Looking for a little help increasing our manpower and effectiveness

[FFPCogs 863]

Fellow Contributors,

I serve as the Chairman of our department's Strategic Planning Committee and our committee is currently developing a series of proposals designed to increase our membership and it's effectiveness. For my part and that of the sub-committee I'm on, we are tasked with looking at incentives plans. Now I know full well that the jury is out on the success of such plans, but we are researching various options in an effort to determine what, if any, may be useful in our situation. OK so now that the back story is out of the way, I'm asking anyone here who is a member of a department that has incentives to please PM me here with some basic info on the plans and programs they have such as type (tax abatement, LOSAP, beach sticker ect ect) and criteria (how are they managed and audited) and also if possible with contact info for the administrators of them.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all

[FFPCogs 863]

Who changed the title of this thread and why?

[Bnechis 3,961]

You also need to try to get a true quantitative answer to the effectiveness of the different incentives. This is the big elephant in the room, as very few departments measure if the money being spent is effective.

To date the only one I have heard of that appears to work is paid on call / paid per call.

[FFPCogs 863]

You also need to try to get a true quantitative answer to the effectiveness of the different incentives. This is the big elephant in the room, as very few departments measure if the money being spent is effective.

To date the only one I have heard of that appears to work is paid on call / paid per call.

Getting that kind of info is one of our goals. I have some stuff already, but none of it local, so I'm hoping to be able to contact departments closer to home to see what they do, how they do it and if (or to what extent) it's working.

[RES24CUE 168]

You also need to try to get a true quantitative answer to the effectiveness of the different incentives. This is the big elephant in the room, as very few departments measure if the money being spent is effective.

To date the only one I have heard of that appears to work is paid on call / paid per call.

I am with you BNechis. I have seen a number of incentives given in exchange for activity, yet, it is my belief that none of them actually make more people come to each call / event. I have seen departments give out Meals, Perks, Gas Cards, LOSAP (Length of Service Applied Pensions) and, while all of these are great reinforcements for people who come to calls, it does not effectually make them want to be more active. It just rewards members (those who are more active) for being as active as they want to be.

When I was a member in an Eastern Connecticut department, the town paid EMTs $50 per call to take in EMS runs on the ambulance. They would not pay all 8 EMTs that showed up but paid 1 Driver/EMT and one Patient Care EMT (unless the call was serious - then they would pay an extra EMT in the back i.e. CPR in progress). This effectively incentivized people to get their EMT training to make some extra money and to show up for the calls that no one wanted to go on. It even went a step further since "the juice was finally worth the squeeze to go on all of the crummy calls (I think I'm not the only firefighter who dreads the fact that the EMS job fell into our laps in a lot of places), people would come around the firehouse to hang out more hoping to be there when the call went out so that they could beat out the other guys to earn an extra $50...therefore, they would be there to take in all of the other calls. It also created a good amount of friendly competition that was fun for the guys. I can remember making $1500 in some months just to hang around the firehouse on the weekends and evenings a few days a week. The town would re-coup this money easily by billing the insurance companies of those who were transported to pay the volunteers.

Another thing that I found to be effective were departments that had bunk rooms. In this day and age where the economy is crap and young adults are being forced to work more hours for less cash and can't afford to buy / rent houses in their home communities, they move away after high school or college leaving the departments that they have been with for 8 or 10 years. Departments that allowed members to "bunk," effectively kept members that were trying to get out of their parents' houses and gave them a free place to live where they could still give back to their community. There major rules:

1. You must have taken your firefighter 1 class.

2. If you are at the firehouse when a call went out, you must go on the call!

3. If you do something stupid, you can't live there anymore!

This resulted in 3-6 free 20-30 year old live-in firefighters at the firehouse most of the time (definitely nights and weekends). You essentially had a full crew ready to roll. And, with 5 or 6 bunk people, there are seldom less than 2 guys there to take in a call at any given time.

Lastly, you need to encourage training so that people don't just want to do the bare minimum. Training bonuses! Take Firefigher II, get a $300 bonus!

The three aforementioned ideas utilized in conjunction resulted in the creation of a "quasi-paid" firehouse for very little cost. For the cost of a couple of sets of bunk beds and a few lockers, you got a full crew on staff at the firehouse who were happy to have a free place to stay and a pocket full of cash from training & taking in EMS runs. These 5 or 6 guys, subsidized by the rest of the volunteers, many of whom would hang around quite a bit to make some EMS cash, created a pretty good system where most calls were adequately staffed, response times were great, and the members were well-trained and happy. When i was a bunk person I was in college and loved it. I went to class during the day, had a free place to stay and more money in my pocket than a college kid could spend. The set-up allowed me to be an honor student and one of the most active members of my department with plenty of time to spare. Many of the other bunk guys had full-time jobs during the day, evening, or night and would come and go as they pleased.

[SageVigiles 1,194]

If you can get a grant to fund it, a live-in program with tuition reimbursement is working very well for us. Most guys are using it towards paying for medic school.

