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Comment by Andy Entwistle on December 19, 2008 at 9:49am

Darrin -

We are a 28-member volunteer dept. and we do our drill schedule each JAN for a year - just did 2009. Be happy to send it to you for ideas if you give me an e-mail. (I'm at aentwist@nycap.rr.com). What we do is in December we ask the members what THEY think we should train on - and we get a lot of good ideas. Then we overlay the requirements, like CPR or OSHA and plug training into each drill day, using common sense to do thing outdoors in summer and indoors in winter. We assign each drill to an officer to plan and run. We allow them to "swap" if it's a bad night for them. In my opinion, we have not had a problem with people opting out of training because of the advance notice. I think it works pretty well and if it's not perfect, okay, it's still WAY better than we had before the last chief came in. Andy

Comment by Dustin J. Millis on December 19, 2008 at 1:16am

Yeah, I've noticed that if guys know what the training is in advance, it just gives them more time to think of an excuse as to why they dont need it. I know that training gets boring when its stuff you already know but our business is all about training!!!! I cant stand these older guys that say they dont need to train because they have so many years of experience. Anyone that doesnt want to or think they dont need to train is someone I dont wana be going in a fire with. If you have the power to make the decision, I reccomend making training mandatory. Dont give guys the option of a sign up sheet.

Comment by Joey "BigShow" De Piano on December 18, 2008 at 4:30pm

You can easily draw up your drills and trining for a year in advance the catch is 2 fold however, first you have to have a back up drill for every drill you plan cause as we know murphys law will rear his ugly head somehow, and second thing and you will find out if you haven't already is when you let on what the drill is if some don't feel they "need" that they won't show, so mums the word.

Comment by Timothy Overly on December 18, 2008 at 8:09am

Try asking to see what training they want. Schedule the requested training and see who shows up. At least you are trying to offer the training they want. If they choose not to show up for the training they wanted, at least you'll know just how dedicated they really are.
My dept offers a lot of scheduled training that we are required to attend, if we are on shift. Some people will look at the training calendar to schedule their vacations so they don't have to attend. Since we are a "captive" audience while we are working, we get a lot of training we are not interested in, but have to attend.
It's a tough job to make everyone happy with a training schedule. Do your best and try to keep everyone motivated!!

Comment by lutan1 on December 18, 2008 at 6:30am

I was thinking that departments could have every training nite agenda wrote up in advance for atleast six months. Maybe people that know what is going to be going on will come to the training session or maybe have a sign up sheet.
In my experience, it's the total opposite. They end up choosing what they want and don't want to come to.