Police professionals across the globe have shared in the struggle to staff their operational forces adequately in recent years. According to the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), “Agencies are losing officers faster than they can hire new ones, so total sworn staffing has continued to decline.” Although some agencies are seeing success due to devoting increased resources toward recruitment, PERF further adds that “resignations are still increasing; responding agencies reported nearly 50 percent more resignations in 2022 than in 2019.”¹

Police leaders can recognize the ever-present need to rebuild their workforce due to the global impacts of the killing of George Floyd, the COVID-19 pandemic, and an increase in divisiveness. Public scrutiny and negative narratives in the media continue to take a toll on officer morale and potential recruits’ interest in the profession. Outside of police work, service industry jobs are also struggling with high “quit rates” due to “remote work [having] changed the game.”²

Policing requires new strategies and constant innovation for today’s tough job market. Think back to before the COVID-19 pandemic and how inept the government was at accommodating remote work. For many jurisdictions, remote work was a completely foreign concept. However, the necessity to innovate and adapt to the public health crisis paved the path for many changes to occur rapidly, allowing the evolution of the remote workspace.

While remote work was not as prevalent in police organizations as many other industries, the profession faces a similar evolutionary challenge to recruiting and hiring in a tight labor market where private sector employers can pay more, offer more flexible work conditions such as remote or hybrid work, and hire more quickly. Where does that leave policing? With an opportunity to evolve!

Evolution for an agency will include ensuring it has a comprehensive recruiting and hiring strategy and closely examining the efficiency of its hiring processes. By establishing robust recruiting pipelines and focusing closely on communication and responsiveness, agency leadership can take steps to reverse the trend of “we can’t find qualified candidates.” In addition, agency leaders can review their jurisdiction’s civil service process for reforms and make contemporary adjustments to agency hiring protocols.

A Comprehensive Strategy: Knowing the Numbers

First, agencies need to be specific and measured in approach. Understanding the agency’s approach involves using data-informed projections to appropriately map a plan with total metrics tied to timing and dates. Given the reduced number of candidates available to agencies and the increases in retirements and resignations, agencies should develop a comprehensive talent management plan that will include, at a minimum, the following information:

• • The current agency vacancies—sort by type (commissioned vs. noncommissioned) and rank by priority to fill first.

• • The yearly turnover rate for employees in the organization—examine historical data and develop a range of averages to inform the base recruiting rate needed to balance attrition rates.

• • A talent retirement liability number—develop through consultation with human resources: How many people in the organization could leave within a year and are at retirement age or above? Considering the recent landscape, the hiring goals may need to be higher to compensate for the unexpected.

• • The numbers needed to keep up with community growth—base on existing agency strategic plans or governmental comprehensive plans.

• • A rough timeline of how long a hire takes through the entire testing and background process.

An agency’s vacancies, attrition rate, retirement liability, and growth statistics can be used to chart and understand the need for the agency beyond simply its vacancy rate.

Map Out the Hiring Process—It’s Time to Get LEAN!

Once the agency leaders understand where the organization needs to go, they should convene their hiring team and map out the entire process from the first point of recruitment to the successful hiring of an employee. Doing so will help identify the time each step takes and where identified improvements might exist.

Many public safety professionals may be familiar with the LEAN process. These concepts originated in manufacturing but have successfully been translated to the business world to help improve performance and lower costs.³

What if there was a faster, better, and cheaper way to hire an agency’s next police officer?

There is.

A 2017 UK study focused on applying the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach in the public sector. It closely examined four case studies from different public sector settings: higher education, police service, public hospital, and local government. The case study that focused on police service examined the performance of the Israeli Traffic Police and found that, by using LSS principles over a period of five years, the service made a 17 percent increase in the quality of citations issued, had fewer driver challenges to citations (360,000 dropping to less than 250,000 in two years), and saw a significant reduction in the number of traffic fatalities, all while maximizing the force’s existing budget and staffing levels.⁴ The study’s authors concluded, along with their other case study assessments, that all public sector organizations can use LSS methodology to build efficient and effective processes to deliver superior customer service value and reduce costs. What if agencies do the same with their recruiting and hiring efforts?

Recruiting Pipelines

A well-rounded agency recruiting strategy cannot be, “Let’s wait for the candidates to come to us.” Similarly, an agency cannot focus on recruiting lateral candidates alone. Suppose an agency hires a pack of employees who have 10, 15, or 20 years of experience at once. In that case, this strategy backfires in several years when this “new” talent reaches their retirement marks and creates the same staffing hole the agency originally had. Throwing money at the solution may be necessary to be relevant to regional pressures from recruiting bonuses, but it won’t create long-term candidate loyalty and retention for an agency.

