Halton Regional Police has eliminated the Ontario Police College exam as part of its promotion process.
The police service has revamped its protocol for officers to become sergeants, relying more on practical skills observation and evaluation than the written test. It also incorporates more coaching and mentorship.
“The new process is a marked departure from previous promotion processes,” Deputy Chief Kevin Maher said during a presentation at Thursday’s Halton Police Board meeting.
The key elements of the former promotion method were the OPC exam and a panel interview. There are currently 22 candidates in the final stage of the new process, which involves them being put into an acting sergeant role on the road over a three-month period.
“One big difference is that you would go through a promotional interview, go through some testing, and then you would show up on Day 1 as a confirmed sergeant,” said superintendent Cole Repta. “Now they’ve spent three months in a car, driving around, going to calls.”
Each month candidates meet with a supervisor who will identify their strengths and areas in which they can improve.
“The previous iterations lacked significant involvement of the candidate’s direct supervisors in identifying and developing future leaders,” said Louise More, manager of human resources for Halton Regional Police. “These are the people working with the candidates on a daily basis, the ones that know them best, the ones that see their work. We wanted to tap into these individuals in a meaningful way.”
Maher said the feedback received through the development of the new process was that the OPC exam was preventing people from putting their name forward for promotion. That prompted a closer look at the exam.
“It was based on philosophies and policing models that we don’t subscribe to anymore or are out of date,” he said.
There is still a test element that helps narrow down the field of candidates in the early stages of the new process, but it is tailored more toward Halton Regional Police’s needs.
“(It) is specific to what we want to measure, what is important to our organization,” Maher said, “as opposed to letting an external organization determine what it is our people need to know before they can be promoted.”
Another big change in the protocol is rather than officers applying to become sergeants, now everyone who meets the requirements, which include seven years with the organization and being discipline-free, is automatically included in the process unless they opt out.
Inspector Anita Laframboise said in the cases where people opt out, it prompts a discussion with a supervisor and human resources as to why they don’t want to proceed. Those conversations can then help address issues that are preventing them from proceeding.
Statistics showed that fewer female candidates put themselves forward for promotion and it’s hoped the new method will encourage more to do so. That wasn’t the case this year, but Superintendent Sue Biggs said it was a bit of an anomaly, with many of the eligible female candidates instead applying to join specialized units that were of interest to them.
Through the monthly meetings with candidates, Repta said he feels he knows the candidates much better, as well as being able to see how they perform on the job.
Biggs said that whether or not candidates earn a promotion, the new process can still benefit them because of the coaching and mentorship aspect.
“We have seen so much value in this,” she said. “We’re setting up our people for success rather than throwing them to the wolves. We’re actually supporting them and developing them to be future leaders.”
