Exhibit 1
Recruitment and Hiring Incentives for Lateral Police Officers A. PURPOSE
The City has determined that Lateral Police Officer is currently a “hard to fill” position and the purpose of this policy is to define the specific recruitment and hiring incentives that may be offered to candidates and to employees who refer successful candidates.
The City recognizes that officers from other agencies have accumulated years of service that provide for higher vacation accrual rates, time that is counted towards longevity pay incentives, and progression in their respective salary schedule.
The City also recognizes that word of mouth recruitment efforts from our police officers is an effective method of attracting qualified lateral officers.
The City also recognizes that there are cost savings and operational benefits when we are able to hire trained, experienced officers.
B. OVERALL GUIDELINES
The City would like to provide Lateral Police Officer candidates with the following hiring incentives:
1) Offer the candidate an advanced step in the salary schedule to ensure the City can meet or reasonably exceed the candidate’s current compensation. 2) Offer the candidate a starting vacation accrual rate that is commensurate with their years of service as a peace officer. Said accrual rate shall increase in regular increments going forward as provided in the vacation accrual schedule described in the Memoranda of Understanding for the Alameda Police Officers Association. As an example: a lateral officer with seven years of experience will accrue twenty days of vacation per year upon hire and their accrual rate would increase to twenty one days upon completion of one year of service with the City of Alameda and so forth.
3) For candidates with five or more years of experience, offer the candidate additional vacation hours. The City would grant 80 hours of vacation upon completion of 12 months of service.
These vacation hours would be considered additional accruals and would not affect ongoing vacation accrual rates.
4) Offer the candidate year for year service credits up to a maximum of ten years to be used towards the years of service required to obtain the Retention Pay incentive as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding for the Alameda Police Officers Association. For a lateral officer with ten or more years of service this would amount to a 3% increase in pay. As an example: a lateral officer with ten years of service credit would be eligible for the 10 year service retention pay rate of 3% upon hire and would be eligible for the fifteen year service retention pay rate upon completion of five years of service with the City of Alameda. 5) Offer the candidate front loading of up to 48 of the 96 sick leave hours police officers accrue annually. Front loading of sick leave accruals shall result in an employee not accruing Exhibit A
additional sick leave until his/her service time is equal to that in order to generate the amount of front loaded sick leave. At that time, accrual shall commence at the awarded rate.
The City would like to provide the Alameda Police Department’s sworn employees with the following recruitment incentive:
1) Offer employees who refer a lateral candidate two days of vacation or the equivalent cash payment upon the lateral candidate’s successful completion of probation. The time would need to be used or cashed out in the same calendar year as earned, unless it is within the last four full pay periods of the calendar year. In which case employee will be eligible to receive the leave hours after January 1st of the following calendar year. The cash out option would follow APD’s current year‐end floating holiday cash out process.
C. GENERAL PROCEDURES
When the Police Department identifies a lateral candidate the Chief of Police will prepare a justification memo for approval by the Human Resources Director and City Manager prior to the offer being made. This memo should include language addressing the departments hiring needs and the candidate’s current years of service, compensation level, and benefits package. The memo should also identify if an advanced salary step will cause salary compaction with current police officers at the same salary level.
The Human Resources Department will review this policy annually to evaluate if Lateral Police Officer remains a hard to recruit position. The following criteria will be used in the evaluation.
Does the Police Department have current long term vacancy rates despite repeated recruitment efforts to fill vacant positions?
There is a documented shortage in the labor market for experienced police officers.