From The Great Resignation to the Race-to-Space, across the world recruitment, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, is changing, owing to myriad social, cultural, and economic trends.[1] Despite such challenges (indeed in spite of them!) our work, already applied successfully in several fire and rescue services evidences how research and data can be used to innovate solutions to the problems faced by many.

Our preceding blog posts discussing the On-call landscape, and the research situation for the fire service highlighted an unfavourable backdrop across the sector for recruitment, as did the data and research we shared recently at the National Fire Chiefs Council’s Practitioner forum.

So how can Fire and Rescue Services make favourable outcomes for recruitment and diversity more likely?

How can they raise awareness of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion across the workforce?

One way is explained in the video below…for the longer version…read on!

Research suggests that the key to an organisation's success in recruiting and retaining is having an intimate understanding of its target group. On-call stations which can only recruit from a pool of people living or working within 5 minutes of the local station have a limited pool of human resource from which to recruit and are a very specific target group. The innovation explained in the video below makes recruitment and diversity outcomes more likely and raises EDI awareness.

If you are a FRS senior leader and want to:

make recruitment favourable outcomes more likely
support realistic diversity aspirations
Start plugging the gaps in diversity data
Improve On-call recruitment prospects against unfavourable an backdrop;
Raise EDI awareness;
Improve your evidence and data base for local diversity targets to 'plug the gaps' (NFCC/CIPD ref document)
Highlight the tremendous value of On-call and your past success at recruiting despite such low prospective pools of recuits
Benchmark future social media and other recruitment metrics
Create data-driven Positive Action (PA) aspirations
Target PA and recruitment in the right areas
Calculate times to diversify workforces for HMI inspections and service aspirations
Determine if extending turnout times augments recruitment prospects (nationally and locally)
Use data to inform sustainability strategy at a station-level by identifying vulnerable stations and supporting those most in need
Then you can contact us here or here.

**SMARTer use of data for recruitment**

Recognizing the threat to the sustainability of on-call availability this backdrop poses, we use research and data to understand the prospective pool of OCFFs intimately and to guide recruitment strategies.
By using our Widest Possible Pool (WPP) initiative - explained in the video above - FRSs can estimate each on-call station’s possible pool of recruits, and its demographic profile/diversity to make future recruitment and diversity endeavours SMART and to support the stations identified as those most in need.
The SMART approach adopted, and its results, reflects the position of the most recent independent review of the fire and rescue service that ‘Services need to be innovative at reaching out to the widest possible pool, to make sure they have enough staff to keep this model viable.’[2][3]

SMARTer use of data for diversity

‘The business case for diversity is well documented, people from different backgrounds, identities and ways of thinking, behave differently and when this is embraced it enables us to be creative, innovative, adaptable and flexible. We recognise that the continued improvement of service delivery will only be achieved with a workforce that accesses the widest possible talent pool and is made up of individuals who represent the diverse communities that Fire and Rescue Services serve. Leaders in the Fire and Rescue Service must lead a cultural change by effectively communicating the benefits of, and the need for, workforce diversity, with their staff’[4]

Culture; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) continues to be the hot topic in the fire and rescue service: already the subject of scrutiny by HMICFRS inspections which now include additional measures for increasing their EDI focus to emphasise the need for an increase in awareness within each Service.

Likewise, HMICFRS’s preceding report notified services that His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services intended to produce a spotlight report on values and culture in all fire and rescue services in England. That report has since been published.

Culture was also the subject of much discussion and signalled as singularly important by the recent HM Government Home Affairs Committee (HAC) in March 2022, and by HM Government’s even more recent white paper. Yet even defining the term remains a uniquely challenging task within a context in which multiple cultures co-exist, sometimes cohering, and occasionally conflicting.

Using data to set diversity targets according to demographics

On-call stations can only recruit from a pool of people living or working within 5 minutes of the local station and so can only diversify according to local demographics.
Acknowledging this, identifying local profiles, and defining the characteristics of cultures is necessary, especially for an on-call workforce which is embedded within local communities and functions in uniquely, independent, locally-centred, non-centralised ways.

In the words of the National Fire Chiefs Council’s reference document for its position statement the CIPD (2019) Diversity Management that works: An evidence-based view statement in 2019, 'A common challenge when designing diversity and inclusion (D&I) interventions is knowing where to start [...] How about plugging the huge gaps in monitoring data?'[5]

re-enkindle’s Widest Possible Pool approach is an effective starting point to start plugging the gaps, identify meaningful success measures for local contexts that recognise country-level priorities in diversity, and then monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of local-level practices.

If you want to make favourable outcomes for recruitment and diversity more likely and raise awareness of EDI…Then you can contact us here or here.

As always, thanks for reading!

[1] M Elbers (2020) Brandweeracademie: Recruitment and retention of volunteers in European Fire Services. Phase 1: document study and exploratory focus group. Arnhem: Instituut Fysieke Veiligheid, p.1; Tamo Vogel (2014) Volunteer firefighters and their intention to remain active, (University of Twente). p.23; D.,K., Yoon., J. Jensen and G., A. Youngs (2014), “Volunteer fire chiefs' perceptions of retention and recruitment challenges in rural fire departments: The case of North Dakota, USA”, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Vol. 11, pp. 393-413; D., Kragt., P., Dunlop., M., Gagné., D. Holtrop and A. Luksyte (2018), “When joining is not enough: emergency services volunteers and the intention to remain”, Australia Journal of emergency Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 35-40.

[2] Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely approach. The need for such an approach was highlighted by the FRSA in its 2017 during its research into the recruitment and retention of 4000 OCFFs.

[3] Adrian Thomas (2015) Independent review of conditions of service for fire and rescue staff in England <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachme nt_data/file/562972/Thomas_Review_-_for_publication_in_97-2003_format.pdf>, p. 81.

[4] NFCC (2020) Position Statement on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion<https://www.nationalfirechiefs.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/NFCC%20Guidance%20publications/NFCC%20Position%20papers%202020/People/NFCC_Equality_and_Diversity_position_statement.pdf>, p.1.

[5]CIPD (2019) Diversity Management that works: An evidence-based view <https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/7926-diversity-and-inclusion-report-revised_tcm18-65334.pdf>, p.1.