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Recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters
I'm looking for ideas on recruitment, retention once they have joined and any recruitment materials any one may have to pass on to our department.
In today's computer generation society it seems more and more young people pay more attention to what going on with their text, cell phone, tweets or games then what going on around them. In our community all we have for fire protection is our volunteer force, not paid professional firefighter on duty ready for the call. We only have the community around us and the few brave men and woman that have chose to volunteer their time to help their next door neighbor when in need. We need more of those type of folks. The ones that feel it is more important to give then to receive. The question is how do we find this type of person?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nathan Henderson on
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Some things I have heard of department doing are puting ads in the local papers, banner/signs at the station or placed at businesses and just generally getting the word into your area that volunteers are needed.
Some other things your fd could do is set up booths at any area events or put on demos (extrication ones work great to get attention) to show off your dept and get the word out.
As far as retention, as long as your department runs itself in a professional manner, works to be the best department it can be and remembers to have fun while doing it (very important!), things should go in the right direction.
Hope these ideas help.
Good Luck!
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Jerry,
Welcome to FFN.
The issue of recruitment and retention is a challenge for any department. Even in paid departments, it is not uncommon to now see firefighters walk away before retirement, and this act was not seen in the past. Why? Firefighters whether paid or volunteer have become disconnected to the organization.
It really boils down to understanding and taking care of your personnel. The leadership needs to understand their personnel, the many different types of personalities, and driving factors that make people want to be part of "something". The fire service has always had multi- generational workers that have co-existed but in the last two decades those generations have had different driving forces and underlying work ethic.
In my opinion, Fire Chiefs and Fire Officers that lead from how they were shown or how the organization has "always done it" are way behind the curve. Without (PD) professional development, how does any officer stay ahead of the curve? Development when done correctly, keeps the leadership "leading the organization" and not vice-versa. When the department is properly lead, the personnel strive to be part of "the mission". A simple communication tool that keeps firefighters feeling as though they are important to the organization and the service's mission. Without it you will find many ultimately get fed up with the lack of leadership or negativity and walk away. This positive work environment creates strong morale, the glue that holds the department together. Have you ever heard guys say, "Man I hope we get a fire soon, so we can all get along for a while?" I have, and this type of leadership is failing the membership. That is actually a management style, for which the fire, is temporarily distacting the underlying problems.
Once positive morale has been achieved through implmentation of this personality based communication model, you will find that the environment will drive retention. For more information on this subject check out a free internet radio show on "Personality Based Effective Communications" at our website www.fetcservices.com
Bill
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Bill, You hit the nail right on the head.
Getting members to "Want to be there" is the biggest challenge in the retention of members.
Having that feeling that the department values you as a member and wants you there makes a member want to be more involved with the department and work harder as well. Retention is definitely not easy but the right leadership makes it a whole lot easier.
Even saying a simple thank you to members can go a long way towards a happier department.
Good post Bill.
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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Our county fire and rescue association had a commitee for recruitment and retention so members of different depts could join to help.
We had many ways to recruit through the county. We had a number of 15 minute videos which would run on the county public safety cable channel which would show the many operations provided by volunteers plus a video to show that we also worked with our county career service.
We had a bill board that would be moved around the county with a phone and website info and pictures of different scenes of emergencies.
Members of the committee would attend shows or the county fair to passout flyers and have people sign info sheets for callback contact info also run the videos.
I have been a member of the committee for many years and then the fire commission took it away from the people that were running it so no one knows what is happening about recruitment of new people.
My dept has had people come in to join off the street by using our dept's website which has a recruitment info. Sometimes we get people who join because of another member or follow a new member to join.
A few volunteer stations have their own websites so it works for them also.
Our biggest problem today is getting new members through investigations, physicals and 18 months to get their training and then on to riding and running calls.
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Permalink Reply by Justin D. Hendricks on
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The most important part of your sentence above is the "Retention" part. As has been mentioned a number of times in the responses, how new recruits are integrated will make or break your recruitment efforts. I am often surprised at how often long time members of a department don't understand how their treatment of new personnel impacts retention. Existing members need to bend over backwards to welcome new people, and above all train them. People instinctively desire to be part of an organization that shows it is serious by training aggressively, and shows that it values its people by treating them like human beings. Pretty simple stuff, but all too often overlooked. Recruitment is like fishing; it's not how many nibbles you get, but how well you set the hook!
