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.<\/p>\n
New plans to allow Chief Constables to offer \u00a34,000 bonuses to help \u2018urgently\u2019 ease recruitment crises were ratified by the Home Office recently.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhy should some teams get this and not others?\u201d Federation Chairman Steve Kent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u2019ve come from a response team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at breaking point and no one seems to want to come back to response to be a response cop.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut on the flip side I know too well from the work I\u2019ve done with CID departments that they\u2019re 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?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019ll also be a lot of other departments across the force, so I don\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n
\u201cAll 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\u2019m here to fight for better conditions for officers, however I think it\u2019s got to be very well thought out about what\u2019s being bought in and for who it\u2019s being bought in,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Steve\u2019s also concerned that it may make money the overriding motivating factor for applying for the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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\u2019ve been through is nowhere near as rigorous as it should be.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople 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\u2019ll think, \u2018I can go into this job and I can get extra, I\u2019m making it up 10% on my pay packet each year\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s natural for people to do that but I think we\u2019ve got to be careful about how we identify our talent in that respect and it shouldn\u2019t be based on financial reward.\u201d<\/p>\n