Report Summary
This report provides members of the Scottish Police Authority's People Committee with an overview of HMICS Review of Strategic Workforce Planning – Improvement Plan & developing the next SWP.
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Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
People Committee - 28 February 2023
Date : 28 February 2023
Location : online
Inspection Activity
Outside of Scotland, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) included an assessment of the effectiveness of forces activity to identify and plan to address workforce capability gaps in their recently published evaluation of Force Management Statement (FMS) returns in England & Wales. This reflected that these self-assessments are improving, with a better understanding of demand, but no single FMS is uniformly strong. Almost all forces needed to show a deeper understanding of workforce skills and how they use and develop them, but often the focus is on headcount rather than on meeting changing needs & future demands. HMICS in Scotland have undertaken benchmarking which suggests that there is no one best practice example of strategic workforce planning in UK policing. Our commitment is to learn from good practice and the recommendations of HMICS to undertake a process that fulfils the needs and expectations of the public, our organisation and its workforce.
Police Scotland’s first Strategic Workforce Plan (2021-24) was published in March 2021 having been developed throughout 2020. This plan, its development process and the mainstreaming of the approach across business areas has been reviewed by HMICS in their recent inspection, published in August 2022. The Improvement actions discussed in this paper are drawn from these recommendations.
This HMICS inspection assessed the Police Scotland approach to strategic workforce planning under four headings:
Appropriateness of the overall approach and methodology used in the development of the SWP (and supporting divisional and workstream plans) and the resulting quality of the plans.
Alignment of the SWP within the overall strategic planning framework and governance: including with strategic plans, strategic assessment, demand analysis, transformation portfolio and Target Operating Model.
Application - Examine how the SWP (and supporting processes) are used to support strategic tasking and co-ordination, medium to longer term resource planning and operational change programme/projects to maintain the required level of operational policing capacity with the right skills mix to cope with demand on policing.
Anticipation - Consider how well the SWP reflects projections for demand on policing services in the future (and Target Operating Model) in terms of securing a sustainable policing model.
