APCO Task Force Survey Results

Why do personnel leave public safety communications?

From the table, it's appears that working conditions and private sector jobs are the main reasons that dispatchers leave the profession. On the other hand, benefits and other comm center jobs bear the least on their departure decision. Interestingly, recognition received the highest individual response (37%) among the questions, although it ranked only 4th based on "very" and "extremely" important responses. Benefits received the highest "not important" response, while working conditions received the highest "extremely important" response. The responses in yellow provide a view of the relative important of each response compared to each other. Note the similarity of the dispatcher responses compared to those of potential candidates in the table below.

Why are personnel not attracted to public safety communications?

From the table, it's obvious that potential dispatchers don't apply because of the odd shifts and hours, and the requirement to work holidays. The candidates also don't feel that dispatchers are paid according to their responsibility. The candidates are dissuaded least by benefits and the impression gained from the news media. Competition from private-sector jobs ranked only 3rd in the survey. Note the similarity of ranking to the dispatcher responses in the table above.

• all figures are percents
• survey taken in summer 2000
• yellow highlight indicates largest response for each category; red indicates most important response overall; green indicates the least important response overall
• rank is based on the total "very important" and "extremely important" responses

[back to APCO conference report]

Respondents to 2000 APCO Staffing Survey

The demographics of the respondents doesn't seem to provide any insights into staffing or the current crisis.

What Is Your Authorized Staffing?

These responses seem to confirm what it generally known--that most comm centers (like most law enforcement and fire departments) are small. In this case, 33% of the responding agencies have from 1-10 positions, 20% have from 31-50, and another 20% have from 21-30.

How Many Vacancies Do You Have?

These responses don't provide any particular perspective on the current staffing crisis, because they aren't correlated with the authorized position figures. They do indicate that some respondents may have up to 20 vacancies---but out of how many authorized positions? In this case, 75% reported from 1 to 5 vacancies, while none said they had over 20 vacancies.

What Was Your 1999 Turnover Rate?

The slices of this pie indicate that far too many comm centers are experiencing from 11% to 50% turnover rates---over half the respondents. The biggest slice of the total (29%) reported turnover rates from zero to 10%, while 17% reported rates of from 11% to 20% and from 21% to 30%.

What Was Your Turnover Rate for Jan. to June 2000?

According to APCO's staffing Task Force, this graph indicates that the overall turnover rate for comm centers has increased three percentage points from 1999 to the first six months of 2000. We can see that the zero to 10% category increased from 29% to 31%, and the next largest category (11% to 20%) dropped from 17% to 14%. The third largest category (21% to 30%) increased from 17% to 20%. On the other hand, the percentage of blank responses on the survey form increased from 9% to 17%, which could make comparison of the two results impossible.

[back to APCO conference report]