Strategic alignment detail

Strategic alignment to strategic police plan and other key enabling strategies

Strategic outcome(s)

Vision 2030 (Three-year Business 2024-2027) – A thriving workforce

People Strategy 2024-2027 - SO 2: We support our people to be confident leaders, innovative active contributors and influencers

Policing Together Strategy – Empower, enable and develop our people

Vision 2030 – A thriving workforce

We will support our people to be effective leaders, with equitable access to career development opportunities, ensuring our recruitment induction, lateral development and promotion processes meet the needs of underrepresented groups.

We recognise that developing our leaders is vital to the growth and effectiveness of our organisation and we will continue to invest in our people to ensure they are supported to lead with the necessary skills and capabilities and to build and lead teams underpinned by our values.

People Strategy – Objective 2: We support our people to be confident leaders, innovative active contributors and influencers

Managing talent is key to improving performance in the workplace, whilst ensuring we remain an inclusive and diverse workplace. We will identify and make best use of our people’s skills and build upon their existing aptitudes to best support of our organisational objectives.

Policing Together Strategy – Empower, enable and develop our people

To enable our workforce to achieve their full potential at all levels, we will work to maintain a culture that empowers and supports effective decision making and development.

Alignment to risk register and risk appetite

Risk alignment

O1C0007 – Leadership – currently within appetite

S1C0001 (pending approval) – Strategic Workforce Planning to Deliver a Sustainable Policing Service – currently outwith appetite, currently within tolerance

O1C0007 – If Police Scotland and the SPA do not invest in an effective Leadership, Talent and Performance Ecosystem with a solid digital infrastructure, and do not invest time and resource to identify future talent and develop current & future leaders, there is a risk that we may not have the agility to adopt innovative solutions, may not be able to adapt in a timely manner to changing internal and external priorities or be unable to apply robust data informed evaluation that would shape effective LTP strategies and interventions. This could lead to a reduced ability to develop future-fit, capable, resilient and diverse leaders, could generate a lack of strong accountability and a create weakened ability to deliver and support effective policing, potentially having a negative impact on service delivery and the development of the organisation's culture.

S1C0001 (pending approval) – If Police Scotland fails to implement and embed effective Strategic Workforce Planning, manage talent, and respond to external factors driving attrition, there is a risk that the organisation will not have a workforce of the right size, leadership, management, skills, capability and structure affordable within available budgets, resulting in an inability to consistently deliver the best policing

The development of a talent management framework is one of the actions assigned to both these risks. The progress set out in this paper therefore directly assists progression of this mitigating action.

Prior governance

JNCC – Objective and PDP Setting Pilot – 19 May 2026

People Board – 20 August 2026

At the JNCC on 19 May 2026, the objective and PDP setting Pilot of this paper was supported by members.

At the People Board on 20 August 2026, members approved this paper to progress to the SPA People Committee for discussion.

Stakeholder engagement

Early stakeholder engagement has been established between Talent Management team and HR Strategic Leads, Strategic Workforce Planning Team and the wider Leadership and Performance Teams to share initial talent vision and build key concept enablers and critical friend advocates. As work progresses, further engagement will be completed.