Public Safety Data- How to Enhance Staffing Efficiency

Hugo Mcphee, Director of Public Safety, Three Rivers Park District

Hugo Mcphee, Director of Public Safety, Three Rivers Park District

Staff fatigue, call distribution, and seasonal call load all impact what shift is best for a given agency. Hugo Mcphee, Director of Public Safety, Three Rivers Park District, in an exclusive interview with Govt CIO Outlook for the special edition on Public Safety, explained about a method for determining true staffing needs, and as a result, improve staffing efficiency.

Data to determine staffing needs

Frequently when I meet with chief-peers the conversation oftentimes turns to budgets and staffing needs. The following is one way to mathematically arrive at a numbers based solution for determining true staffing needs.

Call Load Analysis

An analysis of call load essentially means that each and every activity an officer is assigned is tracked and accounted for. This is already being done primarily through CAD and police dispatch centers, or alternatively via your record management system (RMS). At the risk of over simplification, if your agency has 5,000 calls for service annually and the total time spent on these calls amounts to 14,500 hours, simple math of 2080 hours worked by a typical employee in a year means that you would need a minimum of 6.97 officers or in reality 7 FTE just to meet dispatched call load. This number however, is misleading, as many calls require more than one officer to respond such as in the case of domestics or building alarms and staff get time off. But for our purposes the minimum 7 FTE is a good place to start our discussion.

This accounts for only calls responded to and not administrative tasks such as report writing, court time, self-initiated field activity, or training days. These too need to be factored in to the officer’s day as does time for proactive patrol. If, as the chief you believe that 30% of an officer’s day should be spent on proactive public interactions, and 5% of an officer’s day spent on administrative tasks, (total 35% non-dispatched call load) this time must also be planned for.

In short, that formulaic process of determining staff needs looks something like this:

14,500 hours total dispatched call time / .65 (where 65% is that amount of time spent on dedicated call response and 35% of time spent on proactivity and admin tasks )= 23,308 hours of work for the department.

23,308 total hours x .30 spent on proactive efforts =6,993 hours of proactivity.

23,308 total hours x .05 spent on administrative tasks = 1,166 hours of administrative time.

Revisiting this data, we now know that to meet the chief’s expectations for proactivity and accounting for administrative tasks, this agency in reality needs a minimum of 11.2 officers (23,308/2080) or 12 total FTE staff. This is referred to as the effective strength for the agency. However, these 12 officers also have days off, vacation, training, etc.

Important note: if the chief believes proactivity and administrative duties should be 20% and not 35%, that will change the total hours needed and therefore total officer complement needed as well. The selected 30% for our example is arbitrary but realistic for the profession. (For example 14,500/.80 = 18,125 hours; meaning 80% of an officer’s activity is dispatch related and 20% spent on proactivity and admin tasks).

Relief Factor

The last step in this analysis is to calculate relief factor, or in other words, the amount of time a given officer is unavailable for work due to vacation, training, sick time, etc. Relief factor is calculated by adding up the total days annually the given officer is not at work due to anticipated time off.

Assume a 2080 hour work year / 12 hour shifts = 174 shifts worked per year plus vacation/sick/training days or 191 days off per year (365-174= 191).

Assume a 2080 hour work year / 10 hour shift = 208 shifts worked per year plus vacation/sick/training days or 157 days off per year (365-208= 157).

Assume a 2080 hour work year / 8 hour shifts = 260 shifts worked per year plus vacation/sick/training days or 105 days off per year (365-260= 105).

As you can see, each shift requires 2080 hours of work annually, but depending on which shift staff work determines a great difference in the number of days on vs days off. For ease of discussion, lets assume that each employee has 10 days of vacation plus 3 training days plus 2 sick days every year for a total of 15 more anticipated days off annually.

Assuming this, an employee working a

12 hour shift has off 206 days RF 1.77

10 hour shift has off 172 days RF 2.12

8 hour shift has off 120 days RF 3.04

Taking this one step further to determine relief factor we take the number of days in a year (365) and divide by days unavailable to work. This number is the relief factor (RF) needed to cover that person’s shift. In the above scenario, 12 hour shifts require a RF of 1.77 staff (in reality 2 FTE); 10 hour shifts require a RF of 2.12 (in reality 3 FTE) and 8 hour shifts require a RF of 3.04 staff (in reality 4 FTE). In this example you actually need fewer staff to cover shifts if they work 12 hour shifts. This may change as discretionary days off increase.

Revisiting the effective staffing numbers from above just briefly, to account for relief factor analysis, we now know that based on the data for our example:

12 hour shift 12 officers x RF 1.77 = 21.24 (22 FTE) officers

10 hour shift 12 officers x RF 2.12 = 25.44 (26 FTE) officers

8 hour shift 12 officers x RF 3.04 = 36.48 (37 FTE) officers

So, by calculating workload analysis and relief factor for each employee you really can “do more with less” simply by adjusting the staff work shift length to meet organizational needs i.e. a 12, 10, or 8 hour schedule. This is not a panacea for reducing costs. Staff fatigue, call distribution (when calls come in) and seasonal call load all impact what shift is best for a given agency. Additionally, you may be limited by contract what shifts officers can work and there are other pros/cons for shift lengths not discussed here.