Keys to a Volunteer Department Transitioning to Combination Without Losing Its Volunteers

Is your volunteer fire department considering hiring its first full-time firefighters? Are you about to make the transition to being a combination department? If so, the decisions that you make now matter a lot.

A successful transition from all-volunteer to a combination of paid and volunteer responders requires that you hire the right people and have good systems and procedures and leadership that’s committed to the combination department system. Pay attention to getting all three right and you set a course for a strong and effective department for years to come.

Starting correctly

I’ve observed too many cases in which a volunteer department transitions to a combination department and the department ends up losing most of its volunteers. Often, these departments end up being a “one and done” department, meaning that they can staff one ambulance or understaff one engine, and then they are done. Without a strong volunteer (or paid-on-call) component, the community ends up with a less capable department than what a combination department could deliver. If you transition to a combination department and a few years later end up with a career (or mostly career) department, you lose the depth and breadth of your emergency capabilities.

The promise of the combination department is that a small career force provides the community with a consistent initial response, particularly during peak emergency volume times or when volunteers are less available. However, you still have a well-trained volunteer force to provide a deeper and broader emergency response capability. It’s a cost-effective solution at a time when most small and rural departments lack the money to hire a career force that’s big enough to handle their needs.

The key is starting correctly. The most important factor in creating a combination department that will result in a team of career and volunteer fire and EMS providers who work well together is hiring the right people for the job.

Professional management

When a department hires its first full-time firefighters, it must hire those members for their management abilities. The new hires must understand clearly that their role is to assist with the recruitment, retention, and training of volunteer firefighters and EMS providers. All too often, the focus is on hiring people to clean bathrooms, wash rigs and sit around waiting for emergency calls. Hiring for these tasks ends up with a full-time workforce that doesn’t believe that it has any stake or responsibility in the function of a quality volunteer force.

A department’s goal must be to use its career staff to help with the professional management of its volunteer staff. At the same time, the leadership within the volunteer staff must be preserved while a mixed career/volunteer management team is created. The leadership skills of the chief and senior management team are key to department success and to creating a combination system that works for the long haul.

How does a department hire the right people? A job description that’s unique to the department must spell out more than firefighting and daily tasks.

It must state the job outcomes that the department expects from the newly hired staff, such as maintaining a well-trained career and volunteer force, recruiting volunteers and maintaining a team atmosphere. It must stress that leadership is the most important part of the job.

The generic career firefighter job description that might be copied from a nearby city or big suburban town is the enemy of the pursuit of success for a volunteer department that’s transitioning to combination, because a career firefighter isn’t hired to be a leader or to help to maintain a volunteer force.

Don’t rush it

A good hiring process requires a hiring committee that includes volunteer members. The process must focus on scenarios that aren’t strictly firefighting or EMS. The scenarios must include leadership and how to interact with volunteers.

A department shouldn’t rush to hire. If the wrong person is hired, the department is stuck for years, maybe decades.

Mutual responsibility

A department that’s transitioning to combination must have good systems in place before the first full-time employee is brought on board. Build those systems so that they work for both career and volunteer staff. For example, most career departments conduct daily apparatus checks in the morning.

When a combination department does this, volunteers no longer are part of that process. This leads to problems. If the volunteers don’t do apparatus checks, their knowledge of the apparatus decreases. Further, if only career staff do apparatus checks, volunteers can develop an attitude that the task isn’t their responsibility, and they can blame career staff for failures or perceived failures. Career staff can start to feel as though the volunteers are treating them as janitors and maintenance staff.

Try to do apparatus checks late in the afternoon or on weekends or whenever you can assign mixed volunteer/career teams. It reminds everyone that they are one team and that they all are responsible for each other’s success and the success of the department.

Broadened leadership skills

The combination system will change everyone’s leadership skills. Chief officers never must be perceived as favoring volunteer or career members over the other. Chief officers must have availability during evenings and weekends for the volunteers. They must be proactive in shutting down personal disputes between members, because these tend to blow up into volunteer vs. career issues.

Leading a combination department is more difficult than leading an all-volunteer or all-career department. It requires more hours and always having to manage the issue that part of the staff gets paid to do the same job that part of the staff does for free. It isn’t easy, but success means greater benefits for the community.