Ask the Chiefs: Turnover in Fire in the Fire Service

This is a multifaceted problem that stems from department hopping , job contentment , deficiencies in applications and shortage in fully certified applicants . However , we are continually hiring new probes , training them , just for them to leave or move on or and then be replaced by a new one .

This has made a difficult company officer uh process because I am continually onboarding and training and trying to um , trying to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the new employees .

I have prided myself being a servant leader in the past and have been able to find the deficiencies needed to be addressed in the new firefighters , but now that is getting more and more difficult .

Are there any suggestions from the chiefs on how to best deal with this turnover and having a competent department and not burning me out in the same process , from doing the same thing over and over again And it's exhausted in exuma ? He was writing this vacation .

He's getting qualified firefighters . But Bruno used to say it People don't quit their job , they quit their boss . So , if you know , if he's has a department , and anybody who has a department where people are leaving , first thing you have to do is probably do a little bit of a uh , i don't know if you , if an exit interview would work or could .

Maybe people aren't going to be honest , but at least you could ask after they're gone . You know why did you leave , but , um , you know you just wonder why people are leaving a department to go to another one .

For instance , in , uh , the city that I just worked in over here in the west side of town , um , we were getting firefighters from other cities , most recently from our largest city , and people were wanting to leave that one And this younger generation . I want to call them that .

I don't know what else you call them , but they're loyal to the job of being a firefighter . They're not really tied or connected to the actual city , and we've talked about this before , but why are they leaving your city ? So we'll talk about that .

And then I think we probably ought to talk about his position as a company officer and what he's doing , because it sounds like what he's doing is very , uh , commendable . He's trying to do the best he can do And he's he's trying to ask how he , how he can continue to do that .

So there's probably a couple of things going on there , but we probably had this . Maybe , if you don't mind , talking about the front end first , what do you think ?

And you know , we just ran a piece in the B shifter buck slip in the last month about exit interviews And that got quite a bit of talk back from from people because and the suggestion is , don't get to the point where you have to do an exit interview , do a stay interview , check in with your employees once in a while and and ask them the same questions

that you would in an exit interview but to get them to stay . So you kind of get a temperature of the organization now and then . the other thing I'll say too is and let's , let's get to your point . but I'm seeing turnover in all organizations and that's just because people have changed .

I mean , it's it's not the old days of you're going to stay in the same job for 30 years , so that's part of what the fire service and we should probably hit on that . So your your first thing that you wanted to hit on was was why are they leaving ? Yes , yeah .

Sometimes people leave just because their department they're working in right now is no longer geographically correct for them , for their spouse and their circumstances . People leave sometimes just because it's a shitty department . They're tired of all the negative stuff that has taken place .

And so they , well , you know you , you did this and this and well , no , no , no , no , no . We don't need to talk about this because Jimmy did eight times worse and nothing happened .

So , and you knew that , because it would only rise to a certain level before an adult would get in and like modulate the whole thing and say , no , this is what we're going to do instead . So it became a very good place to work because of that reason is is it was about the work we did and everything that we did inside was somehow had to support that .

Well , that made it better , really , because it didn't become about the ego and ID of the ranking bosses who made it worse , right ?

So those people see , and they existed , they existed in that fire department and you thought I work for this guy and he's an asshole and I don't like him , but it doesn't matter because he can't do what he wants to do with us because it's not allowed in the system due to the people that are actually leading it .

Well , in other fire departments those people didn't exist that modulated things , and so it was just the ego and the will . And if you , what do they say ? with politics today , it's anything for my friends and for my enemies , the law . So that was kind of the way people would run .

The fire department is OK if you're in with me , this is what you get to do , But if you're not part of the group , then this is what that question sounds . A little bit like . That , And you said it earlier is today the working environment has changed in ways that don't necessarily connect to where we were in our lives .

So I have a bunch of like solutions for that that aren't valid , because this is Van said it . It's changed . People go from job to job . They quit quicker , it's just . Unemployment now is as low as it's ever been , probably since we've been alive pretty close to it , so you can get a job , and now people are making more money .

The lower wages have gone up , so people have a lot more options with what they're going to do . Well , just for myself , there's I went to work because you commit to the organization , you'll put up with a certain amount of shit from work .

There's things that we did during our careers or had to do that we didn't want to do , like when we promoted to a certain level you didn't get . You worked a lot more than you wanted to . Basically , you were there more often than you should have been or that you were compensated for , but because you got it in other ways to be validated , you went with it .

