By RICHARD RAY
The volunteer fire service is a true “gem” of the service. However, over the past few years, the volunteer side has seen a decrease in the numbers who serve. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), in 2019, there were an estimated 1,080,800 firefighters in the United States. Of that number, 67% were volunteers, a decline of 3% from 2018. However, this is consistent with estimates of previous years. The NFPA also found that 95% of volunteer firefighters serve in departments that protect less than 25,000 people, and half that number serve in small, rural departments that protect fewer than 2,500 people.1
Although the volunteer service provides protection to smaller populations with limited resources, the challenges remain the same. All tactics must be performed. The fire doesn’t care about staffing levels or response packages. Fire attack, search, ventilation, salvage, overhaul, water supply, and incident command, just to name a few, are required at every fire, regardless of how many firefighters show up. So, why is the number of volunteer firefighters going down? The answer is specific to each department, but department leadership and culture are two factors that have a tremendous effect.
Driven Leadership
Department leadership drives the culture of an organization. When people leave an occupation, one of the top contributing factors is leadership. In volunteer fire departments, especially the smaller ones, department leadership can be messy, incoherent, cliquish, self-serving, and unprofessional. These are the departments that are stagnant, losing membership, and failing miserably on the fireground. However, it can also be the complete opposite, where the department will thrive, grow, and serve with competency and professionalism. Which department do you want to be a part of? We all want to be a part of professional and competent departments that focus on serving others rather than serving egos, but what happens when you can’t? How do you overcome the challenge of departmental cliques? Nepotism? Toxic leadership? It takes effort, work, and humility.
One of the volunteer fire service’s greatest attributes is the family connection. In my volunteer department, there have been several father and son teams serving at the same time. It has a been a privilege and an honor to serve alongside my grandfather, my father, and now my son. The positive side of having multiple members of the same family serve is that it can create a tight-knit group of firefighters. However, it also has presented its fair share of challenges. This becomes complicated when family members are in positions of leadership and nepotism starts to creep in.
My father was a fire chief for 21 years. We had numerous discussions both on and off the fireground, but I understood he was the chief and, ultimately, decisions that were made were his call. The key was the understanding that we had. He may have been “dad,” but when on the fireground or conducting fire department business, he was the chief. We were able to separate family and business at the appropriate times.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case for some departments. This is when the culture can begin to change. Not only can it have a negative impact on culture, but it can also have a direct impact on bringing in new membership. The persona that is given off is that of a clique. If you are not part of an affiliated family member or have some form of a tie to the organization, it is hard to find acceptance—the “Good Ole’ Boy” system.
Sadly, the Good Ole’ Boy system is still alive and well in the volunteer fire service. The negative impact on the department is severe; recruitment and retention then become nonexistent. Think about your department. Have you experienced this? This form of favoritism is not healthy for an organization. I have seen training that was made easy for someone who was liked by the individual conducting the training, and I have also seen training that was made difficult simply because a person wasn’t liked. As leaders in a volunteer department, it is our job to stop this type of behavior. The citizens deserve better, the membership deserves better, and the new firefighter coming in certainly deserves better. All of this affects the department’s ability to retain members and makes retention a more important issue than recruitment.
Building That Trust
How does fire department leadership build a culture of retention, service before self, and technically competent firefighters? It all starts with trust. The membership must trust department leadership. Trust increases loyalty and a firefighter’s willingness to stay with the department. Trust is also a cornerstone of relationships among the members that, in turn, enables the department to be effective when operating at emergency scenes or when conducting departmental business. Firefighters want to feel like they are part of something bigger, that they have purpose, and that they truly matter. When firefighters do not trust the leadership, they will lose interest and simply stop participating in drills or responding to calls. However, it is not all on department leadership to build a culture of trust; it falls on the firefighters as well. The department must trust that firefighters will do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.
Communication is a key element when building trust within a department; it builds stronger relationships which, in turn, breeds cooperation among firefighters. Communication within the department can be in one of two ways: formal and informal. It can be something as simple as talking about a previous incident or a drill, which would be considered formal communication, or asking about their family, which would be informal. These types of communications show that you are listening and care about them, which leads to trust. Keep the lines of communication open and be transparent. Whether a chief, company officer, or firefighter is communicating with others, listen, but do so to understand and not just to hear.
Building Engagement and Empathy
Firefighters who trust departmental leadership are more likely to be engaged in the organization. So, what does that engagement look like? Engaged firefighters participate in drills, answer as many emergency calls as possible, can be counted on to attend department events and conferences, and so on. The engaged firefighters are those who move the fire department forward and who leaders count on to get the job done! Trust is also critical when operating on the fireground, where chiefs and firefighters must trust that each member is doing his job.
