Police Now won Diversity and Inclusion Initiative at last night’s Recruitment and Marketing Awards (Wednesday 27^th October 2021) for its Change the Story campaign, and has picked up a number of other awards this season for its ability to deliver strong results in police recruitment and training despite the significant challenges facing the policing and the graduate recruitment sectors over the last year. 

Police Now’s Change the Story campaign, supported by Blackbridge Communications, launched in November 2020 following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. It highlighted the need for better representation in the police and addressed some of the tough realities around diversity in the service, asking graduates ‘Will you be a part of that change?’ in a drive to encourage dialogue on a challenging subject and to recruit more officers from diverse backgrounds to be leaders on the policing frontline.

On top of the challenges the graduate recruitment sector faced during the pandemic, the policing sector has also faced significant pressures around enforcing Coronavirus legislation, rising crime, resourcing and the devastating murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard which understandably led to a decrease in public confidence in the police.

Despite these challenges, Police Now continued to drive high application numbers and strong diversity across its National Graduate Leadership Programme and National Detective Programme, with the largest ethnic minority diversity to be achieved in national police recruitment in this country in 2020/21. Of those starting on the Police Now National Graduate Leadership Programme in 2021, 25% of those identified as coming from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background and more than half (52%) identified as women. Of those recruited to Police Now’s National Detective Programme in 2020, 66% identified as women and 24% identified as from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background (68% of whom identify as women). This is higher than the workforce national average. 

The other awards Police Now has won this season are:

–   Three Institute of Student Employer (ISE) awards: Commitment to Improving Diversity through Student Resourcing, Innovation in Attraction (supported by RMP Enterprise) and Best Attraction Campaign for its ‘aspirational, holistic and human-centred’ approach to diversity and inclusion across its programmes.

–   The Recruiter Awards 2021: Best Graduate Recruitment Strategy, for its You’ll be there campaign. Judged by industry experts, this award recognises outstanding creativity, innovation and effectiveness in developing and executing a graduate trainee recruitment programme that has led to the achievement of strategic business goals.

–   Two CIPD People Management Awards 2021: Best Learning and Development Initiative – public/third sector, and Best Inclusion and Diversity Initiative. In 2020, Police Now adapted quickly to the challenges in police recruitment and COVID-19, still managing to deliver strong results whilst adjusting to digital deliveries across their campaigns and training academies.

–   Two TARGETJobs National Graduate Recruitment Awards 2021: Best Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Police Now officer PC Sami Halepota’s Rising Star award, for this work tackling Anti-Social Behaviour and Child Criminal Exploitation in Runnymede whilst on the National Graduate Leadership Programme.

–   Police Now also recently rose to number 28 in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers – up 62 places since it first joined the rankings in 2018.

Clare Power, Police Now Recruitment and Marketing Director, said: “It’s really important that everything we do addresses the core reasons that certain groups are underrepresented in policing. We need to address these issues head-on in our recruitment and marketing initiatives and build on our long-term commitment and investment into this very real challenge. This means not only recruiting outstanding and diverse leaders to the policing frontline but also continuing to support them throughout our two-year training programmes and beyond, so they can have maximum impact in their communities.

“We were competing against some huge brands and graduate programmes, so it is a real testament to the Police Now brand – as well as the considerable support from our partner forces and the Home Office – that we have been recognised by industry experts and university students this way, and continued to achieve strong results across our recruitment and programmes over the last year.”