Anyone that works in the emergency service field can tell you how bad management will lead to bad employment. Truthfully, that can be any job in any field, but emergency services is not a place that you want bad management. Bad management can fail you in a number of ways. The main way is in overall department morale. Low morale within departments can cause a lot of unwanted tension and fighting between employees. But where does bad management start? Who does the blame fall on? There really is only one answer to the question. It truly starts at the top and trickles its way down to the lowest ranks of your direct supervisor. The head boss truly does set the standard for how everyone should act, work, and operate. The head boss could be a chief, captain, undersheriff, sheriff, or director. Regardless of their rank, if they don’t lead by example and police their underlings, then they are a part of the problem.
Everyone can feel the stress of being shortstaffed. It is listed on most sites as the number one reason why morale and burnout are so common in most departments. Being forced to work overtime due to being shortstaffed can be draining mentally and physically when it occurs multiple times a week. As employees get burned out, you see a lot of fighting among the same rank, which leads to people ratting on each other and just overall shittalking fellow employees. Once again, all these issues fall on poor leadership. Management is failing to fill the empty spaces, therefore failing you. I have seen a lot of departments try to attack the issue with poor recruitment. A lot of those in management positions will then just hire anyone, even if they know they won’t bring anything to the table other than filling an open spot, issues, and more work among currently employed employees. Going after high school students who have no interest in working weekends and holidays right after getting out of school is a bad idea. While recruiting new employees, you should really focus on the group you want working for you. For communication workers, you really want employees that come from a background of emergency services. You really want a dispatcher that has family in law enforcement or does fire and EMS. Those are the types of people that will stay and don’t mind working holidays and weekends. Career fire departments should be going after volunteer firefighters. They already have most of the certifications needed and experience working on a fire scene. EMS Field is kind of the black sheep. It’s hard to draw interest due to the crap pay and uber-style transport that don’t really need an ambulance but call for one anyway. I would personally go after people looking to be nurses and doctors, as they could use it as a stepping stone while going to school.
A bad department head is also responsible for bad direct supervisors. Having a supervisor that is constantly going after your job can be really stressful. Supervisors should be there to guide and assist when it is needed. We don’t need supervisors breathing down our neck for every little thing. You, as a supervisor, are doing a great disservice to your employees rather than actually helping them. An officer getting ripped for his response time to a call rather than asking him what delayed him is an example I have personally seen. Writing up a dispatcher for not getting a name while giving CPR instructions on the phone is another example of a bad supervisor. These jobs are hard enough without nitpicking everything a part. The officer that was delayed to the call was assisting an elderly female with directions. The dispatcher that was helping the caller with CPR was dealing with a high-stress situation and a screaming caller. So maybe instead of being quick to write these things up, a simple talk would fix that in the future and overall help morale.
Something that plagues a lot of dispatch centers and paid EMS departments is bad contracts. It’s common knowledge that both are extremely underpaid. Most shortages could be fixed in both places with a good contract that shows steps to grow and the ability to raise a family. Most people, the writer of this included, can handle the beatings of working holidays and weekends if pay was at the right spot. Currently you can’t raise a family, let alone stay afloat on a dispatcher’s or EMS salary, and that’s with your significant other working. Police and fire salaries seem to go up a lot with each contract they get. Meanwhile, most of the EMS workers in the USA are working at minimum wage. Which is crazy. In some locations around the US, the EMT’s are doing more work in a day than police and firefighters do in a week. Dispatchers are still being treated as secretaries rather than first responders. The truth of the matter is that dispatchers are just as much first responders as police, fire, and EMS. Dispatchers are the first line of the emergency services, and yet townships, counties, and states refuse to pay them as such. This is, in my eyes, a huge morale killer and creator of hardships for these two groups.
I’m not saying I have all the answers to fix all the problems because if I did, I wouldn’t be low rank in my department. I can only express what I see and what I believe to be the problem. I’ve seen some really good leaders with nothing but high morale in their departments. Unfortunately, that is not the department that I, along with others, am apart of. I’m hoping the right people see this article and change the way they lead. But if they don’t, at least others will know they are not in this alone.