Content by PowerDETAILS
Sworn officers can enforce the law 24 hours a day, however you can only compensate them for the on-duty time. At the same time private companies want to provide a safe environment to patrons and no one is better prepared to offer this than a police officer. For your staff, this means additional income, while using the skills and training they already possess. Every citizen benefits from having more officers working, without it affecting the limited financial resources of the city or county.
Agencies understand the benefits of secondary employment and many have policies in place to guide officers and command staff alike when managing the process. One example is the “Standard 22.3.5 Extra-Duty Employment” from The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). This standard requires that:
(1) sworn personnel must receive agency permission to engage in extra-duty employment
(2) policies that addresses behavior and activities during extra-duty employment
(3) approval, review and revocation process pertaining extra-duty employment
(4) designation of a point of coordination or administration within the agency to oversee adherence to the aforementioned policies, processes, and other matters deemed appropriate by the agency
(5) documentation of the significant aspects of each officer’s extra-duty employment.
Most agencies can easily address requirements 1, 2, and 3 because they are simple to organize and do not require resources on an ongoing basis. After carefully reading requirements 4 and 5 it becomes evident that they require dedicated resources and on-going monitoring. This is where the “extra-duty coordinator” comes in, a position that typically uses a manual process to distribute available jobs. The coordinator is responsible for handling requests by outside employers, advertising jobs to the staff, making sure the policy is followed and providing reports to the command staff. Here is where a great employee can make a mistake that hurts the agency, the officer’s morale and the perceived or real fairness of the process. Here are some of the problems a coordinator might encounter:
- Job not advertised to everyone - The coordinator needs to reach every officer, regardless of shift or time-off. If not, “the job was not advertised to every officer”.
- Policy Enforcement – The coordinator does his / her best to make sure the policy is followed but with a large number of officers, jobs and a single coordinator, it is difficult to track every hour.
- Documentation – The coordinator needs to have documentation on each job and each officer for multiple years. This includes duties, date, times, incidents, payment status, cost of equipment used and possibly more. It is difficult to aggregate this data and provide reports to the command staff on important matters such as “no shows”, “cancellations” and “incidents”.
Recent tragic events in our country will increase the demand for officers at private venues. Can the coordinator handle a large increase in requests without increasing the chance for errors? There are various solutions, some more costly than others. One option is to hire more staff to help out, another option is to decentralize the process so multiple people handle the coordination duties. Larger agencies might decide to implement a technology solution developed by the information technology department. Another alternative is to evaluate commercially available technology created to solve this problem. A product called PowerDETAILS is a great example of extra-duty and overtime specific software. Agencies all over the nation use it to:
- Receive requests from employers via a web-site.
- Advertise jobs via email or text message.
- Establish limits to make sure the policy is clear to everyone and automatically enforced.
- Keep documentation on every job, every officer and every hour.
- Allow officers access to view and apply for the jobs.
- Allow officers to report actual hours worked after completing the job.
- Generate invoices and integrate with billing and payroll systems.
A tailor-made solution like PowerDETAILS can be rolled out to an agency in 2 or 3 weeks. It is less expensive than hiring more staff or developing an in-house solution. This has the added benefit of utilizing a solution that has been successful to many agencies with similar goals and challenges.
How to learn more? To see PowerDETAILS in action or start a free-trial visit http://www.powerdetails.com or call 855-476-9191 to get your questions answered!
