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Lateral Hires

It’s not unusual to advertise with the vision of hiring an experienced person into the public safety environment.  I’ve seen groups of police chiefs and PSAP Directors send verbal jabs at each other for stealing prized employees.  Most of the jabs were said in jest, some were not.  Why do employees leave one agency and jump to another?  The reasons vary, from dissatisfaction with their current employer or position to moving.

Personally, the move from my first, to second, to third PSAP all involved relocating.  My fourth and last PSAP job was strictly based on opportunities.  Technically speaking, my moves were not considered “job hopping”.  Job hopping by definition is when persons move from one employer to another after less than two years with each position/employer.  According to Indeed.com, one of the primary reasons for job hopping is higher wage compensation.

Rather than wait for the current employer to provide wage increases, employees are often able to move to a different agency for a higher wage with faster increases.  Career advancement is the second largest contributor to job hopping.  Moving to a different agency with more chances of advancement provides employees with a great opportunity to learn new skills, obtain more responsibilities, and have higher chances of promotions without waiting for several years.

With today’s mobile workforce, the days of pitching an application out the door due to “job hopping” is rapidly decreasing.  Retirements have transitioned to portable 401K plans, making agency “loyalty” for the purpose of pension packages unnecessary.   Indeed.com has listed the top advantages of job hopping as:

  • Higher Salary
  • Career Advancement
  • Location Change
  • Adaptability
  • Better Environment

Disadvantages are shown as:

  • Difficulty finding employment – Frequently job moves mean instability for organizations. Training can take weeks to months depending on the position.  Keeping a new employee in the PSAP environment when they have a job-hopping history means steady turnover.
  • Inconsistent experience
  • Promotion of job dissatisfaction (if you leave a job every time you are unhappy, you may never fully be able to learn how to properly handle challenging situations)
  • Loss of benefits – Job hopping can likely cost you any vesting benefits you may have accumulated.  Most jobs do not offer vesting until five-plus years. Insurance benefits must also be included when moving from one job to another.
  • Stress and Uncertainty – Changing jobs may include unnecessary stress and tension in your personal life. Relocating, new job expectations, new people, new contracts. New jobs are often physically and emotionally draining, switching jobs often is hard on your body.

Another disadvantage may be the rate of pay and benefits.  You may be able to bring in an experienced applicant at a higher rate than the bottom pay step.  Or bring them in at the first step with a higher negotiated step increase upon successful completion of probation.  If your agency has a bargaining unit, work closely with them (and the Board or Chief you answer to), to formulate a plan to attract those who have experience.  The agency may miss out on excellent candidates if they are unable to offer a higher wage package.

Lateral vs. Training:  I have hired slightly over 100 people in my management career.  I distinctly remember one applicant who looked great in every area except job stability.  During the interview, she was asked why she had switched jobs so often.  Her response was 100% understandable – she was going to school, and looking for something that could be a career that she enjoyed.  She had put herself through a dispatch training academy and was well prepared for the career switch.  I hired her and she turned out to be a fantastic candidate.

She became an incredible asset and progressed in the agency to a Communications Training Officer and was involved in the agency’s peer-to-peer support team and union leadership. She is an example of finding out why people are hopping, but she was not considered a lateral hire because she had no experience.  She did have basic training that assisted her in knowing what the job expectations were, which proved to be helpful.

Many lateral hires are good hires, but not all of them will have an easy time in training.  When you hire someone with experience, you get all of them – with their knowledge, skills, habits and attitudes.  Adjusting those habits and attitudes to fit your agency’s culture can sometimes be difficult.  You also have to be aware that when you do a background check you may get honesty and you may get slight (or blatant) deception.

Many leaders have been fooled when other agencies provide a glowing review of the applicant, only to find out after they were hired that they were sub-par at their organization.  Or their skills were great but they were always “stirring the pot” and right on the edge of every personnel problem that arose.  As a leader, I kept a big wooden spoon in my office to address the pot stirring in a lighter-hearted manner.

At times when I would hear employees stirring each other up, I would go get my spoon and set it down in front of the instigator.  I would tell them to bring the spoon back to me when they were done stirring the pot.  It was a gentle, yet clear reminder of the culture we were striving for.  Lateral hires often have the knowledge to do the job as well as the knowledge of how to stir up their less experienced peers.

Another challenge you may be faced with is a background check that reveals an employee with job performance challenges.  Look into these carefully with your applicant.  Sometimes these challenges have everything to do with the training methods or environment of the organization and the applicant, trained differently and in a different culture, can become a stellar candidate for you.  Others are helping the new employee with the re-treading processing.  A retread is often the term used to describe a new-to-you dispatcher.

Learning a new way of dispatching along with new equipment can be very hard when a seasoned dispatcher joins your staff.  A lot of encouragement and clear communication is needed when a retread is struggling. Be careful not to write off those who struggle.  The person may have come into your organization believing that with all of the knowledge and skill they possess, it would be an easy transition, only to be surprised and discover that it’s not.  Once they accept that, training a retread may become a lot easier.

Once you have resolved the challenges that may be associated with your lateral hire, be ready to embrace the beauty of fresh new ideas with a wealth of experience and knowledge to back them.  Lateral hires may bring with them many new ideas and processes that have worked well in their previous positions.  LawCrossing.com provides a brief list of the positive attributes of a lateral hire:

  1. Lateral hires are an effective way to bring in new ideas and perspectives.
  2. They can be an excellent way for companies to make organizational changes without firing people.
  3. Lateral hires can help organizations become more diverse, and suitable for the organization’s culture.

Hiring experienced employees from other agencies can provide a good boost within your agency.  However, as with all aspects of the hiring process, you must still proceed throughout the process as you would an experienced applicant to help reduce the chances of a bad hire.