Firefighters - Recruitment And Retention

3 Pages 684 Words

Intro to Fire Protection

Recruitment and Retention
I come from a small town in central Pennsylvania with a population of about 2500 people. I joined the fire department in my town about 5 years ago and we had about 30 really active members. We are down to about 15. There were various reasons those people left the department. Some left because they had gotten married, some because they had children, many because they didn’t have time, and some just plain and simply got to old.
It some times can be difficult to get people to join the fire service as a volunteer. Not many people are willing to put it all on the line for nothing. There are only so many people who just want to be firefighters and in the case of my town there are 15. We need to start to give people an incentive to join. The local, state, and even federal government need to step up and help the volunteer fire companies get more members because recruiting is an investment in the future. Retention is the ability to maximize that investment.
First create a recruiting task force or committee and train them. Recruiting should be ongoing and not time-limited. Recruiting takes effort. Market your fire department. You are competing with many community and individual interests. Make the volunteer nature of the fire department known to the community. Make everyone on your department a recruiter, Give them basic skills to do the job and reward them. If someone decides to leave do exit interviews. Ask those that are leaving the department to assist you in understanding motivation to join, reasons to stay and reasons to leave. Use this information to assist the recruitment and retention process.
There are a lot of options out there that the Government needs to look into to get people into the service. For example offer free drivers licenses to volunteer firefighters. You could also offer free memberships to local gyms or health clubs. Also two ideas that I think can real...