A comprehensive strategy considers recruiting from many different areas:

• • Professional support staff or custody officers within the agency

• • Entry-level candidates with career military experience who are looking to continue their service to the community more locally

• • Embedded partnerships with school programs, both secondary and post-high school organizations

• • Youth programs (cadets, explorers, and others) to promote civic duty and service and provide a long-term pipeline for public safety

• • Lateral recruitment of experienced officers who are relocating to the area or looking to change their environment for more significant opportunities or pay

In addition, agencies should consider hiring younger candidates with the understanding that they will grow into their roles and improve their experience and maturity levels on the job. Today’s job candidate is much more experiential than prior generations and may not continue with the career long-term, making longevity increasingly uncommon.

Agencies can also benefit from leveraging their existing staff to attract entry-level and lateral talent. Recruiting is every team member’s job. The best advocates for the profession can often be the ones in it. A unified culture supporting this can breed ownership and collaboration among the agency, as well.

Establish a clear identity for the recruiting brand. What makes the agency unique? What is the cost of living in the area? What unmatched benefits does the agency offer that others cannot? What is the leadership environment like? Establish answers to questions like these, and the strategy will begin to evolve and coalesce around this recruiting brand. While it may start small, each public interaction and online contribution adds up to considerable influence that can help tip the sentiment of the prospective police officer in favor of a specific agency. Build a place that people want to work in.

Often, police recruiting materials and sales pitches are too similar. The photos and listed specialties look identical across different agencies. Often, the pay and benefits are generally close within a region. Too often, recruiters at job fairs say the same things. An agency’s message and specific identity dissolve when they generalize too much, hoping to capture a larger audience.

Instead, once the team identifies what makes the agency unique and special, highlight that. The job can drastically differ between agencies within a 20-mile radius: big cities, small towns, and rural communities. Do not try to present the agency as something it is not because false expectations can lead to a mismatch. When an agency is genuine about what sets its team, working dynamics, challenges, and culture apart, the best-fit candidates will lean in, and the wrong ones will lean away. An honest approach is more beneficial to hiring for the region, as hiring teams can partner and liaise with their colleagues in other organizations to set them upright. In the long run, this can aid agency retention and organizational stability.

The biggest takeaway is that repeated experience has taught the authors that existing staff is an agency’s best recruiting tool. Advertising and other efforts may help contribute to the brand, but no one can sell an agency for a better value than its existing team. Ads, new websites, marketing vendors, and campaigns can undoubtedly attract interest. However, they will not get a single person hired; the team will. An agency’s people need to be the ambassadors, the mentors, and the closers in this respect.

Communication and Responsiveness

Once the pipelines for recruiting are established, enhancing communication to cultivate hiring leads may improve hiring results. Online recruiting portals or job menus that help promote an agency’s offerings with crucial information organized for the job searcher are the bare minimum in terms of communication. People shouldn’t have to dig too deeply to find how many employees an agency has, critical details related to benefits and pay, or where to apply or learn about the process. Annual reports are vital for sharing the agency’s story and workplace culture—don’t overlook these as an essential tool to communicate agency priorities to the community and prospective job candidates.

“Cultivating lifelong learning is one of the best practices for engaging a multigenerational workforce and is a great strategy for a police agency to adopt.”

Other online recruiting efforts can include text-to-chat apps that help streamline potential leads. Several options exist that can help route job candidates to the entire recruiting team and coordinate who will respond to answer questions and get a prospect “on the hook.”

Job fairs and traditional advertising through print and radio will still be part of a comprehensive strategy. However, the challenge is this: if not doing so already, an agency should start tracking where its best job prospects come from. Experience has informed the authors that most successful candidates originate from existing employee referrals. Again, don’t overlook the power of the agency’s existing staff to be the first and best ambassadors for recruiting the next generation of officers.

Civil Service Reforms

In Washington State, a dramatic shift in policing strategy dictated by legislative efforts resulted in rapid attrition at many police agencies in 2020 and 2021. Amplified by social justice movements and other regional unrest, officers chose to move to other states for police work, retire, or resign. As community members and police leaders worked to help the profession recover from sweeping reforms that, for the most part, have been adjusted to more workable policies, many agencies realized that the old ways of recruiting and funneling candidates to become police officers were simply not working.

Many agencies have begun to rethink their civil service rules to help increase the speed of the hiring process. Several jurisdictions in Washington have, with the cooperation of the independent commissioners and the city and county councils, passed both civil service and local code reforms to improve the speed and responsiveness of government hiring to meet the realities of the job market.

An easy reform to consider is changing the rules to allow the chief examiner for civil service to certify new lists for job classifications continuously. Adopting this process will enable an agency to work with candidates more quickly and keep lists fresh rather than waiting a month to move a candidate forward. The chief examiner then presents the civil service commissioners with those revised lists at each meeting to confirm the actions the examiner took with their authority. This change allows the civil service process to work effectively as a backstop and not a barrier to the speed and efficiency of the hiring process. All decisions are still tracked and reported on, with a trail of memos to justify removals from lists and actions taken should any matter be challenged and brought before the civil service commission.