Empathy is another element of building a positive culture; it helps you relate to others. Empathy starts when that new person comes in and wants to be a firefighter. When the new person does come in, do you go out of your way to welcome him? Do you remember his name and make him feel welcome? This also applies to firefighters who have been on the department. Are you checking on them? Do you understand and remember the work-life-volunteer balance they are trying to achieve and the importance of maintaining that balance?
So, as a leader within the department, how do you achieve empathy? It starts with understanding the needs of your members. Who is going through a tough time? What is going on with their families? As a leader, how can you help them? Failing to understand the needs of your membership or forgetting where you came from turns personnel away. Are you able to anticipate the needs of your personnel when they are at home or work? Many times, we forget that life gets in the way, and it affects a volunteer firefighter’s ability to participate. Understand the why. Give help when you can. Remember, it is not about you but rather something much bigger. It is through empathy that the firefighter will feel connected because department leadership will be able to address any issues at hand. However, more importantly, you must improve interactions with those personnel to help you achieve your organization’s vision and mission.
Empathy just doesn’t happen on its own. Fire department leadership must intentionally show an interest in the needs of their people. When you give time and attention to your firefighters, you enhance their performance, which increases the department’s effectiveness on the fireground. Additionally, the firefighters will feel respected and will naturally want to participate and make a difference.
Empathy allows department leadership to better identify with the firefighters. As a department leader, empathy can help you to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of your firefighters; this is critical to fireground success, as it allows you to plug in the right firefighter to perform the needed fireground task.
Empathy in the volunteer fire department creates a culture of respect and inclusion; it can make firefighters feel like they are part of a team. For firefighters and officers to work together in harmony, proper relationships must be built. When this occurs, good things begin to happen for the department.
Collaboration and Transparency
Lastly, to have a strong culture, there must be collaboration that focuses on maximizing firefighters’ skills and competencies through teamwork. For this to happen, department leadership must create opportunities for firefighters to work together toward common goals. This is almost impossible to achieve without the members trusting each other or if the department’s leadership is toxic. In a collaborative culture, the firefighters are more productive and effective, leading to success both on and off the fireground.
The strongest culture of collaboration is built on transparency. Transparency promotes trust and open communication and is the glue that strengthens the relationships between department leadership and the firefighters. When the leadership is transparent, relationships among the firefighters will grow naturally, which creates an openness to help avoid misunderstandings that can cause conflicts within the department.
On the flip side, the lack of transparency can have devastating effects on the organization. Leaders who feel the need to withhold information because they feel it gives them power ride a very slippery slope. The membership will begin to lose trust in the leaders when this starts to happen. They will then begin to have conversations and discussions behind the chief’s back. They will start to think that the information the leadership is withholding is about them and begin to start making assumptions. This is another time when participation will begin to decline because the members feel they are viewed as a problem, and then service delivery is affected. To avoid this, simply talk about what’s going on with the organization and why decisions are made. If you are having issues with a member, simply do the same: Talk to him.
Never use information as a weapon. When you exclude firefighters, they will begin to resent you and feel like they are no longer a part of a team and that the chief is no longer their leader. The real losers will then be the citizens because the department is no longer functioning as a team, and when the department is not operating as a team on the fireground, efficiency, effectiveness, and safety are lost.
The volunteer fire service is built on individuals giving their time and talents to serve their community. When the culture of their department is dysfunctional and toxic, retention is a problem and recruitment is nonexistent. It is not hard to build a culture of trust, empathy, and transparency. However, it does require work and effort at all levels, from the chief to the firefighters. It is an investment into the future of the organization. Not only is it an investment, but it is the lifeline for the department to grow as a team and provide the highest level of service possible. So, my questions for you, as a chief or an officer, are, What type of culture have you created in your department? Is your department thriving or barely hanging on? The citizens of your community are counting on their volunteer fire department. Make sure they have a professional and technically competent, cohesive team coming to handle their problem on their worst day.
Endnote
1. Fahy R, B Evarts, and G Stein. (2021). U.S. Fire Department Profile 2019, NFPA.
RICHARD RAY is a 30-year fire service veteran with volunteer and career experience. He is a captain with the Creedmoor (NC) Volunteer Fire Department and a career firefighter and battalion chief with the Durham (NC) Fire Department. Ray has instructed at the national level and written for Fire Engineering. He is also a member of the UL FSRI Residential Home Size-Up and Search & Rescue Operations Technical Panel.
