

Traffic wardens

12. Traffic warden strength as at 30 June 02 was 618. The 2002/2003 recruiting target for traffic wardens has been set at 276 wardens.

13. To date, 1,305 enquiries were made to the call centre. Of these 226 were female (17%) and 600 VEMs (46%). 126 applications have been received. In May, 78 applicants were interviewed. Of these 45 passed the interview, 14 (31%) females and 11 (24.5%) VEMs, and await further assessment. (June figures not yet available). A training course is arranged for July 2002.

Advertising

I4. In addition to nation-wide recruiting for police officers, the MPS will continue to target experienced transferees from other forces. From May the Constabularies around London have been targeted. Starting with Kent, and working our way around the MPS, we are targeting officers immediately bordering the MPS. Future campaigns will again highlight the need for specialist skills especially posts within SO.

15. The mid year recruitment campaign has concentrated on VEMs and women by focused advertising in targeted media.

16. The content of a new fitness video is at the first stage of production. It will be fully transferable to other mediums such as CD-ROM's, DVD and the Internet. Enquiries are being made with the Home Office to ascertain the potential interest in the project for national distribution.

Interactive Services Review

17. An Evaluation Team is currently visiting the 'long-listed' IT Companies. 12 companies have been selected from the 120 who responded to the notice in the European Journal. Invitations to tender for the contract were sent out to 6 companies on 17 June.

Updates

Positive Action recruitment

18. In the June regular intake, 19 were VEM officers.

19. A review of the implications of the Police Reform Act is underway to consider the access of other than Commonwealth citizens. There are however, no plans at present by the Home Office, to alter the residency requirements for new MPS officers. Anyone wishing to apply to the MPS must currently be a British or Commonwealth citizen, or a citizen of Eire, and have been resident in the UK for a total of at least two of the preceding 3 years. A candidate who has lived abroad for more than 6 months needs to provide two references. This criterion is applicable for police and civil staff.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)

20. The role of Police Community Support Officer is newly created and was launched by the Commissioner on 23 May 2002. The starting salary for PCSOs is £21,278 including basic pay, shift disturbance allowance and central London allowance. There will be a probationary period of 12 months.

21. Interest in becoming a PCSO has been strong and from launch to 5 July, 3,962 enquiries were made. Of these 1003 were from women (22.6%) and 1,375 were from VEMs (33.8%). Interviews at the rate of 20 per day, are being arranged and started the week commencing 24 June.

22. One of the attractions of the job was the opportunity to achieve a 'work-life balance.' It is too early to say whether this aspect of the role is having an impact, however, systems are in place to monitor future applications.

23. It is anticipated that PCSOs will undertake a three week training course, before the first 50 are operational in the Borough of Westminster on 23 September. They will operate on a 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, shift rota. It is then expected that 50 PCSOs will become operational every three weeks, until the target of 500 is reached by the end of March 2003. Recruiting and training will be ongoing.

Transport for London

24. The Transport OCU commenced operations on 10 June 2002 and roll out to become fully operational by the end of February 2003.

25. A total of 39 officers (sergeants and constables) had joined the OCU as at the end of June 2002.

26. In addition, there are 2 traffic warden managers and 13 traffic wardens currently attached to the OCU, whilst 9 are awaiting transfer. The Service is currently in the final stages of processing the applications of 40 traffic warden candidates who have passed the selection process

27. The first 5 day Transport OCU induction course for police and traffic wardens took place in early June. A further induction course for police officers commenced on 8 July.

Processing times for police recruits

28. The average time taken to process police applications in March 2002 rose to 40 weeks. An action plan was immediately put in place to reduce the length of time from receipt of an application, to job offer.

29. Due to the large numbers of applications still in the system which were received from the January and June 2001 campaigns (9,000 and 3,500 applications respectively) the ability to dramatically impact on processing time quickly is inhibited.

30. Mechanisms are now in place to try to reduce the percentage of applications from candidates who are ineligible e.g. self selection questionnaire, and to increase the yield of applications received from enquirers e.g. non-return research project, as well as raise the proportional success rate e.g. applicant support programmes.

31. It was recognised that one of the contributing factors was the number of applications within the pool. According to an initial trawl, this equated to over 5,000, however due to the limitations of technology the 'status' of all the applications was not known. To ensure that an accurate picture was available a manual count was initiated. The current computer systems do not enable such management information to be available automatically.

32. The count demonstrated that the number of 'live' applications was 4,200 excluding those that had already been offered jobs, were on hold for medical or CTC or fitness reasons. Often the reasons for being on hold were in the hands of the individual e.g. overweight. It was also identified that 400 were 'banked' applications and these could be in this status for over 12 months i.e. if the applicant had failed just one element of the selection e.g. fitness or interview and were told they could return after a period of time.