A few years back, we did a recruitment drive for an auxiliary force of personnel to assist at search and rescue and wildland fire calls. We advertised for about a month in local businesses and a department newsletter and had a recruitment evening in conjunction with our forestry district. We got about 12 new members for this program, who we trained to be wildland firefighters. Later on, a couple of those individuals became full members of the department after experiencing some of the camaraderie.
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Permalink Reply by Everett Eric Cooper on
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Hello.
We worked hard on our retention Program, We started a mentor Program with a senior FF assigned to each canidate that joins to begin in house training. After they complete a few modules of the program we give them a t-shirt and a hat. (I know that a hat and a t-shirt ain't much but it begins the process of being on the team). By starting their training in house we can use our canidates as a support group. Changing air bottles humping tools and rehab. Again making them feel part of the team even before they get their FF Cert. We also started a Life insurance program for each member, and a uniform program (paid for by the FD).
These examples are just a few things of many that we try and do to retain our Members.
Everett
Asst. Chief
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Butcher on
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I have recently taken on the position of Recruitment and Retention Officer at Delhi Township Fire department in Michigan. We were able to gain a full time position through the SAFER grant program. I have tried various activities to recruit members from our community. The very first thing I did when I took my position as RR officer was to sit down every member on the department and conduct an interview with them. I devised a standard set of questions that covered questions like; why did you come here, what do you like about our department, what makes you want to quit, what is one thing you would change about the department, etc… This gave me a great spot to start from because once I combined all of the answers together I found out that everybody had the same general problems and we quickly were able to fix them. The funny thing is that most of the problems that make people want to leave are very simple to fix.
For recruitment, I realized very quickly that flashy advertising was basically useless. When ever I put out articles in newspapers or put up signs I always brought in the type of person that would drift from place to place. They would stay a few weeks then realize firefighting was dangerous and hard, thus quitting after a few weeks. Your real firefighter candidates are already volunteering in your community! I have found the best candidates at Red Cross meetings or classes, blood drives, food banks, and basic community service places. A lot of members want to be a part of a team but simply don’t know where to start so they go to the local service that is offering an introductory class. I suggest offering a community CPR class or disaster preparedness class and giving a quick talk about recruitment opportunities at your local fire department. The best marketing strategy for recruitment is cheap, simple, and face to face.
A secondary help for recruitment is to have a business card to give out that has a link to some type of social media for your department. If you are not good with social media recruit a local high school member to manage it for you. They would love the opportunity to help out the fire department and get a nice letter of reference for future endeavors. These are just a few of the things I have used, if you would like more information please e-mail me at Delhifirerecruitment@gmail.com. Hope this helps!!!
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Jeff, this is the first time I heard of the Safer money going to a fulltime R/R position. Wow impressive. What was your number 1 reply about "What makes you want to quit?" I have posted above and have a theory about that answer.
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There are approximately 75 of us across the country that are full time R&R officers. I am currently trying to track them all down and develop a working collabaration that will help fire departments across the country with R&R issues. The number one response to what makes you want to quit was a training issue. We had three Lt's training on same subject three different days. What we found was that each officer was training slightly different and that caused a lot heated discussions. Nobody realized how different the trainings were until that point. Now we have one person doing all three trainings so everybody gets the same information.
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Well having a shift person assigned to training works well when you need to cut costs and not fund an official training officer, (seen this as a big economy mistake lately) but the lack of continuity can make for some big operational problems. Especially noted for smaller departments who rely on the whole department to mitigate an incident. That lack of continuity really shows when everyone has been shown things differently. I have found that it isn't usually intentional, the issue is one person is higher trained on a topic and takes his group to the advanced level and then the other guy might do the bare minimum due to experience level.
I am surprised that was the number one reason why many wanted to quit though. It wasn't how they were being treated or how administration was handling affairs? Wow.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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If someone from your department asks 'what would it take for you to quit', would you really give them an honest answer?
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I thought the same thing at first. I thought for sure that I would find that issues between full timers and paid on-call. But, when it came down to it the reason for being treated bad and the rift between the full timers and paid on-call really came down to training. I am not going to tell you that there weren't fewer complaints about management styles, seniority, and fair treatment. There were a lot of those issues and there still are those issues occurring everyday. But a good portion of the fight was from the inconsistencies in training.
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