Motivation in the Fire Service

[scopino 0]

Thoughts or ideas on how departments are motivating their members to train more and be more active in the day to day operations especially in the volunteer organizations

[FD7807 59]

I am not sure how your dept. is setup but I can tell you that I come from Tarrytown which has 6 individual companies. In my company, 3 years agp we were averaging 2 drills a month with 4 men/drill. BY April when I got out as Capt. we were averaging 5 drills a month with 9 men/drill. At least 2 of those drills per month were state trained drills at Valhalla. Basically what worked for us was I got a few regular guys who were committed and we decided that we were going to go out and better ourselves. We talked it up at meetings, callled members who did not regularly train and talked up what we were doing, and took them to Valhalla and showed them how good drills can be. I find that guys respond to positive talking rather then trying to shame people into doing it or worse threaten to punish them. Key word in this is Volunteer and we try to make drills fun and the eating and TV watching we do afterwards is fun as well. ANd by doing it often enough it becomes habitual and guys want to improve and get better while cementing dfriendships. Hope that helps you in some way.

[res6cue 67]

Just kidding

Seriously though, FD7807 brings up good points. The key to motivating someone is to make them want to be there. Far too often I've seen people whose idea of motivation is to come from a negative angle. Meaning they'll put rules or penalties in place for guys that don't show up. While I'm sure they mean well, doing that generally has the exact opposite result. I'm not saying go so far as to bribe guys to be there with food or t-shirts or whatever, because that's unrealistic and questionable to begin with.

I've found that a little bit of competition can go a long way. Guys usually respond when you light a fire under their butt and no one likes to think someone is better than they are. Like FD7807 eluded to, if you have multiple companies in your dept, you can have a friendly competition to see which company acrues the most training for the month. You can do the same thing even if you're one company but have multiple stations, or even among individual members if need be. The hard part is trying not to let it get out of hand. Friendly competition is fun, but you don't want it getting to the point of an unhealthy or mean spirited rivalry.

[scopino 0]

Thanks I think the best way to go is the inter company competition drills whether its who has the most drills per month or even if its a competition at a drill the point being get your members out their LATER

[Guest]

If guys need motivation to be good, well-trained firefighters, they don't deserve to be in the service

[res6cue 67]

Aw, c'mon now. We all get complacent or unmotivated to varying degrees from time to time, even the best of us.

[firecapt32 282]

I have to agree with fd7808 on this one motiviation is the key make drills fun exciting and as real as possible, also as safe as possible. Companies should learn to work with each other, they should be interchangable parts.

getting all your members certified as firefighter 1 is the top priority then work from there. all members should have safety and survival.

bring in instructors to your departments even if its some one from the next department, so that your members dont have to listen to you all the time ))