33. In each of these circumstances the time 'counted' as part of the time taken to process, thus adding to the average processing times. It is intended that a better description of the number of 'live', 'on hold', 'banked' and 'dead' files is established. Monthly monitoring information will be examined to ensure performance improves.

Actions

34. The main log jam was identified as processing the throughput of medical screening and examinations; therefore, the following measures have been put in place:

• an additional doctor employed on a sessional basis but full time initially for 6 weeks,
• four agency nurses employed to work on the backlog
• new administration process engaged.

35. These measures are reducing the backlog in the initial clearance parts of the medical process by 70 forms a day, and for those on hold requiring a doctors input there is already a reduction from 650 to 600.

36. The majority of new processing staff to fill the numerous vacancies following the transfer of Selection to Hendon are now recruited. An induction and training programme has been established to commence mid June.

37. The new automated recruitment process enabled by MetHR has a 'go live' date of 19 August. Although the implementation of such a radical change in processing ability will inevitably have some teething problems – from mid-July all new candidates will be entered and the 'old' applications worked through the existing system until the backlog has been removed.

38. We are confident that the overall processing time for applications received after May 2002 will reduce. Those in the system prior to this date will continue to diminish in numbers.

39. The mid-year recruitment campaign, which is focused on VEM and women candidates, will monitor carefully the application return rate to ensure that the overall target of 3,000 new recruits, plus 440 transferees and the VEM and female targets for 2002/3 are all achieved.

Chart 1 - Comparison of application processing times for regular police intakes (see Supporting material)

40. Notes

• The graph covers the previous three regular police intakes and highlights the time taken to process the recruits' applications
• The 'processing time' starts from the receipt of an application until a formal offer of a place at training school has been made; instances where applications have been suspended e.g. pending the outcome of medical enquiries, are included
• The intake sizes are as follows: February 262, March 244 and May 261
• The graph highlights an increase in overall processing time during the three intakes

41. The reason for this apparent increase in processing time can be attributed to several factors including:

• The build up of applications, into the thousands, due to the success of the January and June 2001 recruiting campaigns.
• The disruption to processing caused by the transfer of the recruitment centre to Hendon during January 2002,
• Insufficient staffing levels
• Improvements to the medical screening process resulting in a large number of applications previously suspended due to medical enquiries returning to the recruitment process.

Retention

42. A draft retention strategy was submitted to the last MPA HR Committee and an update of this, is subject to a separate report.

43. A retention intervention officer has been appointed and started in May. It is anticipated that the officer will be proactive and will not only target officers who have indicated that they intend to leave but will pursue innovative MPS-wide retention schemes and partnerships.

Leavers

Annex A (table D) shows the number of leavers for April 2002 compared to the same period last year and the reasons for leaving.

Tables

Table A: Workforce strengths as at 30 June 2002

Table B: Police recruitment 2002/03

Table C: Police joiners 2002/03

Table D: Retention - Number of Police leavers 30 June 2002

End of FY 2001/2002 summary statement for police recruitment

Overview

2001/2002 witnessed remarkable achievement and change in HR Selection.

The tremendous effort demonstrated by all departments towards processing candidates and the much needed move to Simpson House, creating a more customer focused service, ensured that our ability to meet increasingly challenging recruiting targets was achieved. Refined processes and new initiatives all contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of recruits being put through to Hendon Training School, so much so that from the previous year, there was a 104% increase in the number of recruits joining. 1,350 recruits joined in 2000/2001, compared to 2,748 recruits this year.

In order to achieve such a great number, there was a need to generate a considerable amount of interest in pursuing a career as a Police Constable and receive applications to process. Substantial expenditure on marketing and advertising, in the region of £4.2 million for police recruitment, ensured that just over 55,000 people expressed interest in joining the Met, with nearly 12,000 applications resulting from this expression. The call centre successfully managed to process 55,012 enquiries for police officers in addition to nearly 20,000 enquiries for civil staff vacancies.

A year on year comparison of applications received has shown a significant increase of 32%, with 11,798 received this year compared to 8,942 applications in 2000/2001. 2,748 recruits entering Hendon Training School meant that the corporate annual recruiting target of 2,551 was exceeded by nearly 8%.

This year also showed valuable rise in the interest displayed from visible ethnic minorities and women, with increases in numbers applying and joining from previous years.

The following provides a more in-depth view into Police Recruitment performance.

Enquiries

The total number of enquiries received during the year was 55,012. For the previous year this was 55,638 enquiries, a marginal decrease.

Chart 2 - Quarterly comparison application enquiries between F/Y 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

During the year, women accounted for 24% of the total number of enquiries and for VEM this was 26%. This equates to 14,501 and 13,433 enquiries respectively.

