Victoria Police Census: Understanding employee movements within Victoria Police

Victoria Police is a large organisation with more than 18,000 employees. This includes a broad range of public servants (VPS), forensic officers (FO), reservists, medical officers, police officers, protective services officers (PSO) and police custody officers (PCO). At any given time, employees may not be performing the work for which they are employed, and the employee management system (HR Assist) may not reflect the type or location of work being performed.

Victoria Police operates on funded profiles whereby Government sets the numbers for sworn positions and sets the financial cap for VPS positions. Full-Time Equivalence (FTE) is comprised of a mix of full-time and part-time employees. On 30th June 2016, Victoria Police was funded for: 13,246 Police FTE, 1,313 PSO FTE and 200 PCO FTE. The VPS FTE was controlled by funding rather than capped by numbers, and on the same date there were approximately 2,900 VPS FTE. The total headcount for the organisation was approximately 18,400.

Each Department/Region/Command and their Divisions in Victoria Police are provided a funded profile. The funded profile represents total FTE, and allows a 1.5% churn rate for vacant positions. The assigned funded profiles therefore exceed the approved funded FTE by about 1.5% across the total workforce.
Every employee of Victoria Police owns an assigned position within the funded profile. Such positions may be either:
- A core position, which is assigned to a work unit or location
- A supernumerary position, where the position is assigned above profile for a period of time or holding position where the employee is unattached but remains employed.

Further, some employees may be working away from their core position for an assignment, or in higher or other duties against a core positon owned by another employee. In addition employees may be conducting duties that do not represent their normal (funded) duties whilst remaining against their core position.

Victoria Police Executive Command has implemented a range of models to allocate resources to work units and set funded profiles. Such models include allowances for CAD data, crime rates, population, emergency management and core service delivery requirements.

Anecdotal evidence and observations within the organisation suggest that employees allocated to patrol and response duties are being withdrawn and allocated to short term task forces to address developing crime trends and public order issues. Thus, despite recent increases in police numbers, the number of police available for patrol and response duties has decreased at a time when calls for service have increased.

Victoria Police Executive Command, in consultation with the Police Association (TPA) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), would like to understand whether Victoria Police employees are working at the locations and on the tasks assigned to the positions they own. Therefore, the aim of this project was to explore the proportions of staff performing in their substantive positions.