NFCC Direct Entry Scheme Officially Launched

[Matt]

Noticed last night on the NFCC twitter that 10 Brigades are intending to adpot the scheme, SM & AM roles available.

"A different route to entry for those with proven leadership skills"

Further details on the press release on their website.

Throwing it open to the floor, thoughts on this one?

[Luminoki]

Didnt LFB try something like this a long time ago. But i believe it was more accelerated promotion. Whatever happened to the chosen four?

[Rory-495]

I've met a few who were on that scheme. Some were okay, one wanted to put a monitor into a house with several BA crews inside and didn't know why we couldn't. 

I'm not saying don't pick people for leadership roles, but grab them as Firefighters and develop them early on so they dont lose heart, drive or want to develop themselves.

I dont agree with going straight in as a SM, committing crews into fires when you have never experienced what they will experience. What ever happened to using recognition primed decision making? Can't be an attribute if you have never experienced anything 

[OscarTango]

I don't entirely agree with the concept of joining straight as a commissioned officer in the military tbh, even though it's always been that way, but at least they spend a large amount if time learning the craft of soldiering (or sailoring) when they are there.

I get the idea of trying to pull in wider talent but what quantifiable difference does it make operationally vs someone who has joined at entry level?

Unless your reasons for wanting direct entry are more about wanting a diversity of "attitudes" than simply operational talent.

[Keith]

Yet more nonsense form those supposed to be running the Fire Service but are shamelessly following the overtly political agenda of the anti firefighter HMICFRS. I could be making this post in the Fire Brigade Leaders to Step Up thread as to why we never hear from them.😠

Back to the scheme and I don't see any of them ever being near the fireground. They'll spend all their time buried somewhere in HQ and attending conferences and seminars.

[Aspire]

13 hours ago, Luminoki said:

Didnt LFB try something like this a long time ago. But i believe it was more accelerated promotion. Whatever happened to the chosen four?

Of a scheme to create 4 direct entry Station Commanders who would then progress up the ranks, it yielded:

• 1 x StnO
• 1 x Station Commander
• 2 x Group Commander

[Percy]

Haven’t we seen this before with the ill fated LFB ‘Multi Tier Entry Scheme’? and if memory serves, that was universally accepted as a disaster (if any LFB bods can confirm).

There was another similar ‘straight to’ SM scheme operated in Northants too around the same time, maybe earlier than the LFB one in fact, but the difference was they took their own Green Book staff and made them SMs… again, from what I know, this too was a disaster and the poor people involved were so demoralised that they left the job altogether.

It’s not that I am being ‘negative’ and I can actually see entry to AM or higher working, as we have done in some FRS, but coming in the ‘at the coal face’ role of SM, where the vast majority of life risk incidents are started and resolved safely and effectively… really?

I’m sure the people they will look to attract will be ‘top tier talent from other sectors’ to quote LFBs Multi Tier Entry banner, and maybe in terms of management they may be. But at some point their pager will go off in the early hours and they will find themselves at a job with a relatively inexperienced crew in the very dynamic early stages and all eyes will be on them - for good measure, the next few minutes and their decisions may just be the difference between someone getting injured or worse, or saving a life.

I am aghast as to why ‘we’ the FRS, one which has preached and followed the importance of H&S for so long, seem he’ll bent on this experiment and potentially allow themselves to be in court or a Public Inquiry where the ‘experience’ of said SM would be savaged by barristers, then resulting in an inevitable Rule 43 for the whole scheme.

I know this has been brought in with the Police to Inspector and Superintendent level - roughly the same equivalence rank/role wise to this with SM and AM, and we share the same Inspectorate who have made recommendations that the NFCC seem to have run away with in order to try and impress. But is nobody capable of saying ‘no’ anymore? Do we always have to be seen and heard to compliment the Emperor on his new clothes?   

[PhilipK]

I'm just joining the fire service so don't know the in's and out's and what has been tried before, but this feels very simular to other organisations I've worked for. 