Well , in those other systems that doesn't exist . It's for the will of whoever's in charge . So I think that plays a lot of it , thank you . During the pandemic you saw some businesses after that opened back up and did very well , and then others that struggled .

Well , the ones that struggled struggled because it was a shitty place to work before and they kept the same shitty employment practices , and so the workers had other choices . No , i'm not going to work at this breakfast restaurant , i'm going to work over here at this one , because they pay me better and they don't screw with me . I have a better time at work .

So that , well , fire departments are the same . There's some good fire departments to work for and some negative ones to work for .

And it's almost reminds me of when we talk about the hazard zone , where if the strategic level , the tactical and the task level , if they're all not matched up with the same strategy , people are going to get hurt . And I think that's the same thing with with organizations .

If we talk , we're going to talk about that organizational alignment with our leadership , our silverback leadership . But if it's not aligned , you have a fire chief who's an asshole , and I know one now .

If you have a fire chief who's an asshole , sometimes those captains count , outperform the strategic level asshole , or the battalion chiefs can outperform the strategic level asshole .

And what you said is if you , you could have a tactical level , a supervisor who's kind of an asshole , but he can be outperformed by the bosses above him Because it's like , oh , i want Jimmy rode up for this , but what do you do ? No , we're not going to do that . And then the organization sees it .

That guy You know what we're going to do is we're going to teach you the better way to treat people right , and so I think it has to be lined up all the way through .

And when people leave organizations because they can leave there unfortunately , when you're , when you're new to an organization and you just come off probation and you don't understand the opportunities , you have to go to other fire stations . So you may get a captain who's an asshole and you may see another opportunity at another station and leave .

But the longer you're in the organization you notice that hold it , that captain's an asshole but we're saying last hole , but that captain's not very productive . But I know the battalion chief , he's good , the assistant , the assistant chief , she's good , and the fire chief cares about us so they can kind of move someplace else and get out from under that person .

But when you got the head of the fish , that stinks like hell . And I know an organization right now where they're bailing out because they got a new boss and he's just . He'll tell them I don't care about you . You know , and I think you said it too , that one time in one of our why care about you ? from the neck down .

did the people that they're managing feel like the top of the organization doesn't give a shit about them ?

He had some firefighters he was screwing with where they would go to their morning assignment and then at lunch she'd call them and they'd go to another station on the other side of the city And so , for whatever reason , they got crossways .

Well , when you just wrote like critical factors down on a piece of paper , one of those critical factors at the top would have been race , because these guys were a different race than he was . And so the union president called the fire chief . It got to that issue where it went .

It bubbled through the union to the union president And he said no , this is , this is illegal , what's going on ? He calls the fire chief and he says hey , we got this deal where we said we're going to meet , and he says we're going to run the fire department a certain way , and he says this is happening right now .

And he explained the situation And he says this ain't what we agreed to . Then that that day the fire chief investigated what was going on , found out it was true and removed the shift commander , put them in another position within And they did the whole deal . The investigators were involved but it took about 24 hours .

So when you know that's a ranking person I mean they're like in the top six of the power brokers in the Phoenix fire department in those days And he said , no , you don't get to screw with the hell . That ain't the way this works . See , i watched that , everybody did And we knew , oh wow , they're serious about this .

So it gave you you know you don't want to see somebody get upside down but it gave you a certain amount of joy that , hey , this is really the way that we're going to interact with one another .

So logistics officers over here and his he's the support officer . It's in his name support Yeah , and he wanted to do anything but support the firefighters . He would screw with them at every chance , yeah . So that impacts how people feel about their job too . It's like , hey , what , what the hell's going on over here ?

Yeah , come on , you own a car company , buddy , get over it . I mean .

It was pretty impressive to see that and it was all be nice . It's everywhere . So if we keep so , if if you're a fire chief or a chief officer and you're not getting on the be nice train , you're I don't know what to , i don't know how to help you with that one .

If you're a smaller department and the big people are grabbing your folks because they pay better , go to more fires or there's more upward mobility , then that small fire department needs to be known for something . And maybe , maybe what you're known for is you're the training ground for the . You know , you're the , you're the .

You're the minor league club for the , the major leagues . Sometimes that's what you can do . Sometimes there's a specialty you can get into . Hey , if you want to be on an ALS engine , this is a thing . Or if you want to be in technical rescue , this is the department for it .