[AFS1970 504]

I know of one nearby department that payed a per-diem wage to attend training. I do not know if it was hourly or not, but I know that I met guys in classes that were encouraged to take more training because of the money. In one class I was taking on recruitment and retention the instructor saw one of these students and had him stand up and tell us briefly about it. I kind of like this idea but I have some reservations of any plan that pays volunteers and still calls them volunteers. I also think that if you are going to pay it is backwards to pay me to sit in a classroom but expect me to go into a fire and die for free.

I can think of a few departments that pay by response, but to me these systems are always one step away from fraud complaints. First would be a volunteer system that pays per call, but allows members to call in to say they were responding if they get canceled en route. It seems to me that on certain calls nobody has any way of knowing if you really got off the couch or not. I have seen similar systems in a couple of career departments where overtime was open book for certain types of calls. One friend told me he rarely did any work but often just had to drive by the scene and the chief waved him on. I was in a class once in a department that had a system of calling certain groups back on OT for full boxes ( I do not remember if there had to be reported smoke or fire) but a call came in and half the class left to take extra OT rigs to the scene. Some of the guys even said they were only going because they were in the building and might as well make some quick money during class.

I don't know much about LOSAPS, however I know that Stamford promised to start one way back in the late 1990's. It never happened. I think that if managed correctly this could be a big retention aid as it would reduce some turnover. I have seen departments that use the tax incentives CT allows as a sort of LOSAP and they seem happy with the results. One department gives $100 off per year of service so it takes you 10 years to reach the $1,000 max. Another gives $250 per year for each of the last 4 years that you have made your quota. This way someone with a bad year may still get something, but a bad year will take 4 years to recover from. I know of one town that has worked out a deal with a neighboring city to extend tax relief to out of town members, although I am not sure of what kind of legal wrangling that took.

Edited August 26, 2014 by AFS1970

[Dinosaur 844]

LOSAP's are great for the guys who would be 30 or 40 year members anyway but do nothing to recruit and retain people.

[AFS1970 504]

LOSAP's are great for the guys who would be 30 or 40 year members anyway but do nothing to recruit and retain people.

I wonder if this is still the case, given the current economy, the status of our failing social security system and the jealousy that much of the public has for pension plans. Might these begin to transition from retention benefits to recruitment tools? However I don't know about too many departments that go to great pains to advertise their LOSAP's.

[FFPCogs 863]

Thanks guys for the input...keep it coming!!

[RES24CUE 168]

I wonder if this is still the case, given the current economy, the status of our failing social security system and the jealousy that much of the public has for pension plans. Might these begin to transition from retention benefits to recruitment tools? However I don't know about too many departments that go to great pains to advertise their LOSAP's.

I know that for me personally, the LOSAP program had no bearing on my willingness to volunteer. I joined when I was 16...I doubt many 16 year old kids are thinking about their retirement (I know for sure that I wasn't). The department that I was in gave $20/year up to 40 years of service for a Max-Out of $800/month. This isn't going to break the bank that's for sure. When I quit the department at 26, the last thing that I was thinking about was my retirement fund. It didn't even cross my mind.

There is one thing that it does accomplish. It results in a bunch of 45-60 year old guys who come to the firehouse after the rigs have left on the run to sign the call sheet so that they get credit. This anomaly is generally intensified between Thanksgiving and Christmas when a number of the fork and knifers come down to look at the points posted on the wall and realize that they are 5 to 10 calls short of getting credit for the year. Then they step-up their loitering for the home stretch.

The guys who are in it because they like to get a little bit of heat are the first ones there and are on the rig in the sleet, snow, and rain regardless of the pension program!

[Bnechis 3,961]

I don't know much about LOSAPS, however I know that Stamford promised to start one way back in the late 1990's. It never happened. I think that if managed correctly this could be a big retention aid as it would reduce some turnover.

I wonder if this is still the case, given the current economy, the status of our failing social security system and the jealousy that much of the public has for pension plans. Might these begin to transition from retention benefits to recruitment tools? However I don't know about too many departments that go to great pains to advertise their LOSAP's.

I have asked a number of depts. and a number of financial managers who run LOSAP if they can show any proof that it works. No one has ever proven it. In many depts. it rewards the guys who would come anyway (which is not a bad thing) but that's not what its being sold as. Also I know of a lot of depts. that find it increases the #'s that show up at the station 20 minutes to late to get signed in, then go home.

Very few 20-30 year olds pay much attention to retirement, even when offered it. If you really are worried about it, I would spend my time working a 2nd job and/or education to move up in your current carrier would put you in better shape for retirement than a LOSAP, particularly based on the hours needed.

[AFS1970 504]

I have only met one firefighter personally who admitted that he was in it for the tax credits. This was a guy who was a police officer, had a big blue light bar on his truck and told me that he only did it because he got a tax break. Interestingly enough this was before the state law was passed allowing cities to offer this kind of break, so it was some sort of local program. I haven't seen this guy in years, and I don't remember the town but it seems they were ahead of the curve on this sort of program.