Recruitment and Retention Strategies

Recruitment of Police Officers

The recruitment of law enforcement officers has never been harder. The combination of a strong labor market, adverse national media coverage and stringent entrance requirements make recruiting a major challenge facing law enforcement today. This is a problem that is common to all law enforcement agencies with no sign of abatement in the near future. There is a cyclical aspect to the problem as well. The normal tenure of a law enforcement officer is 20 – 25 years. There is usually a period of great turnover in an organization when a large group of officers retire. This is followed by a period of mass hiring of replacement officers. This group goes through their career with supplemental hiring of officers who have left due to medical disability, health or to pursue other careers. At the end of the 20 – 25 years, this group retires and creates a need for an additional mass hiring.

Traditional Advertisement strategies

Recruitment strategies have evolved from placing a classified advertisement in the local newspaper to utilizing the full range of technology and relational recruitment techniques. Law enforcement departments are making use of recruiting fairs, college employment days and local entertainment events to staff a recruiting booth with their promotional materials. Glossy posters, professional videos and department logo gifts are all used to catch the eye of a potential recruit and gain an opportunity to “sell the department.”

Digital Marketing Strategies

Digital media and analytics are the newest tools used to drive a potential recruit toward a particular department. A medium size department in the Pacific Northwest engaged the services of a digital media company as part of their recruiting efforts. The digital media company inquired as to what age group, specific demographics, education and recreational interests would meet the target group of entry level law enforcement officer candidates. They developed an online digital campaign that ran four separate ads featuring a different officer from the department. The officers featured were millennials and represented targeted minority groups. The ads appeared on Facebook and invited the viewer to “click on” the officer’s photo to learn more about a career in law enforcement. The “clicks” were tallied after a month and the two officers who received the most clicks became the face of the digital campaign for the duration of the program. A link was provided to allow the potential candidate to send in an interest submission with just a click of the mouse. This strategy is also employed for lateral police candidates with a link in a national police website seeking lateral police officers.

Recruiting Experienced  Lateral Officers

In addition to new entry level police candidates, many departments are recruiting experienced police officers, known as “lateral officers”. These officers are in high demand based on their ability to be placed into service with a short orientation / transition period with the new agency. Police officers with 6 – 10 years’ experience are the most common officers looking to move to a different agency.  Those officers with more than 10 years seem to consider themselves to be half way through their career of 20 years and seem less likely to move.

One successful strategy for recruiting lateral officers is to utilize the contacts and resources of a recently hired lateral officer. A recently hired officer from a large metro police agency suggested a few more officers that would be a good addition to the department. The newly hired officer contacted officers from his old agency and officers he had worked with from surrounding agencies and gauged their interest in coming to the pacific northwest. A three day recruiting trip was scheduled and testing was conducted the first two days and a background interview occurred on the third day. The department hired four more quality lateral officers from that targeted recruiting trip.  The best recruitment strategy for your agency is from a lateral officer who recently joined your agency and wants to bring other qualified officers with them.

Lateral Officer Motivation

Lateral officers seem motivated to change agencies based on quality of life issues in their current communities or based on family connections to another part of the country. Providing signing bonuses does not appear to be an effective strategy, but offering a stipend for moving expenses has been effective. A referral bonus given to an officer who recruits lateral officers from their former agency may also have a positive effect on gaining quality lateral officers. An initial bonus could be paid when the newly recruited lateral officer successfully completes the application process and a second bonus could be paid when the new officer passes the Field Training Officer program.

Candidate pool

A robust recruitment program becomes important when attempting to fill multiple vacancies that mass retirements create. The high moral and ethical standards applied to entry in to the law enforcement profession necessitate a large candidate pool to hire even one officer. With only a 2% - 5% success rate of those who initially apply to be a law enforcement officer, you can see how a large number of candidates need to be processed to find the one or two officers that can meet all the requirements. The challenge is the same for small or large departments. A small rural agency that needs one officer will still have to recruit and test at least 15 – 20 applicants to meet that need.

Retention of Personnel

In the military, a “stop loss” provision is available to retain experienced personnel. This option is not available in the civilian law enforcement world so other techniques need to be employed to retain experienced law enforcement personnel. As officers age, the physical demands of the job wear on their bodies and long term health concerns become a focus of retirement planning. Progressive departments realize that retaining personnel is more cost efficient in the short term than recruiting and training an entry level candidate. The one year recruiting, basic law enforcement training and probationary period required in on boarding an entry level officer can be mitigated by retaining an experienced officer during that time period. Departments successful in retaining their experienced officers utilize monetary and health benefit incentives. The use of longevity pay can be used to provide economic incentives to officers who would normally retire at the conclusion of a 20 year career. Departments which offer a percentage of “sick leave” cash out or rollover into a Health Savings Account after 20 years is also a successful retention tactic.

A thoughtful approach to employee retention can smooth out the “bubble” of experienced officers who leave and create a labor shortage with their retirement.