Chart 3 - Quarterly comparison application enquiries for financial year 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

Applications

The number of applications received this year experienced a 32% increase on the previous year with 11,798 applications compared to 8,942 in 2000/2001.

Chart 4 - Quarterly comparison application received in 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

The number of applications received from VEMs and women has also increased significantly from the previous year. Marketing has proven to be successful for underrepresented groups since there has been a welcome improvement in the proportion of returned applications from VEMs and women. VEMs amounted to 18% and women 22% of total applications received compared to 16% and 20% respectively in the previous year.

Both VEM applications and applications from women experienced a 48% increase on 2000/2001 numbers; 1,463 applications from VEMs and 1,762 applications from women to 2,168 and 2,612 respectively in 2001/2002.

Chart 5 - Quarterly comparison application received from VEM in 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

Chart 6 - Quarterly comparison applications received from women in 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

Intakes

2001/2002 saw dramatically increased numbers enter Hendon Training School. Intakes rose from 177 in April to a high of 298 in February. Determined effort from all members of staff ensured that these numbers were achieved and resulted in a 104% increase in the total number joining compared to 2000/2001. 2,748 recruits joined in 2001/2002 in comparison to 1,350 in 2000/2001.

The recruiting target for the year was set at 2,551 recruits. Over the year 2,748 joined in 11 intakes, this means that the recruiting target was achieved and exceeded by 7.7%.

Chart 7 - Intakes and target comparison for 2001/2002 (based on an annual target of 2,551) (see Supporting material)

Quarterly comparisons between the two years shows that all quarters enjoyed nearly double or in case of the first two quarters, more than double the activity, than in the previous year's quarters.

Chart 8 - Quarterly comparison of recruit joiners between F/Y 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

VEMs made up 10.3% of the annual recruiting performance with 283 recruits. Last year this was 6.7%, with 90 recruits out of the total 1,350 joining, coming from ethnic minorities. In real numbers this presents a 214% increase whereas proportionally, VEM recruits out of total recruits has increased by 54%.

Chart 9 - Quarterly comparison VEM joiners between F/Y 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

Women represented 19.7% of the recruiting total for 2001/2002. Last year this was 20.6%, a 4.4% decrease. However, in real numbers there has been a 95% increase with 542 women joining this year compared to 278 women in 2000/2001. The graph below shows the number recruited in quarters.

Chart 10 - Quarterly comparison women joiners between F/Y 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 (see Supporting material)

The table below summarises the number of joiners by intakes.

Leavers

1,658 officers left during the year through various routes. The following tables show a quarterly breakdown for the number of leavers and a breakdown of reasons for the total number of leavers during the year.

Civil staff recruitment

General civil staff recruitment

Following the events of 11th September 2001 and budget constraints, a moratorium was placed on further recruitment of general civilian staff vacancies in October 2001. Consequently, only key positions were recruited for, in line with criteria prescribed by the Star Chamber. End of year figures, therefore, reflect this period of inactivity. We would expect these numbers to be considerably higher had the freeze not been imposed.

During the financial year, as a result of expenditure in the region of £307,000 on advertising campaigns, the Call Centre processed nearly 10,000 enquiries for general civil staff vacancies such as Administrative Assistants, Administrative Officers and Station Reception Officers. Selection processes administered centrally and locally resulted in 1,470 people being recruited, and placed throughout the service. Of those recruited, 927 (63%) were women and 350 (24%) VEM.

Senior civil staff recruitment

Senior Civil Staff recruiting is a continuous process according to the needs of the MPS. Whilst the moratorium also applied to senior civil staff, key posts were recruited for, similarly in accordance with the criteria outlined by the Star Chamber.

During the year, the senior civil recruitment team managed approximately 58 campaigns that encompassed 36 posts ranging from Crime Analysts to senior managerial positions. The campaigns were specially designed and incorporated bespoke selection exercises.

Nearly 800 enquiries were made with circa 290 candidates submitting an application for the various posts advertised. Approximately 170 were interviewed with just under 70 offers of employment accepted.

C3i recruitment

Campaigns during the year were also geared towards the recruitment of Communication Officers. Throughout the year 7,707 enquiries were made, 3,980 of which were from women (51.6%). Data on the number of applications received was only available from January 2002. Since then 368 applications have been submitted with approximately 120 candidates awaiting an interview at the end of the year.

Metropolitan special constables and traffic wardens

Since January 2002, a total of 82 applications to join as an MSC have been received, 16 from women (20%) and 22 from VEMs (27%). At the end of the financial year, 84 applications were ready for interview, with a training course due to start in May 2002.

Data provided for traffic warden recruitment included total figures from January 2001 to the end of the FY 2001/2002 rather than the beginning of the financial year in April 2001. Within that period 88 applications were received, with 52 candidates joining as traffic wardens.

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