RECRUITING & RETAINING POLICE EQUIPMENT NEWS ADVERTISER INDEX PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
Addressing the Workforce Crisis with Science
Close the gap between skills and behaviors.
Kurt A. Steward, PhD is a vice president at Infor Public Sector, where he focuses on go-to-market planning and development, product enhancement and expansion opportunities, and strategic market analyses.
www.infor.com/industries/publicsector/
Policing in the United States is more complex today than ever before. Increased citizen expectations, tighter budgets, and the rapidly evolving technology
landscape make serving and protecting our communities a delicate balancing act. It requires offi cers to not only possess a service mentality, coupled with a respect for the law, but also the right mix of communication skills, civility, and a deep sense of situational awareness. Achieving this balance has become increasingly challenging, given the current workforce crisis. According to the American Communities Survey, a periodic sur-
vey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 6.4 people turn 62 years of age every single minute in this country, making them eligible for retirement. When combined with those turning 65 years of age, the result is over 6.3 million people leaving the U.S. workforce on an annual basis. For law enforcement, this is especially troubling. As baby boom-
ers leave our departments, they are taking deep institutional knowl- edge with them, and they are being replaced with millennials, who have different work/life expectations than previous generations. Perhaps most concerning is that, based on the evidence, we are not meeting those expectations. Consider the most recent statistics from the Bureau of Justice Sta-
tistics. For every 122 police recruits, only 100 successfully complete their established probationary period. Resignations, dismiss- als, and probationary failures account for 69 percent of of- fi cers leaving the law enforce- ment ranks. The average annual turnover rate for the 18,500 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. is approximately seven percent. Local, sheriff, and state agen-
cies are losing over 14,000 full- time sworn personnel due to retirements, but that only ac- counts for 28 percent of those
60 LAW and ORDER I June 2016 By Kurt Steward
leaving law enforcement. It is the other side of the workforce crisis facing law enforcement that is particularly concerning—the 69 percent or 35,000 offi cers leaving due to resignations, dismissals, and probationary failures. Not only are agencies struggling to replace the baby boomers retiring
from the workforce, but they are also spending an additional $4 billion annually to replace the replacements. In most cases, these are dollars that could largely be avoided. Hir-
ing the right personnel for the job has always been critically impor- tant, regardless of the industry. In law enforcement, however, the impact of making the wrong hiring decision extends beyond the bottom line to the needs of the community, and has a real impact on people’s lives. And while the traditional Civil Service structure pro- vides an approach to candidate selection that is objective, content- valid, and job related, it largely fails to objectively surface the best candidates and allow recruiters to focus on those candidates who are going to stay committed to the community—and the depart- ment—for the long term. The FBI recently published a law enforcement bulletin outlining
the characteristics it considers an ideal law enforcement offi cer to possess: initiative, sense of ethics, respect and knowledge of laws, communication skills, common sense, civility, service mentality, humility, controlled temper, and thirst for knowledge. What is striking about the aforementioned ‘characteristics’ is that they are largely rooted in behaviors, making them substantially more dif- fi cult to assess through traditional hiring processes. So, while a candidate may have the necessary skills to complete
the essential duties of an offi cer, that person may not possess the be- havioral characteristics to perform it well or the commitment to per- form it over the long term. Talent Science addresses the gap be- tween skills and behaviors, and provides agencies with a scien- tifi c approach to reduce turnover, improve succession planning, and increase offi cer performance by ensuring the right candidates are hired in the fi rst place. Talent Science is a predictive
and analytics-based approach to managing human resource pro- cesses, like candidate selection, offi cer development, and suc-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68