Fire Personnel Management (Research Paper Sample)

Fire Personnel Management
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Introduction
Employees are the most important components of the internal organizational structures. The managers are tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that the welfares of all the workers in their organizations are taken care of. Fire companies are some of the most important institutions in any country charged with the responsibility of rapid responses in the event of fire break-outs. Personnel management in this sector is faced with several challenges. It takes the effort of all the managers in the relevant departments to develop strategies that can be used to work out these challenges. Human resource managers have to ensure that all the developed policies are implemented in order to enable successful running of the organizations with the participation of the personnel. In this study, we look into six top challenges that face personnel management in the fire industry. In addition, there are solutions proposed to curb and control these challenges to ensure easy management of personnel.
Challenges in Personnel Management
The major challenges in personnel management in the contemporary society include but not limited to:
New Talent Sourcing
Modern organizations are faced with the challenge of adopting new technologies in carrying out operations. The fire industry has undergone technological transformation and some of the equipment is now set to run on modern technology. For example, instant communication and feedback is now primarily important in handling emergency situations. As a result, there is need to train existing personnel or acquire new talent that can fit into the new approaches to operations.
Sourcing for new skills and talents to match the changing society is very difficult on the part of the managers. As a result, some of the companies have completely failed to move on with the technological transformations that are currently taking place in the various industries. Most of the fire personnel all over the world still use the conventional traditional techniques in responding to and handling emergency situations.
Challenges in Retaining Top Talent
Turnover rates for top talents are a major challenge to most managers within organizations (Riccucci, 2012). The highly skilled workers often find it easier to shift from one organization to another due to perceived better conditions and terms of service. As a result, organizations that cannot go by the demands of these people end up losing on the top talents that could be available for quality service delivery to their clients.
When skilled workforce quits an organization, the value of service deteriorates and this has a negative implication on the organization as a whole. When the skilled workers leave for other organization, it is an indication of ‘incompetence’ on the part of the managers to retain their workers. Aspiring personnel may lose hope in these companies due to the frequent movements of employees from their premises. The overall image of the company in the eyes of the public is tainted by such activities. As a result of this, the organizations may end up being in the same position in spite the dynamics in the world of business.
Poor Managerial Leadership and Skills
There are instances where an organization has all the required personnel with all the desired skills. However, the management is not effective enough to integrate the efforts of the workforce towards the overall organizational objectives and dreams. In such instances, the employees will not be in a position to deliver their services to the organization as expected. Effective management requires coordination of all the members of staff and steering their efforts towards a common goal. Managers who are not in a position to drive the efforts of their employees in one line will not be able to make the organization develop to the expected standards.
In the long-run, a team that is not properly managed may end up leaving the organization for better opportunities elsewhere, leading to poor employee retention ability of an organization. In the case of fire companies, the clients may end up losing faith in the services that are offered by the organizations. Goodwill is an important element of organizational success that any manager must strive to build in the eyes of the clients and customers. However, loss or lack of it makes the organization lose grip of the market share in the case of profit-making organizations.
Low Employee Engagement and Participation
Change is necessary for any institution to move from the current position to a better point of operation. There are different forms of change that an organization can go through. Human resource managers often fail to involve the employees in important decision-making processes. For example, setting up new policies and standards of performance and enforcing them onto the workers is likely to brew resistance.
Introduction of new technologies within an organization without the participation of the front-line managers will lead to failure of the technology at the time of its implementation. Resistance is common in organizations that do not take into account the interests and opinions of the employees in implementing new work procedures and policies to govern the behavior of the employees at the workplace. In the long-run, it is the employees that will be tasked with the responsibility of using the new procedures that are set up in their absence. Managers who fail to involve their subordinates in decision-making processes find it challenging developing new policies even if those policies are very appropriate for their employees. As are result, the development within those organizations remains stunted due to lack of participation of the end users of the new recommendations.
Workforce Diversity Challenges
Recruitment and selection processes attract candidates from diverse backgrounds. The concept of workforce diversity has been explored by several researchers and human resource managers as a way to ensure organizational development. The major benefits that are derived from workforce diversity include faster decision-making, promotion of creativity and innovation and increased productivity and work performance. However, management of diversity brings about challenges to most work environments.
One of the challenges that managers experience as a result of diversity in the workforce is discrimination against minority groups. Taking the case of a fire personnel team that is made up of people of diverse race, gender; age and geographical origins, there are chances that minority groups would be treated as third party members of the institutions. Managers find a challenge in uniting all the members of staff from diverse origins to direct their efforts towards a common goal.
The other challenge derived out of workforce diversity is difficulty in implementing policies of an organization. Employees come from different backgrounds and embrace varying cultures and traditions. Some of the policies that are formulated may not be in line with the cultural beliefs of all the members of staff. Consequently, managers have to go an extra mile in ensuring that the new policies developed work for the benefit of all the members within the organization.
Lack of Commitment/ Interest in Human Resources
Decisions that are made by managers are mostly inclined towards the financial and natural resources that form part of the non-human resources. The welfare of the workers is often ignored by most managers hence the employees lose the self-drive that would make them deliver quality services to the organizations. An example is poor work/life balance for the employees. There are cases where the employees are strictly expected to abide by the rules and routine of the work calendar even if it is not considerate to their social life requirements.
Emergency situations at work place are not taken into serious account in some instances. This demotivates the employees and makes it very difficult for them to participate in their duties effectively. Fire personnel, like any other ordinary employees, are bound to have challenges in life such as medical cases that call for the efforts of the employers. For example, in a fire-fighting mission, there are risks that may lead to harm on the employees. Managers’ failure to respond quickly to the occurrence of these risks will find it difficult to work with the members of staff. Frequent strike and boycotts will be the end result of this form of assumption.
What some human resource managers fail to recognize is the fact that the subordinates are also human being like the rest of the members of the organization. Dependence on the assumptions may make the organization come to a stall in its operations. Some of the policies put in place are only favoring to the managers and do not take into consideration the interests of the employees.
Strategies to Overcoming Personnel Management Challenges
There are several strategies that can be put in place so as to solve the management challenges that are discussed in the previous sections. Some of these strategies are discussed below.
Dealing with Sourcing Challenges
Managers are responsible for establishing relations with associate organizations or affiliate companies. As a result, there is need to establish positive links with other companies that carry out similar business activities. In the case of fire companies, it would be much easier to link up with other organizations within the same industry so as to curb the challenge of having specialization gaps in the workforce.
In addition, the human resource management can put in place effective training programs to its employees so as to enable work flexibility. By training one employee on more areas of expertise, it will be easier to acquire in-house talents t...