Who Wants a Job? The demographic challenge of recruiting qualified people to emergency services.

Whether your organization is career, volunteer, or combination, it is likely having difficulty finding qualified individuals to fill its ranks.  While recruiting new members has been an issue for some time, the changing demographics of the nation are being skipped as an underlying cause.  Consequently, we are missing some opportunities for identifying and guiding folks into our ranks.

The demographics of the nation have been changing for well over 50 years and we have reached the point where, for every person leaving the workforce, we now have less than one entering.  Historically, through the industrial revolution, when the balance of power between labor and management has shifted, there is a short period of higher wages and benefits quickly followed by the integration of technology, shifting labor locations, and other activities to drive down the need for workers, pay, and benefits.  What do these two factors mean to us? 

First, it will be difficult to find new, qualified members to bring into our organizations.  To address this, organizations will need to do a few things.  First, they will need to reach out to non-traditional groups to fill ranks.  This may mean dividing jobs up so to capitalize on individuals who can only meet part of our needs.  This includes looking for individuals who can lift administrative burdens from field personnel or splitting tasks among multiple individuals.  Second, we will need to build a qualified labor pool.  While cadet programs are a good first step, there needs to be an expansion to those potential recruits who may not look at emergency services as a viable career option.  We also need to make sure that, when they do, that they are qualified to pursue the trade.  This means involvement in reading, math, and other activities at the school level.  Having responders working with students creates both a personal bridge and ensures that potential recruits meet the standards we hold.  We can also reach out to students that we would normally not consider as on the emergency services path.  For example, hazardous materials teams can team up with chemistry classes to demonstrate detection and monitoring equipment and the practical side of chemical and physical properties.  Driver-operators, fire inspectors, and company officers can demonstrate practical math (hydraulics, fire flow calculations, fire protection system application) to math classes.  The options are limited only by your imagination.

In addition, we need to open ourselves to the introduction of new technologies.  Already, robotics is beginning to enter into the response community.  With the merging of intelligent technology with mechanics, it will not be long before personnel are augmented with equipment that will allow a single person to do the work of several.  Whether this arrives as a cobotic system, exoskeleton, or other technology, the role of the emergency responder will change and there will be a need for employees to manage this new technology.  Right now, a driving cost is financial coupled with engineering limitations.  But as the cost drops and technology improves, these systems will become more common.  The advantage is that it has the potential to reduce the physical impact of emergency response (improved responder health and safety).  There will be economic implications on the community (initial outlay and maintenance v. lifetime costs for human workers) as well as on what the role of the future responder will look like (joy stick v. current response model).

As agencies work to address the recruitment challenge, those that are able to integrate their organization with the community, recruit from non-traditional talent pools, and who are positioned to integrate labor saving technology will be in position to meet the challenge and will serve as role-models for other organizations.