Issues which affect Induction Procedure Requirements
There are two main differences between the organisations needs in relation to their induction processes.
- The police are employing an individual for life, not until their profitability ceases.
- Mistakes by officers cost the organisation in terms of claims against its budget; those by AXA employees merely affect the profitability of the company.
As such, induction in the police service has to be more involved to ensure that the primary stakeholders, the public, are not served by incompetent officers whose mistakes could affect the service delivery to Lincolnshire as a whole. AXA have to ensure that their managers are profitable as soon as possible to ensure value for shareholders is maximised.
AXA have a short procedure, limited to a welcome pack and a few days with a buddy. This can give a poor initial impression of the company, and a longer time before a new employee fully adapts to the culture and values. This can lead to a greater staff turnover, and initially, poor quality work which may affect the organisational profitability in the short term.
The police have a much greater induction procedure which is designed to adapt officers to a new way of life. Initially a four week process, officers are given tours, meet with representatives from various departments, are given uniform, and have comprehensive inputs on H&S, diversity, pensions and terms and conditions of service. Unfortunately, it can lead to an “us and them” attitude, with officers feeling very different from the public at large.
Comparison of Induction Procedures – Police and AXA
Ultimately, the success or failure of an induction procedure is measured in terms of staff effectiveness during the early stages of their employment, in the satisfaction of the introduction process, and the turnover of staff in the first few months of employment.
It would be useful to have such data to compare the effectiveness of the two induction processes. It is interesting to note that Lee Maddock states in relation to the induction process at AXA “It would be a bit crass of me to say that the induction process consists of the branch manager lobbing your car keys at you and telling you to get on with it but that isn’t far from the truth…… The first few days are usually spent reading the information and asking your buddy questions. It is quite an uncomfortable period of time for the new recruit because the buddy is usually busy and work needs to be done so new recruits are basically thrown straight into it.”
Wanous (1992) suggested a 4 stage process to induction, and the table below examines the relative effectiveness of the two organisations. It is apparent that the police induction process is superior to AXA. This is because the induction is linked to a great deal of training in the police for a completely new role, whereas AXA are inducting people who can already perform the role, but merely require an introduction to the culture of the company.
Development Needs:
Lincolnshire police currently has no formalised appraisal or development system in place for officers once they have achieved 2 years service. The Home Office has recognised the need for an appraisal system based on performance within a particular role, and the national competency based appraisal system, CBAS, has been under development for the past 5 years. It is likely to be implemented within the force in January 2004.
The current lack of appraisal system has an impact on efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.
- Poor performance is not easily identified
- Developmental needs are not identified
- Staff do not feel valued
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Management lack a clear picture of the effectiveness of the organisation.
Police officers still enjoy a “job for life” coupled with generous pension entitlements and an early retirement age. There is no real incentive for officers to leave the organisation once they are confirmed in post. This contrasts with other organisations that recognise the nature of a fluid workforce. Training in such organisations is a way to attract high quality staff who wish to be developed as they work.
AXA have a formalised assessment system with targets clearly identified in monthly meetings with a line manager. This allows for identification of areas for improvement, and unambiguous requirements to achieve specific goals.
Should these requirements not be met, then individuals are encouraged to look elsewhere for employment. This is necessary for a profitable organisation to attract and develop the best staff to ensure value for their shareholders.
One issue of concern is that remuneration is discussed within the appraisal system, and this has been demonstrated to reduce the honesty of staff when discussing developmental needs.
Individual Responsibility –This suggests both organisations have a reactive approach to training, targeted at addressing areas of poor performance, rather than being proactive which would improve overall performance in the organisations.
Management Assessment –This suggests that management within Lincs Police should be more proactive in terms of skills assessment and developmental needs. Benefits would include greater productivity of staff, and higher morale as managerial involvement and recognition in ongoing development is increased.
AXA have a formalised management assessment process.
Role Requirement – any change in role within the police results in training, some through distance learning, some coursework and some supervised training and assessment. However, individual development training defaults to individual officers to arrange. E.g. police officers seeking promotion have to study for, and pass, a national examination. Lincs police currently provides only limited assistance to officers seeking promotion, resulting in a low pass rate amongst candidates. This means the available pool of qualified candidates for promotion has diminished to such an extent that service delivery is now adversely affected as a result of limited supervision.
AXA tend to default to course based learning, with no checks in place as to the effectiveness of the input. The company is aligned to generating high sales, and there does not seem to be the opportunity to transfer between departments in the same way as there is in the police force.
Conclusions
Lincolnshire Police should introduce a formalised assessment and development process in a similar way to AXA. Individuals would be assessed in accordance with force priorities, and training needs identified at an earlier stage.
Feedback mechanisms will also need to be introduced to ensure that training has been assimilated and is therefore effective.
The force should also introduce a formalised system to help officers seeking promotion. Study courses for the examination would ensure a greater pool of qualified candidates, and a mentoring scheme will allow individuals to clarify and develop into the requirements of their new role.
Efficiency would be improved through:
- Greater numbers of trained supervisors
- Clearer linkage of individual role with organisational goals
- Greater definition of the effort-performance link – better morale
- Earlier identification of training needs, and planned career progression
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Effectiveness of training is measured to develop delivery within the force.
Measuring Personal Performance
Lincolnshire Police
Performance of individual police officers is hard to assess. Although such figures as numbers of tickets, searches, arrests and files submitted can be established, one complicated fraud case may result in one arrest, one file, yet tie an officer up all month. The link between effort and performance on an individual basis is therefore tenuous at best.
While the force is geared up to measure its performance by an area, individual performance data is hard to establish. An officer’s productivity has to be established by manual scanning of written returns, whereas that of a sector is easily available from computer systems administered by the Force Information Bureau.
