Strategic Workforce Planning within a ‘Greenfields’ Policing Context

Andrew McJorrow Aotearoa New Zealand Police

Ngā Pirihimana o Aotearoa

The ATC Events / Kienco Strategic Workforce Planning Conference Melbourne 26-27 March 2014

Wellington 1-2 April Wellington 2014

Overview

• What makes NZ Police unique?

• Recognition of the need for SWP at NZ Police

• ‘Prevention First’

• The demographic cliff

• Desired SWP outcomes at NZ Police?

• Resources

• Questions & brief discussion

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1. What Makes Aotearoa New Zealand Police Unique?

Some Unique Characteristics

• Paramilitary

• Coercive force

• Subject to enormous scrutiny

• Politicised environment

• Very low corruption

• Government sets constabulary numbers

• Very highly unionised

• History and tradition are important

• Single point of entry

• Low attrition

• High internal churn

• ‘Age sensitive’ environment despite there being no compulsory retirement

• Data sets back to the 1800’s

• But beware of the rear view mirror trap!

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2. Recognition of the Need for SWP at Police

Drivers of SWP at NZ Police

Prevention First

Prevent crime Reduce demand

Reduce victimisation

Profoundly Changing Demographics

Gain visibility of and manage the

demographic cliff

Rapid Technological Change

New ways to commit, prevent, respond to

and investigate crime

For our business to be sustainable we must find a systematic method for understanding the capability needed to deliver on our strategy and respond adaptively

to changes in our operating environment, both now and in the future. That methodology is strategic workforce planning.

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ROW – Rest of World

Demographics – Aging, growing ethnic diversity, gender

Environment – Housing affordability, overcrowding etc

Government – Legislation, regulations

Economy – Rapid increase / decrease in GDP, income

inequality

Social – Evolving social norms and values

Technology – Rapid technological development (mobile

devices, social networks, hyper surveillance, internet of things,

etc)

Labour Market

Labour market activity

Labour market sentiment

Access to skills – size and quality of pipeline

Attitudes toward a career in policing (willingness to work

shift work, command and control environment, location etc)

Digital native & millennials – Changing attitudes toward

career

Organisation

Strategy - Prevention First, 'Turning of the Tide', Road

Policing strategy

Operating model – 12 Districts, service centres and PNHQ

Capacity - 8,907

Capability

Technology & Systems - iPads and iPhones, Transition to

Windows 8, PeopleSoft upgrade

Culture - COI, staff engagement, highly union membership

Financial - Living within baseline

Employees

Profile data

Demographic profile - gender, age, ethnicity

Geographical distribution

Employment status (full time, part time, contractor, casual)

Tenure / length of service

Capabilities

Trend data

Attrition / separation, departure information

Transfers / churn

TOIL

Overtime

Leave balances

Demand (Type of Work) Supply (Type of Worker)E

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3. ‘Prevention First’

Aotearoa New Zealand Police Strategy & Objectives

New Zealand Police Objectives

• 13% reduction in reported crime

• 19% drop in prosecutions

• Develop communities where people are safe and where they feel safe

• Delivered through: – Prevention First national operating strategy

– The Turning of the Tide Maori focused strategy

– Road Policing strategy

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‘Prevention First’

• How we gain control over the criminal environment

• Deploying to beat demand – Prevent crime and reduce demand

– Critical command information

– Tasking and coordination

• Understanding and responding to the drivers of crime

• Victim focus – Focus on victims reduces the likelihood of repeat victimisation and

future demands on Police

– Neighbourhood policing teams

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‘Prevention First’ and SWP

• What’s SWP telling us about the impacts of Prevention First?

• A more sophisticated and cerebral approach to policing

• Important implications for future capability – Understanding crime causality requires deductive reasoning skills

– A victim centric focus requires interpersonally skilled, empathetic officers

– Growing multiculturalism requires cultural adaptability and multilingual skills

• Emerging tension between mass deployability and specialisation needs

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4. The Demographic Cliff

Aging, Growing Ethnic Diversity and

Gender

“The police are the public and the public are the police”

Sir Robert Peel

Founder of the Metropolitan Police 1829

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Aotearoa New Zealand’s Aging Population

• Ratio of people under 15 years old to 65 year olds and older: o 1974 3.60 : 1

o 1993 2.02 : 1

o 2014 1.39 : 1

o 2024 1.05 : 1

o 2033 0.83 : 1

• Profound implications for: o Service demands

o Talent and labour supply

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Attrition from 1886 Onward … it takes a lot to move our Attrition Line

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GFC Springbok tour

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Physical competence test

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Aging Effects Over the Last Decade

• Age and experience tend to be linked (so some aging benefits)

• Sick leave increases with age (number of hours worked per FTE decreases as the workforce ages)

• Higher employment costs

• Over the last decade constabulary increased by 1,300…

• But constabulary aged < 40 years old decreased by almost 1,100 over the same period

• What’s SWP telling us about how aging is likely to play out at Police over the next 10 years?