Companies that rely heavily on internal promotion usually end up with poor management as they promote people who are great at their current role only to find that that doesn't really translate to being a great at managing a large organisation. I suspect a lot of fire services fall into this catagory and that this is what they are trying to address. Just because someone was a great fire fighter and incident commander doesn't make them great at planning the budget and needs of the service in 5, 10, 20 years.

I've seen companies try to hire externally to fix this before and it's always been most successful when they build 2 parallel chains of hierarchy. A good analogy is being a teacher in a school where you can either move up the pastoral care hierarchy which is all about the teaching, behaviour, and student care/discipline. Alternatively, you can move up the management hierarchy which is all about the actually running of the school such funding, the board, planning new buildings, etc. 

I have no idea if this would work in a fire service setting but it might be worth trying if it hasn't been already. You could have one hierarchy that it just there to run stations and the organisation from an operational and planning perspective, and then a seperate hierarchy that is just about incident command and day-to-day command. Those 2 things don't have to be linked and based on what you've said, Percy, it's that link that has caused these programs to fail in the past. 

[Carl]

@Percy Ive merged your topic with one that was already started yesterday. 

[Percy]

Sorry Carl didn’t notice 

3 hours ago, PhilipK said:

I'm just joining the fire service so don't know the in's and out's and what has been tried before, but this feels very simular to other organisations I've worked for. 

Companies that rely heavily on internal promotion usually end up with poor management as they promote people who are great at their current role only to find that that doesn't really translate to being a great at managing a large organisation. I suspect a lot of fire services fall into this catagory and that this is what they are trying to address. Just because someone was a great fire fighter and incident commander doesn't make them great at planning the budget and needs of the service in 5, 10, 20 years.

I have no idea if this would work in a fire service setting but it might be worth trying if it hasn't been already. You could have one hierarchy that it just there to run stations and the organisation from an operational and planning perspective, and then a seperate hierarchy that is just about incident command and day-to-day command. Those 2 things don't have to be linked and based on what you've said, Percy, it's that link that has caused these programs to fail in the past. 

The trouble is though @PhilipK is there is no duel path in operation. So based on your observations at a school where you can have the teaching cadre and then the administrative cadre, great, I’m sure that works fine for that environment.

But in our world, and as there is no duel system in place, you will have the ludicrous situation where the good administrators are making risk critical decisions but with peoples lives at stake, not the smooth running of a school or college - in these circumstances, I’d personally rather not ‘give it a try’ as if it’s some form of wider social experiment just to appease HMICRFS.

On 11/08/2022 at 17:00, Aspire said:

Of a scheme to create 4 direct entry Station Commanders who would then progress up the ranks, it yielded:

• 1 x StnO
• 1 x Station Commander
• 2 x Group Commander

4? There were more than that on the original scheme wasn’t there? Didn’t some drop out at WM level?

[Aspire]

Direct entry was only 4, you may be referring to our graduate entry scheme which had around 12 and was a pathway to Station Commander but they had to spend a little bit of time in each rank on the way there. So they rode the back, albeit barely beyond competency, but will have had exposure as stations were tailored to generally the best ones to be at.

Most didn’t join the Station Commanders process for like 5/6yrs.

Some dropped off and some are now (12yrs later) really good officers with reputations to match.

[Antonhu]

9 hours ago, PhilipK said:

I'm just joining the fire service so don't know the in's and out's and what has been tried before, but this feels very simular to other organisations I've worked for. 

Companies that rely heavily on internal promotion usually end up with poor management as they promote people who are great at their current role only to find that that doesn't really translate to being a great at managing a large organisation. I suspect a lot of fire services fall into this catagory and that this is what they are trying to address. Just because someone was a great fire fighter and incident commander doesn't make them great at planning the budget and needs of the service in 5, 10, 20 years.

