By Battalion Chief Bryan Jack
Tri-Lakes Monument, Colo., Fire Protection District
With all of the challenges and changes that today’s fire and EMS industry is experiencing, we need to be proactively seeking out ways to address these ever expanding issues before they drag us down to the point of no return.
Decreased revenue streams, growing populations, an aging populace, new training and education demands and increased service expectations can all take their toll.
I like to think of these “challenges” as opportunities, opportunities that allow us to think outside the box and show just how resourceful and creative the members of the emergency service field are. I sometimes think that on occasion we all get a little overly comfortable with how we operate. Instead of constantly trying to improve, we settle with the thought process of, “We’re doing it well enough so why change it if it works?”
Even if you are not the subject of all the challenges I’ve outlined, maybe, just maybe, you should still see where you could improve your service capabilities and possibly decrease some of your expenses through increased communication, coordination and cooperation.
Now, before you start looking for ways to improve your service through partnerships with other organizations, you need to spend some time re-discovering your own agency. It can be easy to lose sight of who we are and forget why we were created as organizations in the first place. If you are in a leadership position (from line level supervisor to fire chief), you need to spend a considerable amount of time openly communicating with your troops.
Find out why they chose the emergency services field as a profession and more importantly why they chose to work for your agency. If you haven’t already, you need to identify what values your employees hold and what their motivations are. At this point it may be beneficial to conduct an internal customer survey.
Your employees may be more willing to express their viewpoints through an anonymous medium, like a survey, and you could gain some insight into issues or topics that aren’t openly talked about. Once you have established what the real or perceived issues are, you can start to address these items as a cohesive unit.
Once you have gotten to know and understand your staff on a personal level, you can move on to the next stage, which we can call the agency level. The main questions to ask are:
- Why do we exist as an organization?
- Why were we created as an organization?
- What is our mission and has it changed since our creation?
- How can we improve our service levels for both our internal and external customers?
After you have put in the time re-establishing who you are and what you do, and you have worked on improving, correcting,and resolving your internal issues, you can be assured that you have a stable foundation from which to build upon.
At the beginning of this article, we identified some of the challenges/opportunities that we are facing as an industry. If you as an organization find yourself confronting any of these problems, you should probably start trying to identify some solutions that can meet the needs of your organization and citizens for both now and well into the future.
The days of the “throwing money at it” problem-solving approach are gone as there is no money left to throw. With that being said, it is time to erase the line in the district sand, swallow your pride and open your mind to the fact that there are so many possibilities, models and other ways to both provide both better service and save money.
We should all be open to the idea that through increased partnerships we can tackle current and future challenges head-on, rise to the level expected of us and prove to our populations just how resilient and resourceful we really are.
This article is the first in a series that will address how to successfully implement improved mutual aid, automatic aid agreements, closest force response plans, resource sharing, fire authorities, regionalization and full-blown mergers. In the next article we will discuss how to increase communication with adjacent emergency service agencies and the citizens that you serve.
A 15-year veteran of the fire service, Bryan Jack is currently serving as Battalion Chief at Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District in Monument, Colorado. He is also a grant consultant with FireGrantsHelp.com and its sister site, EMSGrantsHelp.com. A certified Fire Officer and Paramedic, Bryan has been successfully writing, reviewing and consulting on grants for more than five years. For any questions related to grants, you can contact Bryan at bryan.jack@firegrantshelp.com. Check out his grants column section here.