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Aging and SWP

• Attrition rate doubles after the age of 55

• Response group – Younger so experience more modest aging impacts

• Road policing – Older so already experiencing higher attrition rates (that will continue to increase)

• Investigations group

– Rapid increase in attrition in the next 3 to 5 years

– 50% increase in attrition over the next decade

– 10 years to build a detective from scratch

• Average age will increase over the next 10 years and then the trend will reverse

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Nightmare Scenario

• Aging, it seems, is not without a sense of irony…

• Our aging population is forecast to reduce average constabulary age, experience and employment cost

• But there’s a nightmare scenario – Tsunami of retiring constabulary

– Millennials and digital natives with potentially negative perceptions of a police career

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Growing Ethnic Diversity

• Asians are the fastest growing group

• Auckland is the 7th most immigrant intensive city in the world

• Immigrants bring their cultures with them, including perceptions of Police

• Maori and Pacific Island communities over represented in offender and victim statistics

• Key risk - The demographic segments from which Police have traditionally recruited are shrinking and are less likely to have the background and skills we need

• We need constabulary ranks to be increasingly drawn from and reflect the communities they serve

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Gender

• The extent to which any group in the community is under represented is the extent to which our talent pipeline is constrained

• More female than male university graduates

• Historically, not a good news story for Police (Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct 2007)…

• … But we’re getting better: – Women now comprise 18% of constabulary

– 50% increase over the last decade (total constabulary numbers increased by 20% over the same period)

– ≥ Senior Sergeant rank, only 5% female

– 2001 20% of RNZPC graduates were females versus 27% in 2013

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Review strategy

Futuring

Realign capability and mindsets to strategy Loss of experience and capability as workforce ages

Road Policing first then Investigations

How do we motivate an increasingly

multigenerational and ethnically

diverse workforce?

Capability

Engagement (Motivation) & Culture

Workforce segmentation

Environmental scan

Current state analysis

Execution & monitoring

Action planning

Gap analysis

Aging population Growing ethnic diversity

Women under represented Tightening labour market at least until 2016

Increasingly technologically rich environmentGrowing cognitive load

Millennials & digital natives attitudes toward career

How long can we continue to rely on our ‘traditional’ recruitment pools when these demographics are

shrinking relative to other groups in NZ?How long can we sustain a single point of entry to

deliver the increasingly diverse and specialised capabilities we need now and in the future?

How can we reliably identify those roles / individuals / groups / and capabilities that actually make the biggest

difference to Police performance?

Recruitment & selection

On-boarding Sustainable

PerformanceRetention

Current collective constrains direct

employer – employee relationship

Hard to fill locations

Age and Australian police headhunting

key drivers of attrition.

Attrition rate doubles past 55 years of age

4. Desired SWP Outcomes for Aotearoa New Zealand Police

Our SWP Programme

• Measure, understand and accurately forecast attrition

• Monitor and understand the labour market impacts on supply

– Quantity

– Quality

• Develop a ‘joined up’ Wing (recruit) management process

• Continuously improve data quality

• Pilot strategic workforce planning in a single district

• Scale up nationally

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A Successful SWP Programme at Police Will:

1. Deliver a standardised, accepted national workforce planning methodology

2. Provide a robust evidence base for our human resources strategy

3. Challenge conventional thinking around how we staff our workforce

4. Provide a practical way by which we create executive visibility and management of the threat to Police capability inherent within Aotearoa New Zealand’s rapidly changing demographics

5. Drive alignment of capability to strategy

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Lessons from Our Journey so far…

• It takes 1,000 conversations to build momentum

• National versus local versus really local considerations… – Crime and its prevention doesn’t happen at a national level

– But SWP has to work at a national and local level

• Service demands versus recorded crime – Focus on the front end of the pipe (calls for service, taskings etc)

• Data quality is a very big challenge (but don’t let it stop you)

• Careful use of buy in tactics – A standard ‘burning platform’ approach won’t always cut it in an

organisation where emergencies are its core business…

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Lessons from Our Journey so far…

• Segmentation – Critical roles a sensitive topic

– More likely to have critical teams / groups

– Counter intuitive, need to work backwards…

– Start with known job families and then allow the futuring process and discussion to throw a light on those areas that are most critical and important

– Not so much about hard to fill roles as it is about hard to fill locations

• Time & persistence – Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is sustainable SWP

– It’s a hard but rewarding road…

– …Take your opportunities and victories where you can

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5. Resources

Websites

• Statistics New Zealand

• Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment - Jobs Online Reports

• ANZ Job Ads

• Shell future energy scenarios

• Shapingtomorrow.com

• Aruspex

• KPMG’s 10 steps to strategic workforce planning

• Gapminder

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Books

• Ward, Tripp, & Maki (2013). Positioned: Strategic Workforce Planning That Gets the Right Person in the Right Job.

• Jac Fitz-enz, (2010). The New HR Analytics: Predicting the Economic Value of Your Company’s Human Capital Investments.

• Smith, (2012). Strategic Workforce Planning: Guidance & Back-Up Plans.

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6. Questions and Discussion