October 2002 Volume 83 Number 10 "serving the protectors"
By Trevor Haskell PASA Vice President

Selections

Selection procedure continues to be a weeping sore within SAPOL. I believe the lack of a specialist selections unit is a critical flaw in SAPOL selection policy. SAPOL has adopted a mishmash approach to selections. Management has chosen not to make this, and many other work areas, specialist fields. This is an “anyone-can-do-selections” approach, and we have ended up with a centralized control point with localized selection advisory committees.

There are many reasons why a specialist selection unit should be set up. It would ensure that trained people – who have knowledge of timeframes, process and assessment protocols – deal with every selection. These people would have neither secret agenda nor unwritten knowledge or gossip on any of the candidates. They would not have been briefed by the candidates’ boss as to who he or she wants in the job. They would be trained in how each assessment item is to be viewed.

The process for every selection should follow a predictable pattern with clear responsibilities and accountabilities.

Those who sit on current panels are very competent people in their own sphere of expertise. Some only sit on panels once a year or perhaps every couple of years. It is sometimes a matter of being in the wrong place and getting roped in. Trying to fit in selection advisory panel duty between murder investigations, or other responsibilities of one’s real job, creates an ad hoc system.

Some argue that you need a local on the panel, but very often this is when bias can creep in or requirements that are not in the PID are raised. This occurs because some managers in local work areas do not believe a generic PID gives a proper account of the position. There is little doubt that, with a specialist selections unit, the PIDs would also be revisited.

The original policy was that all panel members be trained. There were about 60 in the first training group, but what training has been done since?

This is, in my view, one of the top five issues within SAPOL. The poor history of selection management in SAPOL demands a full review.

The selection issue also leads into the quality of the assessments that supervisors provide of their staff. Performance appraisals and bits of personal files appear in a seemingly ad hoc way on occasions. Members have been surprised to read comments that they did not know had been made about them.

Then we add in the most curious issue of selections. It is astonishing that some selection panels require the scalp of another officer to show integrity. That is to say that, unless you can show that you have detected someone else being naughty, you cannot prove integrity. It has crossed my mind that this might be why so many bullshit complaints seem to keep being dealt with by formal processes rather than at the level of managerial supervisory responsibility.

Perhaps this is why: to show I am a person of integrity, I need to formally charge someone with failing to dot an i. What of the integrity of the selection process when such behaviour is not only accepted by management, but also apparently encouraged to be the norm?

The selection process has the potential to become institutionalized bullying. It is time for a real review. We must be prepared to put more cases of abuse of process before the courts and other places of arbitration. We shall explore whether the industrial commissioners are able to consider the lack of a trustworthy selection process as a core industrial issue.

PASAweb   Index & Search   Top of Page   Comments   Email to Editor

The Police Journal Online is an official publication of the Police Association of South Australia and is published monthly. Editors of kindred publications can seek permission from the Editor to re-publish any Police Journal Online article. Copyright 2001  The Police Association of South Australia sustance