The Realignment of Finance, Business and Workforce Planning Functions within the Resources Directorate

66/11
16 September 2011
MPA briefing paper 66/2011

This briefing paper has been prepared to inform members and staff. It is not a committee report and no decisions are required.

Introduction

1. At the meeting of the Human Resources and Remuneration Sub-Committee on 14 July 2011, the Committee were informed of a restructuring within the MPS which involved the disestablishment of the HR Directorate and the transfer of functions to the Resources Directorate and the Deputy Commissioner’s Portfolio. As part of that restructuring, the finance, business and workforce planning functions have been brought together under the Director of Finance.

2. To place the decision to re-align activities across the support services into context, it is necessary to look back over the past 10 years which had seen the MPS enjoy a lengthy phase of growth. Throughout those years, the organisation struggled to meet the demand for new recruits across all staff groups focussing attention instead on vacancy management. However, the announcements contained within the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) created an entirely different political, budgetary and policing environment as the MPS faced cumulative cuts to its overall budget in region of 20%. This presented new challenges in terms of business planning, budgetary planning and of course workforce planning, as staff costs constitute some 80% of the MPS corporate budget.

Pre realignment

3. The coordination and compilation of the Policing London Business Plan was undertaken by three main areas located as follows within the MPS pre-realignment:

• Group Finance (Finance Services)
• Business Planning (Strategy and Improvement Directorate (S&ID))
• Strategic Workforce Planning (SWFP) (Human Resources)

4. Whilst with the move to a three year deployment plan in recent years the teams worked closely together and both Finance and S&ID reported to the Director of Resources, there was occasional lack of synergy. Resources Directorate and HR came together to consider the implications of the financial situation and its impact upon staffing requirements to develop and deliver a balanced policing model to allow us to maintain police officer resilience with safety, public confidence and value for money at its core. The scale of the budget reductions required over coming years places considerable emphasis on strategic direction of the Service as a whole and the need for greater cross business group initiatives. This work must be coordinated centrally to ensure dependencies of different strands of work are clear and places considerable emphasis on the more strategic elements of the workforce planning function.

Realignment

5. Following recent close working between the teams the need for a single central coordination of all aspects of the planning process (including clearly the workforce implications) was identified. With the opportunity presented by the reorganisation within the MPS, the decision was taken to move the Business Planning team from S&ID and the Strategic Workforce Planning Unit from HR into Group Finance, thus creating a single team coordinating all aspects of the budget, planning and workforce planning within the MPS. The budget is the key driver for determining the MPS workforce plan and drawing together the three strands allows better sharing of intelligence and a more consistent approach to developing the Deployment Plans across the staff groups.

6. This realignment took place from 1 July 2011. The SWFP team is now co-located with the Finance Planning team at ESB. To maintain existing links with Business Groups and the key MPS change programmes an office has been maintained at NSY with the Business planning function operating from this office and Finance and SWFP using the office as appropriate.

Planning process

7. The revised structure does not fundamentally change the planning process but it increases the efficiency and coordination of the teams putting the plan together. The overall planning process will be managed in a way that ensures that for all Business Groups, the financial planning process (e.g. assessing savings opportunities and monitoring the delivery of committed savings), the workforce planning process (assessing the impact of Business Group plans in the context of the overall Deployment Plan) and the Business Planning process are fully integrated in terms of timescales and internal/external reporting.

8. This process will ensure a fully integrated planning approach in the MPS and will help allow the organisation to deliver the significant medium-term savings and efficiencies that are required given the current funding position. It will also ensure that the financial and staffing impacts of the medium-term plans are clearly aligned and articulated as the plans are developed.

9. To this end the planning team has strong relationships with the Business Groups to consolidate budgets and agree numbers and priorities at the operational level. This is manifested through the establishment of the Strategic Workforce Planning Group, which is attended by the Assistant Commissioners and other Management Board Business Group leads. This group facilitates the process to develop workforce capacity and capability by assessing and agreeing workforce requirements within the parameters of the current budgetary constraints. This group has ensured that business planning is seen as a key activity with the emphasis on maximising workforce performance and delivering operational results within ever challenging budgets.

10. A further series of strategic meetings have been developed across the Business Groups to support the delivery of the Deployment Plans. Monthly updates are provided to assess the progress of both recruitment and selection activity to ensure that overall workforce targets are being met.

11. The realignment has also started to allow a better understanding of the police officer establishment. Insight from workforce planning is being linked in to finance forecasts regarding:

• Recruitment and wastage data
• Rank and specialism pressures

This work will be further developed in the future to enhance forecasting.

Key Deliverables

12. The new teams will establish a workforce planning cycle, a demand focussed process of planning where future requirements in terms of capacity and capability are grounded upon evidence-based assessments of funding, skill gaps and environmental factors. Specifically:

• Deployment Plans - regular review and adjustment of the Deployment Plans for police officers, the extended policing family and Establishment Plan for police staff. This will ensure the strategic ambition to reduce our reliance on PCSOs and Traffic Wardens and to utilise the released resource to increase operational police officer numbers, is managed at the tactical level with a full appreciation of the inter-dependencies between the staff groups thus maximising the opportunities for re-deployment and minimising the potential for early departure.
• Corporate recruitment targets - to determine recruitment targets for each staff group to reflect budgetary pressures and business requirements.
• Workforce Capability Assessment - to lead and support the Business Groups on an assessment of workforce capability in light of anticipated demand, organisational change plus intelligence around recruitment, progression and retention. This tactical approach will inform our succession plans and allow us prepare selection, promotion, recruitment and activity to meet these skill gaps.

12. Existing processes will be subject to review once there is clarity around the arrangements for and requirements of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

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