Finders Keepers

Two very important words in the vocabulary of fire service leaders today are recruitment and retention.  I don’t care if you are a career, volunteer, or combination station, finding quality people, and subsequently keeping them is one of the greatest challenges we face.  In fact, the old grade school axiom “Finders keepers, losers weepers” is the basis for today’s blog post.

To begin, I researched the word “recruit” and was reminded that it is both a noun, and a verb.  We need to recruit recruits!  How catchy!  There are other interesting words that come up with that definition: enlist, draft, enroll, strengthen, supply, recover, replenish, renew, restore.  I never considered the “re-“ to be a prefix, since as a prefix it means “to do again”.  Then I thought, “Of course, we are always re-casting the net for new members”, or, I suppose, “CRUITS”.  But what bait do we use to catch these “cruits”? 

If they were fish, we would study what they eat, where they eat, and when they eat.  Then we would tempt them with their favorite snack attached to a barbed hook, and snag them through the lip and reel them in.  I suggested this at our last staff meeting, and we collectively decided this would not have any positive long term effects on our membership ranks.  Not literally, anyway.  I wanted to focus on young men and women and the volunteer fire service, so I set out to study these little guppies to see what “lures” them to join.  Like puppets, they said all the correct canned answers: help my community, be a good citizen, yada, yada, yada.  I immediately called “bullshit”!  Young people join the fire department because they are the leftovers, the outcasts, and the visionless who have not been able to carve another social niche for themselves.  They know the fire service, in general, is starving for warm bodies and willing souls.  Let’s face it, we pretty much believe we can mold any of these bewildered humanoids into mean lean firefighting machines, so we sign them up, and take them in.  We attract them with bright shiny trucks full of really cool tools, promise to dress them up in an awesome set of protective equipment, and take them “beyond the yellow tape” where mere mortals seldom trod, and let them break stuff in the name of public service. 

THEN, they discover they actually need to learn stuff… lots of stuff… hard stuff.  Science and physics and math and reading and all the other things they loathed in school are all part of the business.  Then there is the discipline!  In school, they were herded around in groups of people very similar to themselves, and the teachers and school officials made and enforced rules made popular by guards at a reformatory.  Discovering that the fire service is a very diverse group of ages, races, educational levels, shapes and sizes, and is run by several sets of rules (emergency rules, and non-emergency rules) is enough to scare away the weak-hearted.  This is why retention begins immediately after recruitment.

Retention: to continue, keep, hold, and preserve the ranks.  After learning that “re-“ in recruitment meant to do again, I tried that same rule with the word retention and immediately realized how messed up the English language really is.  Why can’t we just use “Obtain and Retain” or better yet, “Finders Keepers”.  Retention of the ranks is an ongoing tactic that we sadly do not put enough effort into.  I could staff 2 or 3 good-sized stations with the quality people I know who have left the fire service for one reason or another. Sadly, I am sure that my actions or even my mere presence may have contributed to one or more of those departures, but I digress.  The best way to retain an individual is to continue to satisfy that individual’s appetite for what bait got him hooked in the first place.  That’s right, every individual needs a bit of specifically designed, personalized “atta boys” or “atta girls” to maintain their desire to continue service with the department.  On a larger scale, a clear and precise departmental vision must be developed, defined, and communicated.  Clear organizational goals must be shared with every member so they can each feel like an important part of the whole puzzle.   It is leadership’s responsibility to outline the specific points of that plan and steer the group’s actions toward the accomplishment of that pre-planned greatness.  THAT is what will help retain membership.

So, to review:

FINDERS:  Look everywhere, discount no-one, open your doors, sell your organization.

KEEPERS: Once you begin to invest in them, protect your investment so interest is compounded.

LOSERS: Passing up a potential piece of the puzzle is a mistake.  Don’t let the big one get away.

WEEPERS: Those who failed to focus on recruitment and retention as a vital resource. 

Your turn… GO FISH!