Bushfire & Natural Hazards CRC

State Emergency Service volunteer views on expectations, experiences and motivations

Title	State Emergency Service volunteer views on expectations, experiences and motivations
Publication Type	Report
Year of Publication	2019
Authors	Farid, H, Kragt, D, Dunlop, P, Gagné, M, Luksyte, A, Holtrop, D
Document Number	513
Date Published	09/2019
Institution	Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC
City	Melbourne
Report Number	513
Keywords	Emergency management, research, state emergency service, survey, sustainable volunteering, volunteering
Abstract	In 2017, the University of Western Australia (UWA) began a research collaboration project with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES), funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), to investigate ways to improve the retention rates of their emergency service volunteers. The State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers are a vital community within Western Australia’s emergency volunteering sector due to their profound work and assistance in times of natural disasters and other emergencies. As such, researchers from UWA (Patrick Dunlop, Marylène Gagné, and Djurre Holtrop have since relocated to Curtin University) have collaborated to develop and administer a Cultural Assessment Tool (CAT) in the form of an online survey. The purpose of this survey was to learn about the SES volunteering experience from the volunteers’ perspectives in order to obtain information on how to improve volunteer recruitment, retention, wellbeing, and diversity within the overall SES volunteering journey.