I've seen companies try to hire externally to fix this before and it's always been most successful when they build 2 parallel chains of hierarchy. A good analogy is being a teacher in a school where you can either move up the pastoral care hierarchy which is all about the teaching, behaviour, and student care/discipline. Alternatively, you can move up the management hierarchy which is all about the actually running of the school such funding, the board, planning new buildings, etc. 

I have no idea if this would work in a fire service setting but it might be worth trying if it hasn't been already. You could have one hierarchy that it just there to run stations and the organisation from an operational and planning perspective, and then a seperate hierarchy that is just about incident command and day-to-day command. Those 2 things don't have to be linked and based on what you've said, Percy, it's that link that has caused these programs to fail in the past. 

@PhilipK hit the nail on the head despite even his own stated lack of time in the job. As one with experience within the job and within organisational management experience in a wider setting. I can 100% say that in my experience one of the bigger issues in the fire service is leadership with zero management skills, it goes two ways and although I certainly agree that in our job one needs to have experience and knowledge of the job, they also severely need management skills. We very rarely seem to achieve both in many candidates and if anything I think we need more management skills, as we do have plenty of operationally competent leaders. 

While I wholeheartedly agree with what @Percy has said with regards to risk critical situations and incident command experience and knowledge. Their needs to a balance, I don’t agree on direct entry as such and two pathways probably wouldn’t  work. But what is the answer? Because presently I feel we are severely lacking and @PhilipK can already recognise that promoting purely internally the people good at their present job causes issues. 
 

At the end of the day it’s a very hard balance to achieve and I don’t have an answer to solve it that’s for sure. Realistically perhaps 80% of the time we rely on management skills on the day to day running of the job, with only of 20% of the day relying on operational competence and experience. 

[Kinmel]

The "Peter Principle" is as relevent to management career paths as it is to those in operational command roles.

Once upon a time senior officers received excellent tuition on management from the heads of national and international organisations, but that was all thrown away in 1990s re-organisation when people with fire related qualifications were renamed "managers" and accountants etc,with no specific management tuition, became "fire officers"; they even walk round in uniforms.

Between the mid 1960s and the 1990s the fire service enjoyed significant management tuition. Upon first promotion, everyone attended Junior Officer 'A'   and J.O. 'B' college courses which included appropriate management training as well as incident command. Station Officer Courses had more management than command material.

Senior office tuition was only about management, - A.D.O.'s and D.O.s attended the 10 week Divisional Officers Course, further promotion lead to the 12 week Divisional Command Course.  Only senior officers who had attended the gruelling Brigade Command Course could become C.F.O.s, that course was only about corporate management.

I know that after many years of only non-operational service managers locally, there is complete disconnect between them and the firefighters they supposedly manage; it will be interesting to see how and if this can be fixed.

[Percy]

On 11/08/2022 at 17:00, Aspire said:

Of a scheme to create 4 direct entry Station Commanders who would then progress up the ranks, it yielded:

• 1 x StnO
• 1 x Station Commander
• 2 x Group Commander

Are they still in @Aspire

[Keith]

Have to agree with everything @Percy and @Kinmel have said. The big problem we have is that we no longer train people properly for the next role. Instead of bringing in outside managers, the NFCC should have been reintroducing the system kinmel described rather than dancing to the tune of HMICFRS.

So after we'll have a few years of supermarket managers or wherever they come form trying to run the show, millions being spent, it will be realised it isn't working. Somebody will discover the old method, dress it up as a new idea, get themselves promoted as a matter of course and the wheel will have turned full circle and we might end up with proper CFO's running the show.

As someone famously said "you know it makes sense".

[Aspire]

6 hours ago, Percy said:

Are they still in @Aspire

Yes, those are their current ranks.

[Percy]

Having had a good think about things, I am past getting ‘worked up’ anymore.

I don’t agree with it, I still think it’s a ludicrous premise, unsafe and may end in tears, but it is what it is. The ‘progressives’ can have their victory on this one.