I think the other thing is is when you have friends at work , you're more attached to that work , and if you have an environment where people are really connected with each other and they're hanging out with each other and they look forward to working with their buddies and stuff , they're going to be a lot sadder to leave .

We had this firefighter get injured back on December 4th . He fell at a training exercise , had a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for a month , and today we're June 2nd . Today He's still in rehab . He's been in , so he's still in recovery , trying trying to get back to at least being able to take care of himself .

The day that he could start getting visitors where it was OK for him to six firefighters . He's in rehab in California .

Six firefighters , on their own dime , bought plane tickets just to go visit him for 24 hours , just to bring him some in and out burgers and hang out with him , because they're connected And there are two guys that work with in that group that can retire at any time . You know one of them , i think , is losing money .

You know he's in that point that he's over 35 years . But they stay because they love each other and they enjoy working with each other . And you know I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when they leave . But when I see things like that , that's a that's a positive sign in an organization .

But in this guy's case I think the turnover is happening so fast and maybe the folks coming in are just looking at it as just a job And they're not connecting themselves to one another within the organization .

But you might want to ask people why they want to be in your department and you'd be surprised they may take give you this answer I want to be here to get trained because I want to end up over there with my whatever . But when you see that , maybe you don't hire those people .

Maybe you hire people with a more of a sense of being connected to the organization a little bit longer And that's part of your . So as you start going through your interview questions , maybe you lean towards why do you really want to be a part of our organization ? And maybe you might find out that there's some people that you're passing over .

That might be more I hate to use the word loyal , but loyal to that organization and stay with you longer . So the front end of it is really important to how they come through the door .

For my recruit class when we went through in 1980 . And some of them , i mean throughout the years , you'd have classes with like 60 firefighters in them from 10 different cities . So it was very dynamic the way all these cities work together And we use the same operations manual .

Well , what ended up happening is it was the same deal , is you had all these different departments . Well , somebody would get hired on the department east of us .

Well , for a period of I don't know 10 years at least , we hired a lot of firefighters from that fire department would come And it was a transfer for them , basically because they went through the same academy . So they have two , three years on and they're coming to Phoenix .

Well , it got so bad that this city started charging them for their turnouts when they left and said you owe us $4,500 because we trained you and we did this . And they were pissed . They said you got to quit hiring our people .

And so the fire chief for that city talked to our fire chief And he says nah , you're not going to charge anybody anything for turnouts . If they , if you need to be reimbursed for that , you come to us . He says but if you keep doing that , we ain't going to train your fire .

He says uh-uh , and he says as far as us hiring your folks , they're coming to us for a reason . You need to figure out why . I don't need to . That's your problem . And what it was is you had a nice person who was the fire chief , but they weren't .

They didn't reassign the shift commander when they started with people , right , so they put up with that and they tried to fix it and be nice about it . Well , no , we did that . That's the reason they were coming is you had to . You had to stand up and do what you were . That was the strength that was expected of you .

To be nice is no , you don't get to be mean to people . So I think that kind of became a magnet for a while And then you got that whole big red thing . Like you said , vance it's I want to go here because this is where they go in the most fires . They do the most of this , they do the most of that .

Well , we still draw young , highly energized , episodic squirrel , squirrel , squirrel . That's who's firefighters , that's who makes the best ones . Because you , you , you need you shouldn't have to talk somebody into running into a burning building , and that takes a special person .

But if they're the kind of people and I don't want to go on , if I was out there I wouldn't want to go on 15 social service EMS type calls every day . But you got it .

but you need to hire people to do , because that's the job of a firefighter nowadays And you know , every once in a while you get a fire and then the captain needs to manage that tactical fun .

So that's the nice thing about a career in the fire service You could start off down here doing dirty work and then you could slowly promote and do other things . I mean , if you want to be an architect and build fire stations , there's a way to do that . So there are a lot of options , All the stuff .

We have a full blown studio that you would find at CNN right now . Today We learned how to do this in the fire department we work for because , we're doing training stuff , so we had to learn how to develop and produce training . So there are a lot of different boxes that make up that . a fire department that services the community does a full service thing .

But one of the red warning flags I would have is when you have people in your primary positions that leave your department before they're scheduled to . Is there something screwed up When the PIO leaves to go be the PIO somewhere else ? that's if I was the mayor . Why did this happen ?

