On-Call Restructure?

[James Abs]

Hey everyone,

I’m curious to know if any On-call firefighters know of a restructure that concerns pay and the hours a person needs to commit?

I’ve had my council tax bill through today, with it was a leaflet about ECFRS and investing in On-call firefighters, primarily for recruitment and retention.

Thanks! 

[Becile]

On call are usually specific to individual services-   not all are alike, so it would depend on your individual services approach. Lots are moving towards pay for availability rather than specific hours etc.

[TandA]

@James AbsAs a longtime on call firefighter in Essex, I am aware that our service, like almost every service in the UK that employs on call firefighters, is currently looking at a number of options around both the hours you need to commit and the remuneration you receive.  This review / these reviews have been going on for a number of years and as yet nothing has changed which just indicates how difficult a problem on call recruitment and retention is to solve, especially in a time of financial restraint (no increase on the ECFRS bit of that council tax bill)  where you definitely do not have a pot of money to throw at it so pay changes will probably be minor if at all.  Even the hours of commitment issue isn’t straightforward.  Almost everyone agrees a cut in hours would be beneficial, very few people will now consider committing to provide cover for 90 or 120 hours per week, but if you cut hours per person then you have to increase the number of people and that means more uniforms, more training, extra space in stations to accommodate them and their uniforms/ kit etc etc.  I currently have exactly that problem at my station, we have managed to recruit a couple of extra bodies to address a 50% shortfall in numbers for the first time in years and I am literally scrabbling about trying to make space on station to fit them as changes to other requirements / bigger appliances over time have eaten in to the space on a station was built 60 years ago and remained pretty much untouched since then.

If you have specific questions, especially if you are thinking of joining Essex as an on-call firefighter then by all means fire away or message me if you prefer and I will try to answer.

[Highlander]

ScottishFRS just went through a very involved exercise to try and get co-responding off the ground. But it stalled.  I was fine with the idea, it makes sense in smaller communities, but in typical FRS fashion the implementation was ill thought out. I asked asked the basic question of "based on historical data, how many incidents could we expect to attend" No one could answer as they didn't have the data......   As retained i have to balance my on-call, main job and family. So if you can't tell me what I'm signing up to, then I can't make a decision..  Training and competency was also an issue, we can't even get sufficient training on or core skills....

Going forward, I believe they are now looking at standardizing T&C's for all retained in Scotland as following the merger, lots of people are of different contracts.  once that is done they are going to be "updating" the service. They are currently exploring different model and experiences of other FRS's.

[Vema11]

Be interesting to see what the “working from home” culture will do for the retained, might possibly be the making of the RDS in certain areas. If people are no longer leaving their towns and villages for work. Services could tap into that to attract more cover. 

[Carl]

Its an interesting point that actually @Vema11I never looked at it that way but you are right, if people begin to work from home on a more permanent basis, it could open it up for a lot of people who previously couldn't and as you say could end some of the retained recruitment issues. 

@TandA Thoughts ?

[Highlander]

1 hour ago, Vema11 said:

Be interesting to see what the “working from home” culture will do for the retained, might possibly be the making of the RDS in certain areas. If people are no longer leaving their towns and villages for work. Services could tap into that to attract more cover. 

We have an app that lest us see availability in our local area. I live in a commuter area and it has massively improved day time availability across the board. 

[TandA]

@Carl It’s certainly being looked at as a potential source of new recruits.  It isn’t as simple as having people work from home, they / we still have to convince their employer to let them respond during work hours which is the hard bit and make it a viable proposition for them to join.

We need to structure our contracts, our reward and our training to be an attractive option.  Recruit training  is a big issue for me, or at least the way my service structure it is.  You are a potential recruit, your employer has agreed to release you for calls during work hours.  You get the standard 20 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays per year.  Now you find that in the first 2 years you need to cover 11 days pump and ladders, 11 days BA, 5 days RTC, 2 days PHEMD, 3 days PPV offensive, 3 days guidelines and a couple of days for skills verifications.  You do the maths and realise it means the Mrs and little ones can forget about a week in Skegness (other holiday destinations are available) for the next two years and all for about £300 a month and being tied to the station area for 90 hours a week.  Are you still interested in joining?  No?, nor are many others.  It’s even worse if you only provide nights and weekend cover, they still expect you to do the training Mon- Fri 9am to 5pm.  

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for high quality training and skills assurance but we have to find ways of being more flexible and we must ensure time is well spent.  I have noticed a few times lately that training is being expanded to encompass extra days but the extra time isn’t used to cover stuff that I believe is critical or practical, more it is used to teach what I would politely term nice to know filler information.  Why are we risking driving potential recruits away so we can teach them fluff?

Having said all that, my station currently has more potential recruits going through the recruitment process than at any time in the last 20 years.  None of them are home workers though, it just seems that the hard work of our on-call liaison officers in raising the profile of the on-call service is beginning to pay off.

[Keith]

More or less the same for us both on the initial training and contracts @TandA. With crewing pressures, its sometimes necessary to try and compress the training into a shorter timescale. For retained recruits we normally get them "safe to ride" over a period of 2 - 3 months before allowing them to respond to calls, then after a further 6 months BA training would follow. However, we're finding that because they're not BA trained the station's availability is still limited.

On the contract front, people don't realise the actual commitment required. We've a banded contract were you have to either give a set part of the hours either in the 08.00 - 18.00 Monday to Friday period, over the weekend or a combination of both. If you can't give many hours in the Monday - Friday band then you have to give them at the weekend, which is a big ask.

I'm also not sure if the potential will actually be there from these home workers. I know retained firefighters come from many occupations and am possibly generalizing here, but most of them will be from office based environments which normally don't provide many firefighters. (Retreats to put on tin hat.😀) 

[TandA]

😀 It is a combination that has suited me ok for the last 20 odd years.