Fire Department Morale

Fire Department Morale

What is it, its impact, and how do you build it up?

 I hope all of you are enjoying the beautiful summer weather. I also hope that you all appreciate what a great weather state we live in.  I had some friends visiting from Dallas. They really and, I mean really appreciated our beautiful weather. They told me when they were here at that time Dallas had 35 days of over 100 degree weather with 90 % humidity. They also informed me that the temperature low in Dallas was higher that the temperature high that we had. They were not happy about leaving California.

One of the officer training classes that I conduct is titled “Practical and Effective Fire Station Leadership.” This class is a very interactive training session that deals with all the challenges that today’s fire officer has to deal with. One of the questions I ask during the class is “On a scale of 1 to 10 how high is the morale on your department?  It appears the average score I usually get is around 7. The next series of questions I ask are “in your opinion what is morale, how do you improve it and, what role and responsibilities do you have as an officer to improve morale?”

If you look up morale on Wikipedia you will find the following “Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used to describe the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others.”

Morale can also be described as a group’s collective job satisfaction level. Morale is a measure of the team’s volunteer cooperation and desire to meet common work goals. If a group’s morale level is high, its members are more likely to cooperate with management and contribute to its goals. But if its low, watch out.

Below are some of the factors that can improve or reduce morale.

• Management style
• Staff feeling that their contribution is valued by their employer
• Realistic opportunities for merit-based promotion
• The perceived social or economic value of the work being done by the organization as a whole
• The perceived status of the work being done by the organization as a whole
• Team composition
• The work culture

When morale is high there is a tremendous amount of cooperation between divisions and shifts. Customers receive better service, accidents and injuries are decreased, and grievances, discipline, and absenteeism are minimized.

When morale is low, you will see signs of a reduced work ethic, increased violence, and increased absenteeism and sabotage; some may even express a desire to quite altogether, which ultimately leads to a decrease in customer service and an increase in complaints.

Poor morale will make team members turn on each other and play the blame game. Firefighters blame captains, captains blame chiefs and chiefs blame firefighters.  Although many want to improve organizational morale, there are those who simply say, “it is what it is.” Although it may be difficult for new firefighters to increase morale of their senior team members, every firefighter is responsible for his/her actions, and every team members actions are part of the overall level of morale around the workplace. To solve low morale problems, everyone must do his/her part, especially officers and senior firefighters, who should begin to develop an atmosphere where team members enjoy coming to work.

Next month I will discuss proven steps to improve morale