A final word of caution though and I’m surprised I didn’t remember the other day when the teacher/administrator example was given as a way this kind of scheme can work. My next door neighbour is a retired Australian Prison Officer at the infamous Boggo Road prison. Some of the stories!… well you can imagine! A few of his clientele included Nathan Jones (of Troy, Mad Max and WWE fame and one of the most physically intimidating people ever made - so strong that he pulled a cell door off its hinges… and Harold John McSweeny both of whom he said would have Charles Bronson ‘holding their pockets’ within five minutes. Australia introduced a system where by ‘good managers’, principally civil servants, could move between sectors at the stroke of pen and were encouraged to do so. Fresh from a couple of decades in health and then education administration, the new Governor of Boggo Jail was aghast at the oppressive conditions he inherited. So he introduced universal change, much to the protest of the career, trained, highly experienced professionals who’s job it was to look after some of the most dangerous people on the planet. These also included questions as to why security had to be so ‘labour intensive’. One would have thought that the prefix to Boggo Road prison being ‘Maximum Security’ was all the new Governor would have needed to answer that, and the fact that it had armed patrols.

However, Mr Health and Education decided all this faff was over kill so reduced security. The inevitable happened, with Harold John McSweeny driving a bin wagon through the main gate and escaping with a few mates. On the run, they committed yet more serious crimes… but that was just the half of it.
 

Captured and back inside again, on the way to court for his trial for the escape, Harold John McSweeny pulled a gun on his armed guards at court and made off yet again - this time attempting to hijack a bus full of passengers on which he was shot dead.

The Governor was later sacked and the scheme stopped 🙄

[Kinmel]

The hardest management task is to have every shift at every site achieving the same standard of output day in, day out.  The concept applies to many, many organisations including emergency services.

Some successfully do it on a global scale and their consistency is so incredible that most consumers don't even notice.

Their ethos cannot be absorbed by johnny come lately, so one common thread among such companies is that every manager starts in the same place - "Would you like fries with that"

[Matt]

Some interesting replies to this one, my view is that FF's should be developed up the ranks, you cannot bring someone in as a SM with no operational experience, its dangerous in my opinion.

I have seen people promoted from other areas in the Brigade to say a SM role, put through a FF's course, does hold their hand up when it comes to operational side of things and not knowing everything but is actually a really good manager, its rare, there are some out there that this can work but the generally I've never seen good results.

It's not just Fire I've seen it in the NHS similar areas no experience it does not work.

[PhilipK]

On 12/08/2022 at 17:21, Percy said:

The trouble is though @PhilipK is there is no duel path in operation. So based on your observations at a school where you can have the teaching cadre and then the administrative cadre, great, I’m sure that works fine for that environment.

But in our world, and as there is no duel system in place, you will have the ludicrous situation where the good administrators are making risk critical decisions but with peoples lives at stake, not the smooth running of a school or college - in these circumstances, I’d personally rather not ‘give it a try’ as if it’s some form of wider social experiment just to appease HMICRFS.

Yep, I totally get that. I apologise if my post come across naive - it's bound to happen when starting somewhere new but it's a topic that interests me so I still want to contribute thoughts. As someone who will (hopefully) be working on the ground at incidents from next year I'm as keen as you are to know that the people who will be sending me in know what they are doing. I don't actually come from a teaching background but my wife does and it was the example that jumped to mind.

It's a shame to read here that the level of internal training that was once on offer isn't in place which I'd assumed it would be. That is definately the most obvious route and one that should always be supported.

[Percy]

@PhilipKI’ve long since stopped getting annoyed over Direct Entry as evidenced just this week when a Green Book colleague, and likely nowhere near fit enough to pass that side of things, said they are ‘considering’ applying. When I genuinely asked “would you not be put off by not having any prior knowledge or practical experience of firefighting, let alone incident command?” They replied that they have been told ‘they will get full training’. Admittedly my response was heavy on sarcasm when I said “Never a bad idea” and their parting shot was “it’s easier to train ‘us’ to be incident commanders than to teach current Ops Staff to be managers, project specialists” etc.

