Introduction

The nature of challenges faced by the policing workforce is always evolving. The changing nature of crime, community and victim support services, and digital transformation means there is a need to constantly evaluate what skills and people we need in order to deliver excellent
public services.

Attracting and retaining talent in the police staff workforce is a crucial consideration for UK police forces to effectively meet the evolving demands of modern policing.

Avon and Somerset Police and Gloucestershire Police both recognised the need to pre-empt these workforce challenges and undertook a discovery project to strength test their approach to workforce planning. Understanding how to plan an agile workforce equipped with the necessary tools and knowledge to tackle emerging challenges, such as cybersecurity and digital transformation, was a key objective for them.

Activity and approach

Skills for Justice were commissioned to use our expert knowledge of workforce development, scenario planning, pay and reward, and skills management to help Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire consider options for a future job evaluation approach.

The two forces were able to co-commission the project, sharing resources and saving money by co-developing and approach across boundaries.

With embedded experience of working within policing across the UK, we understand the complex environment that their workforce operate within, and the regional variances in the approach required to underpin service delivery.

We undertook a full evaluation of skills, role and service design approaches, considering

  • Best practice from forces across the nation, as well as other public services
  • Highest outcome indicators from other forces
  • Benchmarking and gap analysis of current approaches
  • The different systems and methodologies available to workforce planners
  • How to further embed digital, data and technology skills in the workforce, aligning to the
  • Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework and the Skills for the Information Age Framework
  • Risks, benefits and opportunities of different solutions
  • How to gather insight and research to make informed skills decisions
  • Implementation possibilities and change transformation management

Outcomes

We worked with Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire forces over a compressed timeline to rapidly evolve the work and provide guidance. Through our project management support we provided both forces with consistent communication and effective stakeholder management, resulting in the final delivery of a comprehensive evaluation report tailored to each forces’ requirements.

Part of the report provided specific recommendations and solutions to the problems and challenges that they are facing.

The forces will now use the results of the above analysis and our recommendations to test and consider how they approach their future workforce challenges. Any changes they implement will be strategically driven by delivering on excellent public services, and underpinned by an industry-leading evidence base.

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