Massachusetts Fire Chief 2009

important to the success of the department. There must be a partnership formed that recognizes and appreciates the differences between both groups and how those differences blend together to make a successful combination department. To do this isn’t easy. It begins with the chief’s commitment to eliminate or minimize any behavior that tends to divide the staff. And this applies to everything from training to station duties to promotions. For example, make all of the staff drill together. If the career and call/volunteer ﬁ reﬁghters don’t drill together you are setting the stage for division. Other simple examples are to make sure you have one Holiday Party for the whole department, not two parties – one for the career staff and the other for the call/volunteer staff. Make sure everyone wears the same logos. Sure, your career ﬁreﬁghters are going to have some union logo wear, but don’t let that become the standard uniform. Everyone needs to wear the same uniform, or minimize the differences in the uniform. If you can at least provide the same duty shirt for all of the staff, you reinforce the concept of everyone being on the same team. From personal experience, I can tell you that the logo wear issue is bigger than one might think. I spent many years as a call/volunteer ﬁreﬁghter on a combination ﬁ re department and never even got a t-shirt with the department’s name and logo on it. The stated reason for this was that there just was never any money and I couldn’t buy my own because the union had designed and supposedly owned the department logo. What it said to me, and the other call/volunteer ﬁreﬁghters, was that we weren’t worth $20 to the community, to the department and to the chief. As you can imagine, the call/volunteer force in this department died out. While the chief would always tell us we were important and that our services were valuable, the chief’s behavior toward us strongly contradicted his words. When leading a combination ﬁre department you must make sure that your words and your actions say the same thing. Structural ﬁreﬁghting gear (PPE) can also create big trouble for combination ﬁre departments if it is distributed in a manner that creates inequality. PPE should be issued without regard to employment status. When a department buys new PPE for its career ﬁ reﬁghters and passes down the old PPE to its call/volunteer ﬁreﬁghters, it is saying that the call/volunteer ﬁ reﬁghters lives are less valuable. If the PPE isn’t good enough for one ﬁreﬁghter, it isn’t good enough for anyone and needs to be retired. This doesn’t mean you can’t have hand-me-down PPE as ﬁreﬁghters come and go or change ranks or tear something – this is a normal and necessary function. Just make sure the criteria for issuing new PPE is the same for everyone. Combination ﬁre departments must appoint ofﬁcers based upon ability and not job status. Don’t automatically qualify or disqualify anyone for any rank based on the fact that they are career or call/ volunteer. This is real tough one, especially as the career staff grows. When ﬁlling or creating ofﬁcer positions, you must let everyone compete for the position. I recently had to delay the appointment of captains in my department because the best person for the job was a career ﬁreﬁghter and there was no money in the budget to fund his promotion. Two volunteers who also were to be promoted to captain had to wait until the department could fund the career captain position. If we appointed the volunteers and not the career ﬁ reﬁghter on the excuse that we couldn’t afford the career promotion, this would have driven a wedge right through the department. There are many departments that restrict call/volunteer ﬁ reﬁghters from being ofﬁcers and many departments that restrict career ﬁreﬁghters from being ofﬁcers. In either case, it is destructive to the true concept of being a combination ﬁre department. In reality, career ﬁreﬁghters will eventually dominate the ofﬁcer ranks of combination ﬁre departments based upon the fact that they will have the most experience, more opportunity for specialized training and other very legitimate reasons that will make them come out ahead in a fair promotional process. The importance here is that you have a fair promotional process that everyone can compete in. If you do this, the correct people will be ofﬁcers and your ofﬁcers will have the respect of the ﬁreﬁghters they lead. Sometimes, you have to recognize and adjust for the fact that career ﬁreﬁghters and call/volunteer ﬁreﬁghters are part of your department for different reasons and they are motivated differently. While they all should be Fireﬁghter I/II certiﬁed, you must provide the initial FF I/II training and certiﬁcation to each group in a different way. The same is true of discipline. Giving a career ﬁ reﬁghter a one-day suspension is pretty serious, but giving a call/volunteer ﬁreﬁghter a one-day suspension is a slap on the wrist. What is important is that the outcome of your actions is fair and reasonable, even if you follow a different path for your career and for your call/volunteer ﬁ reﬁghters. It is also OK to have different roles for your career and for your call/ volunteer ﬁreﬁghters. As long as everyone fully understands everyone’s role, the differences and the reasons for them make sense. Written job descriptions for both call/volunteer and career staff go a long way to providing the necessary information here. Written policies and procedures that you actually follow are important as well. It’s critical that you involve both career and call/volunteer staff in writing these policies and procedures. Ambiguousness and arbitrariness will tear a combination department to pieces. LEADING TRANSPARENTLY The second tool I have found extremely useful for leading a combination ﬁre department is making it a transparent organization. Everyone needs to know almost everything how they ﬁt into the big picture. Knowledge builds teamwork and helps unite the career and call/volunteer staff. While certain personnel issues clearly (and legally) need to be handled in private, the vast majority of department business should be done openly. Preparing and managing the budget, writing new procedures, and writing speciﬁcations for a new truck needs to be a public process. In a combination ﬁre department, anything you do in a secretive manner is going to be perceived by the career staff as a conspiracy against them by the chief and the call/volunteer staff, and simultaneously perceived by the call/volunteer staff as a conspiracy against them M A SSA C HUSE TTS FIRE CHIEF 2009 | 21

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Massachusetts Fire Chief 2009

Massachusetts Fire Chief 2009 Contents A Message from the FCAM President Code of Ethics/Vision Statement Bonds of Service Legislative Report The Fire Chief for 2009 and Beyond Leading a Combination Fire Department Remember When Fighting for Code Change Leadership Matters Fire Risk Management - Fire Chiefs - Codes The Current Economy and its Effect on Fire Departments Statewide Fire Mobilization Plan Beware of the Truss Index of Advertisers

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