Now previously that would have ‘irked me somewhat’, but the new me just nodded in agreement, yes sarcastically and disingenuously, but a nod it was nonetheless.

I await the grand experiments introduction with interest and look forward to working with those selected.

[Steve]

Thank God I've retired... No 363.

[Becile]

@Percyyou not irked or annoyed, how you've changed...lol

[Messyshaw]

I note this Direct Entry Scheme will be launched next month after a delay of eight months. Its now only for Station Managers and not Area Managers as first envisaged.

I wonder how it differs from the LFB Direct Entry Scheme that was withdrawn after a very short time. One difference I have noted is that recruitment will be farmed out to Reed Specialist Recruitment LTD and training will be organised by Crapita at the Fire Service College - sadly another two steps towards Fire Service privatisation

This maybe a controversial point but the NFCC press release states one aim the scheme is the scheme will ‘play a valuable part in diversifying senior management in fire and rescue services’. I am not 100% sure what that statement means, but if the scheme is designed to increase minority diversity into the fire service by arguably cutting corners and lowering standards, this cannot be great news for anyone. I may have interpreted that statement wrong and am happy to be corrected. Its also completely unfair on the individual to be dropped in the deep end.

The LFB Direct Entry Scheme a few years back was a disaster. It is against the experiences of this scheme that I suggest that standards were lowered. It also created a system where individuals on the scheme where placed in extremely stressful management and operational situations where arguably they did not have a sufficient knowledge, skills or experience to do what was asked of them. That is totally unfair.

The LFB scheme started with attendance at a 16 week recruit training course. The individual would be posted to a two pump station and ride in charge - including operationally where the Watch Manager would sit in the back of the appliance and monitor. After a number of weeks, the individual would be transferred to a station to be in charge.

Let me clarify that I am not being critical of anyone who takes advantage of this scheme. In fact if members of his forum feel they would like to try this route, I would advise them to have a go. But they must manage their expectations.

To be in charge of a watch, to ride in charge of an appliance and be responsible for the safety of your crews and the public is an absolute privilege and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. But I did so after 16 years operational experience where I gained confidence and knowledge that can not be learned from Powerpoint presentations - both from attending shouts and listening to others during that period.

I know that many fine Officers have been promoted much faster than that and good luck to them. But I literally cannot imagine being dropped into the OIC seat with a few months of experience. Its a horrifying thought

I did my first temporary promotion to Leading Firefighter after three years operational service. My first shout alone was to a brick shed alight as part of the controlled demolition of a school. It was a bread and butter shout to most, but I had to decide do I let it burn (contractors were trying to break the solid concrete roof of this former WW2 air raid shelter) or do I put it out and send news in under the weakened roof????  Years later I had significantly more challenging decisions to make than this, but my point is even the most simple decisions are bloody tough when you have next to no experience

Its a odd that one aim of this scheme seems to be about fairness, but the truth is it is not fair on the individual , the crew or the paying public to put so much pressure on an individual that would be less traumatising if promotion was delayed. If Incident Managers are underprepared they will always take the safest route for them and their promotion, and not necessarily the most efficient way to deal with an incident. Good luck to anyone embarking on this scheme….. you are going to need plenty of it

 

[Percy]

Well said Messy. If anything it is the Area Manager DE that they should have stayed with and dropped Station Manager, not the other way around! At that level there is less of an operational risk - all their proven strategic experience in the private sector would have been easier to migrate and what Incident Command training they required for Level 4 could have been delivered via well tested courses like MAGIC etc.

Even being such an opponent of the overarching premise, I could see some logic of that cross over. But not to SM. Yes it’s a ‘junior’ rank to AM, but in terms of the frequency of exposure to making risk critical tactical decisions that if done wrong could lead to significant injury or worse, between an SM or AM there is no comparison.

Worrying times IMHO, fortunately we withdrew from the trial but despite my objection to the concept, I would give my absolute total support and any advice they needed to anyone wishing to go pursue this avenue into the FRS, especially to people on this site.