Federation: Bonus plan could be another blow to morale

OFFERING bonuses to help fill hard to recruit for roles could be divisive and hit already low officer morale South Yorkshire Police Federation has warned.

New plans to allow Chief Constables to offer £4,000 bonuses to help ‘urgently’ ease recruitment crises were ratified by the Home Office recently.

“Why should some teams get this and not others?” Federation Chairman Steve Kent said.

“We have to be truly careful with the force with bonuses for some and not others. I want to be very careful not to isolate certain parts of CID when I say this, but I’ve come from a response team.

“We’re at breaking point and no one seems to want to come back to response to be a response cop.

“But on the flip side I know too well from the work I’ve done with CID departments that they’re similarly at breaking point with some truly horrendous caseloads where officers are working ridiculous hours just to keep their head above water. So why should one (receive the bonus) and not the other?

“There’ll also be a lot of other departments across the force, so I don’t want readily know what some intelligence departments are doing day in, day out. I need to find out about their workloads, but these departments will have their own issues. So why should some get it and not others?

“All this will achieve is a further serious knock to morale to officers who may be working just as hard. I do support officers being rewarded for hard work and we need to look at ways to do that. I’m here to fight for better conditions for officers, however I think it’s got to be very well thought out about what’s being bought in and for who it’s being bought in,” he added.

Steve’s also concerned that it may make money the overriding motivating factor for applying for the job.

“There is a crisis in recruiting for CID and there are concerns that people are being used to just plug the gaps and the application process they’ve been through is nowhere near as rigorous as it should be.

“People are not being identified as talented to do that role and are just being picked as a number. This could further this issue because people may just go into it because they’ll think, ‘I can go into this job and I can get extra, I’m making it up 10% on my pay packet each year’.

“It’s natural for people to do that but I think we’ve got to be careful about how we identify our talent in that respect and it shouldn’t be based on financial reward.”