Another change that may prove controversial for some but highly effective for others is to consider removing the initial oral board from the hiring process. Oral boards help agencies limit the number of candidates considered in a job process. Oral boards are also highly time-consuming for staff and candidates. Add up each contact that a subsequent job prospect has with the contact from the administrative interview, a background investigator, administrative staff, a chief’s interview, and more. The needs to assess the candidate’s suitability may be more than met through that entire process. Agencies should study their current civil service rules and understand that, as long as they work within the guidelines established for changing the rules and consult with their legal departments, these rules can be adjusted to enable a more nimble hiring environment.

Agency Hiring Protocols

Establishing loyalty in each job prospect the team meets should be central to an agency’s hiring philosophy. Ensure that the team is vetting each candidate to make sure they will enjoy their assignment at the agency. Consider which sales approach to use— should it be the hard-sell, high-pressure tactic or the “let’s ensure this is the correct department for you” approach?

Today’s Gen-Z applicants are socially conscious and want to impact society positively. The policing profession has long been able to recruit from multiple disciplines by connecting with candidates who share this worldview and have the suitable skill set to succeed as police officers. Gen-Z applicants also tend to be focused on wellness programs.⁵ This can be addressed through a focus on aspects of wellness that an agency promotes, such as exercise equipment, time to work out, mental health check-ins, and flexible work arrangements.⁶ Consider creative programs like the 4-32 schedule, such as the one at the Golden, Colorado, Police Department. Golden Police Department’s program allows employees to work a 32-hour workweek and receive regular pay. The program is currently under evaluation, but early data suggests that the department is seeing benefits in response times and employee satisfaction.⁷ It is worth considering if any innovative opportunities exist at that can set an agency apart.

Agencies should examine each step, each question, or requisite to identify what they are looking for. What is this evaluating? Does the agency have standards that are either socially or culturally antiquated, or is the agency using police-culture norms without anyone genuinely being able to connect the standard to a behavior? It is time for a reflective self-assessment of the agency.

In Summary

The number of officers, deputies, troopers, and agents that need to be hired to continue to police will continue to require constant vigilance from leaders to ensure that policing does not lower its standards and works to continue to improve policing outcomes through the caliber of people hired.

The lack of attention to comprehensive hiring strategies and reacting under pressure can contribute to lowering standards. However, investing time in the proactive analysis of systems, strategies, and solutions can allow agencies to be ahead of the curve and plan appropriately. A standard database of disqualified prospects could be one future area of exploration for regional benefit. Agencies have had many background investigations stopped cold by discovering that a job prospect did not disclose a previous job application to another agency and concealed disqualifying behavior.

Both entry-level and lateral police applicants want to work for well-run agencies with positive leadership and good work cultures. Improving the internal culture of leadership and work culture will contribute to making the agency into a destination that people want to work for and stay with. Investments made here will also encourage the retention of qualified staff that already work for the agency, reducing the need to hire replacements.

Forecasting into the future, developing police leaders will become one of the challenges facing police agencies. Cultivating lifelong learning is one of the best practices for engaging a multigenerational workforce and is a great strategy for a police agency to adopt.⁸ Before a chief or sheriff fills their open vacancies, they need to think about how to develop police sergeants, lieutenants, majors, captains, assistant chiefs, and chiefs of police. The massive gap in hiring and attracting talent will translate into vacancies in formal leadership ranks and promoting officers of junior tenure into these positions. The future is bright, but it will take the combined efforts of today’s police leaders to pave this path for the next group of leaders, giving them the best opportunity to succeed. 🛡

Notes:

¹Police Executive Research Forum, “New PERF Survey Shows Police Agencies Are Losing Officers Faster Than They Can Hire New Ones,” news release, April 1, 2023. https://www.policeforum.org/staffing2023.

²Stephanie Ferguson and Makinizi Hoover, “Understanding America’s Labor Shortage: The Most Impacted Industries,” Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, December 19, 2023.

³Lean Enterprise Institute, “What Is Lean?: Lean Thinking,” January 27, 2023.

⁴Jiju Antony, Bryan Rodgers, and Elizabeth A. Cudney, “Lean Six Sigma for Public Sector Organizations: Is It a Myth or Reality?” International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management 34, no. 9 (2017): 1402–1411.

⁵Aditya Malik, “Gen-Z Hiring Practices: What Organizations Need to Consider,” Forbes, December 11, 2023.

⁶Catherine Collinson and Michael Hodin, “Best Practices for Engaging a Multigenerational Workforce,” Harvard Business Review, October 17, 2023.

⁷Corinne Westeman, “City: Golden Police’s Four-Day Workweek Trial ‘Going Fantastically,’” Colorado Community Media, November 13, 2023.

⁸Collinson and Hodin, “Best Practices for Engaging A Multigenerational Workforce.”

Please cite as

Erik Scairpon and Eric Tung, “Reimagining Hiring for Police Organizations: A Multidimensional Approach to Addressing Hiring Challenges,” Police Chief Online, July 24, 2024.