Human Resource Training for Fire Department Company Officers

Company officers find themselves in the lower middle management of the fire department hierarchy. Their responsibilities are sweeping, and in asking them to execute these responsibilities, they become the first line of representation of management.

According to the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Firefighter to Supervisory Fire Officer Transition Plan, the officers’ duties generally fall within the areas of administration, apparatus, facilities, operations and training. Of these, administration—and more pointedly, the human resource (HR) aspects of administration—are overlooked most often, although they arguably are the most impactful for a healthy and liability-free firehouse environment. Therefore, the application of administrative HR is a pertinent training need in the fire service.

Supervisory fire officers play a pivotal role in the development and sustainability of their subordinates. The gray area of personnel management includes interpersonal conflict, reviews, individual development/succession planning and discipline/enforcement of standard operating guidelines (SOGs). All of these translate into the capture (or loss) of the three tenets of cultural success: engagement, trust and buy-in. Officers face these in-station challenges regularly and, as such, are deeply influential to the cooperative success of the department and its individuals. However, more often than not, officers are left with few tools to wield.

These duties are best labeled as HR. At the fire department station level, HR could be defined as assisting the management of the employee life cycle. However, this ambiguous definition, the lack of understanding of this complex skill set and the absence of complete, identifiable metrics lead the fire service to underappreciate and, to a degree, avoid the subject matter.

Training

How do we best teach officers to handle potentially difficult HR situations? Create and introduce a formal HR training program for line officers. The end goal is to meet the department’s mission statement, vision statement and values by having well-trained, high-performing line officers. The stakeholders in developing this training would be operations chief, administrative chiefs, battalion chiefs and HR personnel.

The foundation of the training is for line officers to understand the importance of their relationship with their department and their subordinates. The following guidelines should be considered benchmarks:

• The company officer is the direct line of command that exists in a de facto domestic setting. It is acknowledged that this is a challenging relationship.
• Always maintain fidelity toward your position and the department.
• Adhere to the department’s rules and regulations and enforce that your subordinates do the same.
• Hold yourself and the members accountable.
• Be consistent.
• Be fair and equitable. Subordinates must trust that you will do the right thing and be discreet when required.

The actual HR training should consist of a presentation session that’s followed by hands-on training.

The presentation session allows for the introduction of the material and initial information that’s shared between the instructor and students. Comprehension and retention could be best achieved by offering a platform that provides a comfortable space for questions, discussions and case examples.

Hands-on training allows for situational practice for line officers to enhance their abilities and acknowledge and address their weaknesses. Hands-on training consists of real-world-based participant scenarios, to provide situational examples, role-playing opportunities and learning repetitions for line officers.

HR training should cover six essential subjects.

Policy knowledge

Although a strong understanding of policies is valuable, it’s more important that line officers have the ability to access and reference the appropriate information in a timely manner. Simply memorizing and knowing reference material doesn’t equate to understanding it and doesn’t necessarily lead to good decision-making and positive HR outcomes.

Setting expectations

Expectations equate to firefighters having a better understating of roles and responsibilities.

Set expectations early, make them meaningful and attainable, and make certain that your personnel understand them. The “why” of expectations’ intent and purpose must be understood by all of the parties. This creates a shared value and builds engagement, trust and buy-in. Use the department’s mission statement, vision statement, and values to explain and support rules and regulations.

Coaching/feedback

The purposes of both coaching and feedback are to help to improve the performance and attitude of employees, to develop and improve an employee’s ability to perform, and to correct poor performance.

The professional expectation is to always be firm, fair and friendly.

It’s best not to let performance issues linger. By being an involved supervisor, you spend less time, maybe no time, on discipline.

Frequent feedback is crucial. Ongoing engagement and information-sharing with employees should be emphasized, because it allows for immediate direction.

Importantly, the supervisor should never take an issue personally, even when the subordinate does. Remember, a bad act or behavior doesn’t always equal a bad person. Look for the real problem behind the symptoms that you are given.

Lastly, the goal is to solve a problem, but the other person must be motivated to take part in the solution.

Performance review

This is a key element of the employee development process.

Line officers should be familiar with the official performance review documents prior to the evaluation. They also should be instructed to take a rational, even-handed, objective viewpoint for each subordinate. Honest and meaningful commentary is crucial for the employee’s growth and an obligation of the officer.

The department’s goal should be that no one is surprised by his or her annual performance review. Furthermore, these reviews could be available to future commanding officers as a reference to current or future behavior depending on policy guidelines.

Discipline

This is the difficult part of the job, but the fire department is a professional workplace, and as the boss, officers have a responsibility to the department, its employees and its customers.

A thorough understanding of the department’s discipline steps or process is required and must be followed. Consider a “hazmat” approach toward discipline: Step back and take the time to figure out all of the information before acting.

There should be an option for consultation with a superior officer. This allows for a third-party view of the situation.

A focus should be on how to best handle varied disciplinary situations and how to best deal with each unique individual, while following policy.

Documentation

Documentation is the written and retained record of an employee’s employment history. It describes the actions that were taken in notable instances. These range from providing formal employee recognition to taking disciplinary action.

Maintaining documentation allows the employer and employee to preserve a written record that might be necessary to support workers’ compensation events, employee pay raises, and cancer, heart or behavioral trust claims. An employee-specific file helps to organize and track the employees’ trajectory, which assists with management of the employees.

Filing e-mails and documents for later reference is conducive to accuracy and timeliness.

Finally, the effect of poor documentation, both administratively and legally, should be established.

Other potential training subjects

In addition to the aforementioned six main topics to be covered in HR training, subject matter can include employee counseling, SOG application, interpersonal conflict, and when required, behavioral remediation. Some of the educational tenets should be explaining the intent and purpose (the why), taking the right tone, being constant and direct with feedback, and documenting exchanges in detail.

A successful culture

Company officers’ responsibilities are difficult. Often, officers have the motivation to apply appropriate HR influence but not the ability. Therefore, there is a training gap. By creating and implementing effective HR training, departments create better cultural success.