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Human resource management is especially important in business areas where people play primary role. Sure, we don’t want to say that machines can adopt decisions and overcome problems and even severe crisis. But in some areas such as military or police human factor is extremely important. The gun will not shoot by itself and the criminal will not come to prison by himself. Police and military are those areas where human mistake may cost serious injuries or life, unlike commercial businesses were mistakes cost money, sometimes huge money.
For this reason a special attention should be given to human resource management in police. The task of police HR department is to find people who want to work in police, educate them, help them understand all peculiarities of police work and then create suitable working conditions to retain such employees.
A police officer has to be 100% loyal to police service as he is representative of the law. Any mistake a policeman may make can cost him his life or life of other people whom he should protect. Taxpayers hire police to protect them, and taxpayers want their money to be used efficiently.
That’s why human resource policy in police departments needs to be constantly evaluated. Some progress if police departments are already using balanced scorecard system to link operational in strategic management. Sometimes personnel policy conflicts with strategic goals. Balanced scorecard helps align human resource measures with mission and vision of the police. As known, balanced scorecard measures performance through evaluation of key performance indicators. In our case these indicators may look like this:
- Average number of training hours per employee. What will happen to a policeman who has and shot a gun for a year? The answer is quite simple – he will miss when the time comes to neutralize a suspect. What will happen in the policeman has not run for half a year? Will he catch a suspect when needed? Of course, not! Training in police is a must. The more policemen trains the more professional he is. It doesn’t matter if this concerns a field work or office work. Average number of training hours per employee shows efficiency of HR department in its training and coaching campaigns. It goes without saying that training should be effective otherwise this will be just a waste of money. At the same time policemen should not spend much of their personal time to train as this will decrease their satisfaction with work and possibly their performance.
- New staff vs. experienced staff ratio. Of course, believes should hire young people who want to serve their society. But rookies in police may cause serious problems. Lack of experience in confronting criminals may cost them their lives. That’s why it is important that the police department has a sufficient number of experienced officers who would instruct newcomers, shared some secrets of their work, or even protect them if necessary. One cannot buy experience, but can only get it in real work. Measurement of this indicator will help police avoid problems and improve their work.