Mud Army and SES volunteers working together at the 2011 Queensland floods. Photo: Queensland Fire and Emergency Services
Understanding the diversity of people that fire and emergency personnel serve—and being inclusive of their needs—is changing the way some agencies are thinking about their operational requirements.
By Costa Haritos. This article first appeared in Issue One 2019 of Fire Australia.
Australia is often praised as one of the most multicultural countries on the planet. However, that diversity is not always reflected in the workplace.
Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC researchers are working to better integrate Australia’s diverse population and how diversity can be better managed and measured in agencies to help address this gap. The aim is to help create an inclusive workplace culture that will enhance decision-making and strategic thinking.
Celeste Young (Victoria University) leads the Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability project, which began in July 2017.
“There’s no one way to do diversity and inclusion, but if you want it to be effective, you have to create an inclusive culture,” Ms Young said.
The project has focused on the following three areas of interest:
economics—the case for investment and the changing capabilities of emergency services
community thinking—investigating community values and their attitudes and understandings of agencies by communities
organisational change and culture—looking at barriers and enablers to diversity at an agency level.
One of the key challenges currently facing emergency services is the need to build resilience in communities. This fundamentally shifts the focus of organisations to working with communities, instead of for them.
Ms Young said that while the notion of diversity is not new to the emergency services, effective diversity outcomes have been elusive.
“The services themselves are changing, their communities are changing, technology is changing, and the hazard is changing,” she said.
“This means that people are actually your greatest resource, so learning how to use the diversity of the people around you and being inclusive of them is now becoming a central part of the organisational agenda.”
She said organisations felt the diversity discourse had become ‘stuck’ and needed to be reframed so that it was not just counting heads, but more about the longer-term outcomes and benefits.
Diversity survey
Dr Craig Cormick (Out of the Box Consulting) conducted a survey that assessed the values of 539 randomly selected participants from Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales. Dr Joanne Pyke (Victoria University) also undertook interviews with residents in Bordertown, South Australia; Parramatta, NSW; and Bendigo in Victoria as part of the community stream of the research.
Residents were prompted to answer questions on ten different values and attitudes towards topics such as gender, lifestyle, ethnicity and perceptions of emergency services. The survey design considered the participants’:
openness to change—attitudes towards equality and civic action
self-transcendence values—attitudes towards diversity and concern for equality and rights
conservation values—attitudes towards difference, change and diversity
self-enhancement values—levels of prejudice and discrimination.
The study found some strongly ingrained gender stereotypes among both men and women. However, these stereotypes were more commonly held by women.
Twenty-seven percent of the total respondents agreed that men were more suited to frontline emergency response than women, and 50% agreed that when there is job insecurity, priority should be given to Australian-born people first. Respondents also commonly defined emergency management organisations as heroic, and primarily dominated by white males.
They also wanted to be more involved but felt what they had to offer was not always well understood.
“There is lot more work to do in this area to better understand who these diverse communities really are and the capabilities they can bring to the table, which is really important for communication and working partnerships,” Ms Young said.
Assessing agency diversity and inclusion
The organisational stream of the project examised and identified barriers, needs, opportunities and benefits in relation to diversity and inclusion across Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES), Fire and Rescue NSW and SA State Emergency Service (SES).
Ms Young and her Victoria University colleague Professor Roger Jones have worked with the three organisations to determine how they respond to operational requirements, and how their diversity and inclusion is shaped by their current context, purpose and history.
Evidence from all three organisations suggests that while women and people from non-English speaking backgrounds are under-represented in most organisational areas, this is slowly improving.
QFES reported that, as of June 2017, 11.1% of senior officers were women. However, figures like these are expected to increase, with several policies and strategies underpinning the development of a more inclusive culture.
One of the policies enacted since the appointment of Commissioner Katarina Carroll in 2015 is the ‘One QFES’ vision, which aspires to be more inclusive of women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The organisation has also implemented a new human resources management system to recruit and retain a diverse workforce by tailoring to individual needs in a safe, secure and inclusive working environment. Part of this initiative is the QFES Transforms Through Leadership, which places the organisation in a position for change by developing thought leaders and thinking about the future.
Fire and Rescue NSW is one of the world’s largest urban fire and rescue services, with more than 13,000 employees and volunteers. To reflect the diverse population of Australia, the organisation has changed its recruitment process and has developed a pathways program for Indigenous fire training. It has also created an adaptive leadership program for middle management and developed a policy to manage pregnant firefighters.
SA SES is primarily involved in volunteering, where diversity and inclusion has been more of an organic process because of the nature of existing informal structures. Policies and practices are currently in development, so a formal approach can be created that includes flexible volunteering models and a new recruitment campaign to target women.
Economic benefits
When it comes to the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion, the project is looking to see how diversity and inclusion can be better measured at an agency level.
Professor Bruce Rasmussen (Victoria University) has analysed the three organisations’ changing capabilities over the last ten years. He found that organisations were enhancing the diversity of their services and had become more focused on their communities.
End user benefits
Ms Young said the team’s research aims to explore the constraints and enablers of implementing effective inclusion in an operational context. She hopes to discover how diversity and inclusion can enhance the objectives and delivery of emergency services.
“We’re undertaking end user–based research to generate this knowledge, with our stakeholders being very much a part of our research team,” Ms Young said.
Heather Stuart from NSW State Emergency Service is an end user for the project, and is pleased with the direction of the research.
“The project is addressing an area that presents significant challenges for the emergency management sector,” Ms Stuart said.
End users affiliated with the project concluded that cultural change is the first step before changing any operational strategies.
Ms Young agrees with this sentiment and said that while the research is part of a huge area of organisational behaviour, it is important that it takes an integrated approach.
“One of the biggest barriers to effective diversity and inclusion is the current culture,” she said.
Despite the challenges, end users like Heather Stuart think that end user engagement has been a key supporting factor on the project.
“With the release of the first of the findings from the research, I believe that the contributions this project will make to the sector will soon become evident,” Ms Stuart said.
The project team hopes to develop a body of knowledge that can be used in decision-making systems across the emergency services. With the first phase complete, the researchers will continue to build the knowledge base with their stakeholders.