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What Does Your Dept. Do To Keep Morale Up?
We have a bonehead award. It's a little dog tag in the shape of a bone and is passed around monthly at our business meeting to the person who has a bone head mistake. Nothing serious or life threating. I.E. we are selling x-mas trees for our yearly fund raiser which are tax deductable, but one of our LT. had his pager on his hip and was neting up the tree and the pager went along for the ride. Well LT, couldn't find it and we had our pager test and the guy who bought the tree was pulling off the roof of his vehicle when the tones drooped. He freaked and brought it back with a few words for the LT. LT, said try having that go off at 2 in the morning when your asleep, blah blah blah. Just wandering what you all do and if you all do something in the same catagory?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John on
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We have a big rawhide bone for our bonehead award, to which a blurb is wrote on to about why this person got the bone. That is just for our company, as for the moral of the dept. not really sure what they do for moral. We have had a blast with the dog bone though, with many discussions on what constitues the award, usually the person getting it will try an argue about it LOL.
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Permalink Reply by EngineLadder on
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Lets see they keep our moral up by closing companies on a rotating basis and by having a PIO that was never a firefighter who lies to the public every day.
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Permalink Reply by capcityff on
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Yea the chiefs and mayor could care less about morale in large cities. As long as they are having the job get done for the least amount of money possible. The morale is definitely not strong over here right now, but I know it's even worse in Baltimore.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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That seems on par with passing around a dog bone to increase morale.
(Requiring FF's to take classes in civic responsibility and/or religion might help to increase moral(s) but may do nothing for morale.)
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Permalink Reply by Shareef Abdu Nur on
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Moral at my career department is pretty much in the toilet and every attempt to raise moral is shot down by the the Officers of all people. They have allowed themselves to be llulled into a state of complacency and laziness.
As far as my other department, our moral is good and heading towards great. We did this by restructuring from the top. we replaced a Chief and some other Officers. We were once the laughing stock of the area, but through training and a more selective employment process, we have turned our reputation around and now we are actually proud of not only ourselves but our department as well. We had to get rid of some people who were just bad for business and trying to pull everyone else down with them, but now we are very proud of who we are and the work that we do. So, our moral is good and only getting better.
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Permalink Reply by Gregory Borg on
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Absoulutly nothing. Unless you count closing companies, laying off firefighters, demoting people because of cuts, suck ass training program, broken equipment, hostile attitude towards the employees. Even if you count those things they still do nothing.
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The line officers are another matter, at least in my station. We have station get togethers every other month, we work together on station projects (maps books, training programs, engine modifications, tool upgrades). We spend our own money on station projects. Our station gives toys and food to families in our first due area at thanksgiving and Christmas, we asses ourselves to pay for this. Station moral is good, department moral and feelings about the city suck.
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Worse in an understatement its downright rock bottom.
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Permalink Reply by Bekks on
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We don't do anything because morale is not an problem at the moment.
We are fortunately like a family and tease the crap out of each other.
The Chief is scared to open a can of pop around us because it is almost always gonna spray him.
We now have a photo wall with pictures of our FF at calls and at the training tower and the Chief is adding some comments/"comicbook word bubbles" to them... sounds lame but it is funny as hell.
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Permalink Reply by Norm Tindell on
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We're all very close and, like Bekks' guys, tease each other and pull pranks non-stop. We're beefing up the award program and adding little things like occasional door prizes at training meetings. Old-fashioned "thank you's" from the officers after runs still work well, too.
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You'd think some would get the point when you look at these fires in Baltimore over the past year. Yes, Baltimore has always been busy, but big fires don't have THIS often in most aggressive urban departments. However, when you take away staffing and close companies it's unpreventable since the crews can't get to the fire while its small. That alone should show that the cuts are hurting the city.
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Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on
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You know a thank you and recognition is always good. I take every oppertunity to publicly thank and highlight my firefighters. I find reasons to award and build up my volunteers. Heck they are the Department, not me. Without their efforts and involvement there wouldnt be anything. So i am constantly doing things to show my appriciation to them.
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