Law Enforcement
Operational policing solutions.

When it comes to safeguarding public safety and security, the police is perhaps the most important force there is—and also most taken for granted. The police face a highly demanding working environment—in addition to arresting criminals and attending to crises, law enforcement officials spend much of their time working to lower everyday risk to people and property.

An administrator who coordinates the schedules of 80 police officers manages approximately £4.5M of assets per year—too much to trust to manual and ad hoc staffing methods. Without a workforce management system to address complex scheduling factors, up to 65% of staffing costs could fall casualty to unplanned overtime, unexpected absences, and uncoordinated deployment.

Police department services have to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Regardless of the level of demand or the scheduled shifts, each call must receive the same quick response and elevated service levels. Fixed shift patterns and variable shift patterns both present their own challenges—the key is finding a balance between the two with intelligent resource management.

 

The same principles of workplace management used in production environments also apply to service delivery:

• Longer working hours can expose staff to unacceptable peaks in risk and fatigue, increasing margins of error and misjudgement
• Requests for flexible working schedules need to be considered
• Absences, overtime, and training all need to be planned well in advance

If you´re still tracking schedules and resources in spreadsheets—or perhaps even with a pencil and paper–it´s time to catch up to the quickly advancing workforce strategies. At Intellicate, we´ve developed a streamlined solution that enables local police operations to manage workplace complexity, adjust to erratic demand, and get essential resources where they are most needed. Ideal for divisional, sub—divisional, and BCU deployment, our solution offers seamless installation and ease of use, requiring no special IT support.

Managing Variable Scheduling Arrangements (VSAs)
When managing law enforcement, it´s not enough to simply schedule a certain number of daily or weekly hours. The unknown—and most important—factor is when those hours will be in the highest demand. Policing operations require varying shift patterns, often combined with staff working together in the same local area. Our unique shift pattern design environment automates schedule production in a matter of seconds, facilitating future planning and clarifying staff expectations.

Feedback Improves Decision Making
Timely, relevant feedback is essential to continual workforce improvements. Our solutions offer advanced monitoring and analysis tools to generate the insights needed for maximum efficiency. You´ll know ahead of time when you´re in danger of over—staffing or under—staffing, allowing you to make the necessary scheduling adjustments. By deploying staff within defined tolerances, instead of just fixed number counts, you´ll reduce the frequency of ad hoc shift changes and promote team cohesion.

Staff Wellbeing
Research shows that the rigorous demands of police shift work have significant physiological effects. Even with fully compliant schedules, too many nights of extended shifts can cause issues like sleep deprivation, irritability, depression, and sub–par performance. You don´t have to rely on memory or constant back–tracking to ensure sensible scheduling. Automated Conflict Monitoring (ACM) eliminates guesswork, notifying you as soon as working hour thresholds are exceeded or minimum rest periods are breached.

Time Saving Procedures
One potential time waster involves searching witness availability for court hearings. Individual officers often perform this same task multiple times for any given case. Collectively, this is a big time investment–it costs around £12k a year for 80 officers, and a significant £1.2M or more for an entire force. This is a perfect example of where our solutions can reduce or remove a drain on frontline operational resources. By automating this procedure and enlisting several officers across multiple court sessions, the task could take a few seconds instead of a few hours.