See , and that's the other part of the problem because the people who are actually responsible for the fire department , the authority having jurisdiction , are all elected officials that are not there for more than four to eight years And then they go away . So we can be victimized by that because we're this like , we're almost more like the church as you get in .

That's the way we grew up in it is . You didn't travel and go to different places . I worked my whole career in the same one . You're a little different . You worked a career in one and then you went off and ran a bunch of them .

And I said take off all the things that have to do with going into fires and stuff , maybe one or two pictures . But we've got to show like we're caregivers , we're with the community , doing pub ed and everything else .

Because if you look at our brochure , our recruitment brochure , and there's 15 pictures of us fighting fire , well , that's 2 percent of what we do And it's really misleading those candidates into thinking well , every day I'm going to go fight a fire , look at all the action these guys get .

Well , that's not your misrepresenting yourself if that's your recruitment brochure .

So I think the onboarding thing is very , very important . The other thing that you guys started bringing up with the pension is until you hit 10 years , they don't understand even how the pension system works .

They don't care , they don't understand how much money they're going to get And we were just talking about this at my place is we want to put together a chart ? Firefighter A worked here for 20 years and this is how much was in his deferred comp and this is how much his pension was And this is what he walked out the door with .

So people can start to put that together , because we just had a guy retire after 27 years . He's doing all right for himself . I mean , it's a life changing amount of money that he got in a lump sum , but people don't understand that until they're in that second half of their career Unless their dad was a firefighter at the home .

I don't know how many people actually leave . Leave an organization due to pay . That's some way of somebody knows that . I don't know what it is , but if it's a compensation issue and you're not explaining to the elected officials , this is what it costs us .

But this is what it costs when we lose a firefighter that we train , because this is how much it costs to train them . Now we've got to train a new one . Why don't we just increase everybody's pay and make everybody a little bit happier ?

The smartest thing I ever heard about the onboarding process of picking the right people to be firefighters is what you guys were doing , where , like right before they would start the academy , you'd bring them in a week or two ahead of all the candidates that you were going to select from and they would do that little two day , Oh yeah , Horsley drill thing .

Well , they bring them in and if you're going to hire , if you're going to hire six , so you're going to hire ten , bring in thirty , or bring in thirty-five and spend a weekend with them , where you start on Friday .

They bring in their t-shirts , you spray paint their names on the back of their white t-shirts and you assign them to teams and it takes an investment from the labor is a part of it , but they don't manage it , because if you let their labor management , you've lost that , and the fire chief's a part of it , but he doesn't manage it , so don't let him get too

deep in it either . But you get a group of people that are in the training division and they spend a weekend with them and these people do , these candidates do exercises together where they do team building and put up ladders , the job .

They do the job in teams and then you see how , how they act , and not only what they did in Glenda was so beautiful is they ?

they watched them , why they were performing , but they watched them in between and we had a couple guys when I first got there that they said these are two superstars , they're ex-marines , they're big , they're buff , they look like those are the guys we want as firefighters . So on the very first day they're doing exercises as teams . These guys get done .

Actually I think it was an individual exercise . These guys got done first and it was like a scene out of an officer and a gentleman . When they got done they went over and stabbed by themselves and badmouthed the other guys in ear shot of the training teams . And they were in ear shot because they wanted to be and they sat there and they didn't help anybody .

We had people that were getting it done not quite as well and they were encouraging other people , helping them , showing them better ways to do it . They didn't hire these two guys right off the bat saying no , they're not what we want , and that was because , since Glendale has used that system , we haven't had to in other departments .

Like Nick said , we all train in the same location , in the same academy . There's one on the west side , one on the east side and Phoenix now and when they all train together . Glendale has not had to release any of their cadets , their recruits , and other cities have several in one city because they do the interview . They talked to them .

They seem like nice people , they look like firefighters and then guess what ? six weeks later you're having to release them .

But , man , i think he ought to , like you said , be known for something . He may be , he or she may be known as the guy that really produces great firefighters . And it's unfortunate they go other places . But you know , college coach doesn't get to keep them very long .

So keep doing what he's doing and , you know , maybe while you're training them and spending time with them , build relationships with them too , because maybe they won't leave and I'm not saying he didn't do that , but you know , relationships , people will stay based on the relationship they . You remember your training chiefs .

I still remember mine from 1977 and the way they treated us and , yeah , luckily we had some good ones . But I've seen how other chiefs train them . So , yeah , i think what he's doing is really , really important and he ought to keep doing what he's doing . I don't know how to help him .

