The HR team at the Metropolitan Police has signalled its intent to become more strategic, moving away from focusing on recruitment to developing the skills of staff and managing change.
A new four-year HR strategy, known as ‘Enabling People’, will see the Met focus on four areas: becoming an employer of choice, releasing potential, delivering leaders for the future, and using people effectively.
Speaking exclusively to Personnel Today, Met HR director, Martin Tiplady, said the force had recruited enough people, and now has to develop them and give them the necessary skills and capabilities for modern policing.
To make sure skills are being used effectively, he said, the force needed to review employee roles across the organisation.
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“Modern policing is not just about blue uniforms and support staff,” he said. “The Met is a very efficient organisation, but there are things police officers do just because they have always done them. For example, detectives detect fraud, but sometimes the best people for looking at that are accountants, as there is a lot of number crunching to do.”
Succession planning and having an idea of who would be managing the organisation in five to 10 years’ time is a key part of the strategy, Tiplady said. To facilitate this, the Met has launched a three-year development programme.