Sector performance is much more important to the police. Performance information, such as crime rates broken down into categories, accident rates and disorder incidents, is cascaded weekly to the sector inspectors, who are expected to implement plans to deal with any trends which become apparent.
Daily tasking procedures result in a performance management approach, which does allow individual officers to understand their contribution towards organisational goals.
The three critical components of any control loop – objective setting, monitoring and review, and action in the light of feedback – are present to ensure effective performance management. (Storey and Sisson, 1993)
The concentration on sector goals recognises that the efforts of the team have a greater bearing on crime and reassurance levels than the efforts of an individual.
Remuneration and recognition also reflect this, in that the police have a national pay scale decided by length of service. There is an ability to pay Special Priority Payments to those in especially demanding roles, but it is interesting to note that these payments are decided by individual chief constables, and all 43 have decided different roles require the payment.
An officer at the maximum of their pay scale can access a Competency Related Threshold Payment, which currently is only linked to attendance. In certain forces, 99% of officers attain that threshold.
While individual assessment is not currently carried out, this is likely to change once the National Competency Based Assessment System is live. CBAS will ensure officers are appraised in relation to a “rating” approach, but will also incorporate “critical incidents” methodology. Supervisors will be expected to monitor and assess individuals on their performance continuously. A formal annual meeting will then be held with the officer’s line manager, to agree development objectives based on organisational priorities, and devise action plans to ensure these goals are met.
The benefit of this approach will be to reinforce the role of the individual in the organisation, link effort to performance, identify developmental needs and facilitate career progression in a structured way.
Problems are that the lack of personal performance data will hinder the monitoring of objectives, and the force will have to consider how to streamline the current information gathering process to facilitate such monitoring ability in a cost effective way. Unless this problem is overcome, the CBAS system is likely to suffer from a lack of credibility amongst staff.
AXA Sun Life
As a profit making company, AXA has to maximise value for its policyholders and shareholders. AXA have the ability to assess Accounts Mangers in relation to their productivity. In a profit making organisation, the income generated will always be the prime performance measurement indices. It is not unreasonable to assume that good sales are an indicator of good performance within the role.
Staff are continuously assessed in relation to their sales figures, and also on twice yearly tests. Poor performance in either results in an action plan being generated on their Personal Development Plan. This can result in additional training being provided.
Monthly appraisal meetings take place with the line manager, where concerns are raised, performance is assessed, and targets assigned for the next month.
It is clear that AXA provides employees with distinct targets to achieve, allowing for self monitoring of progress.
The most important and influential way of assessing an Account Manager is by their business performance figures. These are updated daily and are available to all senior management within the organisation. The Good and Poor performers stand out like a sore thumb. The success and failure of Account Managers at the end of the day is purely performance figures related.
Staff have an annual appraisal interview, and are graded using a rating approach as:
- Below expected
- Expected/good
- Superior
- Outstanding
A “below expected” rating implies that staff are encouraged to leave the company. A financial penalty is imposed in that no pay rise is awarded.
Staff who score a “superior” or “outstanding” rating are awarded a cash bonus, and also additional pay rise. One possible drawback is that these awards are strictly budgeted, and are therefore awarded on a competitive basis, rather than an individual performance basis. This leads to a weakening of the effort-performance link, as the ultimate reward is not within the control of the employee, rather than dependent on the performance of others.
Another possible disadvantage is that an able person may be penalised or disenfranchised when a lack of suitable training is to blame.
It has also been proven that an appraisal interview linked to remuneration or reward can lead to a lack of honesty within the assessment. AXA may wish to examine this, and separate the two parts of the process to allow for a more constructive critical approach.
It is clear that individuals are held highly accountable within AXA for their performance, while in the police, a team of officers is more accountable. Individual efforts are therefore more closely linked to success in a sales environment than in a law and order situation.
AXA obviously feel their appraisal system works. It allows continuous assessment against easily defined targets.
The police have recognised the need to have a personal appraisal system linked to the organisational goals. CBAS has been developed to ensure this is carried out in the future.
References
Recruitment and Selection at AXA Lee Maddock (2003)
Lincs Police Annual Report 2002 (Accesed 5th September 2003)
AXA Sun Life Homepage (Accessed 5th September 2003)
Wanous, J.P. (1992) organisational entry: Recruitment Selection and Socialisation of Newcomers (2nd Edition), Reading, Mass, Addison-Wesley (first published 1980)
Sisson, K. and Storey,J. (2000) The Reakities of Human Resource Management, Buckingham, Open University Press
This seems a very fair and valid point i.e. just because people are experienced doesn’t mean to say that an induction programme is not useful
This is a concise but effective Exec Summary with some good questioning and recommendations. Well done.
…and may not optimise long term performance. This is an astute observation.
I had to blow this diagram up but it was worth it – nice diagram which shows a great deal of information
…probably throughout their employment if the induction process is effective
Although anecdotal this is a good quote which gives some indication of the regard which AXA holds its’ induction programme.
OK in the sense that this sets the scene but you need more in your intro e.g. what you are going to discuss, how you are going to discuss it and the conclusions you will be drawing
This is a great diagram and truly compares the processes. I look forward to reading your commentary
Your pretty much there. You needed to make the final leap of faith to show what actions needed to be taken to improve the situation i.e. present some recommendations – otherwise this was excellent 8/10
I like this form of comparative diagram- it does show what is going on very clearly
…bit more explanation needed here
Not quite sure if you have covered everything, for example, how are skills gaps identified and resolved?
Very reasonable conclusions. 15/20
…linking to Expectancy Theory
…and how might this affect the motivation of individuals in the Force?
..and therefore subject to some subjectivity…?
