Overhauling police officer recruitment communications

The challenge

As part of their work to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers, the Police Uplift Programme wanted to support the 43 forces in England and Wales to manage candidates through their recruitment process. They sought to provide a best practice framework to help ensure the best candidates remain in the often lengthy recruitment process.

The solution

Working to short deadlines and tight budgets, we created an easy-to-use toolkit showing what to communicate at each stage of the recruitment process to keep candidates engaged. The bank of assets included:

  • A timeline laying out the complex recruitment process in a clear, yet engaging format for candidates
  • An interactive PDF for recruiters with downloadable assets for each stage
  • Social media templates for interesting ‘did you know?’ facts to maintain engagement
  • An email signature for recruiters signposting further information.

We also held a workshop for recruiters to introduce our toolkit and the accompanying assets, ensuring standardisation of this communication across the 43 forces in England and Wales.

The results

Along with a high take up for the workshop, feedback from police recruiters was very positive and showed that these assets will undoubtedly make their lives easier. In the future, we expect measurement to show this toolkit had a positive effect on police recruitment, while keeping the best candidates engaged throughout the process, to the point of a job offer.

“44 were great to work with. They understood our tight timescales from our early conversations and ensured the campaign was on track with a clear delivery date. Forces are already using the assets and we were very pleased with the concept and design. We will continue to recommend 44 for internal communications campaigns across policing.”

Chloe Cryne, Communications Manager, NPCC Police Uplift Programme

Why we love it

“We love a challenge that involves bringing together complex communication requirements into an easy-to-use, engaging format that delivers for our client, especially one that is for such a vital reason.”

Sam Docking, Senior Project Manager