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Some thoughts on promotion processes following a fairly difficult week for those taking the Inspectors exam. Having previously been @MPFed Promotion Lead for a number of years and recently gone through the process in February I feel vaguely qualified to comment.
No promotion process is going to be perfect. There will always be someone unhappy about it. And as a fellow rep said to me - it is an emotive subject & officers are more bothered about promotion than they are the prospect of going to prison if they failed in their duties.
I do think there needs to be some sort of legal examination - present exam doesn& #39;t test law that is relevant to many core policing roles and that probably makes CoP very distant from the front line.
I don& #39;t pretend to be an expert on the system in Scotland ( @west_response can enlighten me) but some sort of qualification could be a good idea if it incorporated the law and management issues. Once you had that you could then apply for Sgt or Insp. Just an idea.
The Met has now got some managerial scenarios in the Sgts process. That seems sensible to me and candidates in the current process seemed to like those sort of questions. I do think forward facing should feature a bit more. So not just about everything in the past.
In terms of the recent Insp process I did, of course I& #39;m going to say it was alright! I was treated fairly in all parts of the process and my feedback was relevant. In fact before I knew my result I emailed to SSCL to say I was impressed in how the process was run.
Some got upset at the briefing exercise (20mins prep on unseen material and them deliver 15 min briefing). It was challenging but I do think that could reflect real life. You might end up doing a fast time briefing like that. Written test was just a mountain of information.
There is certainly room to improve that - I can touch type (self taught from a mad rush to get my dissertation in at uni) but plenty can& #39;t so i can totally get the frustration at those who ran out of time.
The way into promotion processes definitely needs to be better. I see a few forces binned the application form - all for that. But needs a good PDR process to back it up. How many honestly have that? Not many I suspect.
The way we use acting ranks also needs to change. We cause a lot of problems but putting people into those positions and then they fail the actual promotion process. Often suspect that is because they aren& #39;t given enough support with the process in the first place. Doomed to fail
In summary - it is moving in the right direction albeit at a glacial pace. There is a lot more that can be done to support candidates in terms of their own management. But I definitely think we could look at more what can someone do rather than what they have done.
