Fire and EMS departments must pay constant attention to connectedness and retention if they want to keep their volunteers. Otherwise, their volunteers will tune out and silently fade away
Conducting surveys and asking for member input in your fire/rescue/EMS organization is the sign of a healthy organization focused on volunteer recruitment and retention. However, mismanaging the process can irrevocably harm trust, loyalty and rapport in an organization that so heavily relies on teamwork to serve its community.
Remember, YOU and the panel represent your department, and remember your candidate is also interviewing you. When the interview is over, you want them to be motivated by the opportunities for growth and development and your department’s culture.
Departments may have younger members who recently joined the military and are away for boot camp, training, or a deployment. Trust me, these member posts give members pride, and it’s equally wonderful for younger generations to hear about others’ Service.
To create the ideal volunteer advertisement, you must know your audience. You should be aware of their needs, demographics, interests and concerns. It would help if you also had a good grasp on their goals. The more information you can gather about your ideal volunteer base, the better able you will be to tailor your advertisement accordingly.
Fire & EMS is a volunteering opportunity like absolutely none other. We in Volunteer Fire & EMS get to do *stuff* that no other volunteering opportunity offers.
As a recruiter, You must view every person who contacts you as a valuable asset who wants to join your team; when someone takes the time to fill out a form and show interest in something these days, they must be serious about it!
You can’t put a dollar amount on volunteer engagement in the fire and EMS service. Feeling relevant, needed, and understanding that the time given has meaning is the jet fuel of a volunteer’s service. Thanking your members for a job well-done too often gets placed on the back burner.
Spring is in the air and so is the opportunity to get out of our COVID-confined cocoons and go recruiting. A recent email to my volunteer fire department’s recruitment team “accidentally” caused me to write this piece about recruiting in a high school career/college fair environment, an opportunity we welcomed with open arms.
Organizations compete to attract potential leads to their table, so let’s look at some methods for setting up engaging and productive recruitment tables at the recruitment fair or event your volunteer department will attend.
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getstarted@firstarriving.com
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