Critical influences on succession management for non-commissioned ranks within Victoria police
Creators: name: Owbridge, Lynne Michelle
Publisher: name: Figshare
Year: 2017
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: This thesis examines issues affecting succession management within noncommissioned
ranks (NCRs) of policing services. Using Victoria Police (VicPol) as a
case study, this research explored the organisation's capacity to build individual and
organisational capability through adequate recruitment of new police, professional
learning, and retaining talent within NCRs.
A grounded theory approach was used to explore VicPol's recruitment, foundation
training, transfer, promotion, career development not linked to promotion, and
retention of talent for NCRs through a document review, and seeking corporate and
individual perspectives on succession management and career development for
these ranks. The initial part of the study involved descriptive research describing
past and current recruitment and career development models for NCRs to provide
context. Exploratory research developed a balanced picture by providing
understanding of the underlying processes and influences informing the way VicPol
handles succession management and career development opportunities.
Quantitative and qualitative data were collected with corporate perspectives sought
through a document review and semi-structured interviews with 15 key VicPol
managers, whilst individual views were sourced via a workplace survey for which
stratified sampling was used, and further interviews with 30 selected survey
respondents. Constant comparison was utilised to code and analyse data, eliciting
interpretations about how VicPol can build individual and organisational capability
through adequate recruitment of new police, professional learning, and retaining
talent within NCRs. The data' determined VicPol's recruitment, foundation training,
transfer, promotion, and career development not linked to promotion have critical
interdependencies, with all inherently linked to retaining talent. The grounded theory
developed shows organisational awareness, organisational limitations, work I life
balance, and organisational capability are critical influences impacting succession
management within NCRs of policing services.
Giving consideration to an appropriate mix of knowledge, skills and capabilities,
VicPol requires capacity to strategically plan and align its current and future sworn
workforce with effective service delivery to ensure long-term sustainability of
generalist and specialist roles through succession management within NCRs. This is
critical as VicPol becomes challenged by a rapidly shrinking labour market,
generational differences in workers, and its ageing workforce projected to result in 30
per cent of police having less than five years' service by 2014 (VicPol, 2012a).
VicPol requires a system encapsulating all human resources practices examined in
this study, with robust links among them to ensure they are complementary and work
collectively towards identifying and retaining talent through succession management
rather than operating discretely to each other. Recruitment and an appropriate
professional learning model providing continuous professional learning, including
lateral and vertical movement, for recruits and NCRs should sit within a far wider set
of resourcing and development processes linked to retaining talent.
This study of VicPol provides a detailed portrait of the setting in which the research
was conducted to give enough information to judge applicability of the findings to
other settings. Because most western policing services still subscribe to traditional
western police recruitment, foundation training, transfer, and promotion models
similar to those used by VicPol, the critical influences on succession management
within NCRs are likely to be transferable to other western policing agencies. As the
critical influences identified are principally due to VicPol being pyramidal and paramilitary
based, there is also potential for transferability on a broader scale
incorporating other rank based, para-military organisations.