Maybe you guys can jump in and kind of give him some advice , but I had one more diagnosis thing okay , i jumped ahead on no , no ,

no .

because I think it's not money , i think it's time off . People value their time now more than anything , and it used to be . We fought over overtime , right like we used to be a competition to see who on your department . They don't care about that anymore . They want the time off . So you're getting ready to get off the shift .

You're the next one to be mandatory . You're going , you have a kid's birthday or you got tickets to the football game or whatever , and they're like nope Terry , you're staying for the next 12 mandatory overtime .

They're leaving because we don't have enough firefighters , because we haven't planned ahead that people get to vacation time , they get sick leave time , they get personal time off , whatever it is , and we need to have enough firefighters and enough staff to backfill those positions rather than using overtime and forcing the overtime .

She got to have that whole modeling done and paint that picture on how that's impacting these guys here .

Well , you're putting everybody at risk because they're basically going sleep deprived for three days to do the work because nobody . So it becomes this loop that just keeps becoming more and more toxic in the thing . It would seem to me the current system that we have to manage that isn't working anymore . See , before it would be like you said , over time .

We went to the union and said no , enough . People went and said this isn't fair . The same people get hooked up to this all the time . So the union came up with a socialistic approach to overtime where it was equal among all the members for like working out in the field in 24 hour shifts and ambos . So today it would be the opposite .

I know I'm only going to work a 56 hour work week . I'm not going to work 80 hours anymore . So I want you to represent that for me . Maybe it's happening somewhere . But you're right , the more places we go that have forced march overtime are the places they're leaving . They're going other spots .

so , uh , no , you're absolutely right on that , and you can't , you can't sustain that The only people that want to work overtime are people that are in their last couple of years .

I mean , you're going to have this sort of turnover .

And it's OK saying you do a good job when you do a good job or something , and he wants to continue to do that . Now he's starting to feel it's starting to impact him a little bit where he's not feeling so good about it , because he sees what's happening . So he needs support in the system .

So whoever the bosses are in that system need to recognize the good work that he's doing . And how do you support somebody ? First of all , how do you recognize , listen to him and say , yeah , ok , we hear you , we agree with you .

Are you at a point where we need to move you away for six months or a year , where you don't get somebody that you got to train ? Because the last thing I want to do is take a really good person like this and just wear him down . Give him an opportunity not to do that . But don't you want to lose your spot .

Just , that spot is no longer a training spot , because that's the other thing . Ok , you're not going to train anybody , so we're going to move you to some . Well , i lose my home . No , so you need to really help these people out and support them . So hopefully he's getting some support within a system , and I don't know .

And I've always , even as a fire chief , i got the phone call Oh , someone's leaving to another department . I would call them up and I'd say congratulations , you want to go there ? Yeah , my wife works on that side of town , or this is why I want to go . Good , i hope you get what you want in life and it works .

Don't be mad at people because they're leaving . Look at the reason they're leaving and try to fix the reason . Are you hiring the right people ? Are you keeping the right people And are you identifying the reason they're leaving ? But get mad and he's not .

But fire chiefs should get pissed off , like the one you talked about , and try to penalize the people for leaving . That ain't nice .

If you're going to be an insane commander , be the best insane commander you can be , and the only way you could do that is through training , because you're not . you know you always talk about experience . Well , eventually you may get the experience , but training is experience right .

We made them as dangerous as we could . So you thought , well , no , this makes no sense , we're practicing dying in fires . Now , as we need to recalculate this and practice being successful . Well , you know , we say safety and everybody thinks , ah , there we go again . And you think , uh-uh , we make the scene safer for the victims by eliminating the hazards .

Well , that's what we do for ourselves then too . So the quicker we eliminate the hazards , the more dangerous we are . Well , today's fire attack offensive fire attack you can initiate from the outside of the building , so I could knock three quarters of the fire down before I ever get in the building makes it safer for everybody .

Well , you still hear these old knuckleheads , our generation . I don't believe it . This isn't what I saw during my career . Yeah well , captain Salty , your shit in your pants twice a day .

You know , if the American Fire Service ran the airlines , it wouldn't be safe to be on the ground , even because they are gonna fall down somewhere .

You can see our silverbacks there , along with 19 other instructors , So hopefully you can get signed up and we'll see you in person Until next time . Thanks for listening or watching B-Shifter Shit Sh messiesTFJSponD] you .