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(c) Personnel resources plan: one of these is
being prepared for the rank and file in the Police Force, involving the problems both of recruitment and wastage. As you are all aware, this is a serious problem and it will be interesting to see what proposed solutions this plan produces and whether they are different from the solutions currently favoured. It is already evident that it is not just a problem of pay levels. Charles Sutcliffe is not usually the easiest Head of Department to deal with but he is co-operating with enthusiasm though he does not necessarily agree with some of the assessments in the draft plan. The Consultants are impressed with the calibre of the police staff detached for the exercise,
Some of you may say that all this planning is all very well, but will it not produce inflexibility ? This is a fair comment, but the Consultants maintain that it does not, because plans are updated annually and decisions are not made until they have to be made; when they are made it is easier to make them because most of the data required to make the decision is already there. Furthermore, although the production of the initial plan is quite an ordeal, updating programme plans is relatively easy, particularly as information is fed into them from the annual operating plans. This leads me to say that one weakness of the present test areas is that they are scattered around and we are not testing out all three plans in any one activity. There is also no attempt as yet. to produce a financial resource plan and in the meantime we shall have to rely on the 5-year financial forecast, incomplete though it is, for it was not originally designed for this purpose.
B
It may occur to you to wonder what happens to all this planning when the Consultants leave us in June to which the reply is that we too are concerned about this aspect. Various steps are being taken to train professional, executive and administrative officers in the McKinsey techniques. Unfortunately, because most departments are already short of staff it has not been easy to detach staff to work on these plans. But we are hoping to obtain reinforcements to form a nucleus of management services group which will initially be part of the C Division of Finance Branch working to Alan Scott (PAFS(2)) and Peter Lee (who will be PACS (SD) when he returns from leave in April), with overall direction from myself. Incidentally, don't be too worried about Finance Branch involvement in all this; we are
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