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Aspiring to excellence in Derbyshire |
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Chief Fire Officer and Chief Executive Brian Tregunna, Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, presents an overview of the organisation’s ‘Achieving Excellence’ five-year development programme, established to achieve Derbyshire’s aspiration to be described as a ‘top quality’ organisation
DERBYSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE has embarked upon an exciting and challenging development programme to achieve excellence over the next five years. The service has recognised that it is currently mid-performing and has a genuine, realistic ambition to ‘raise its game’ to such a level that it will be rightly described as a top quality organisation that is performing with distinction across a wide range of key indicators.
The beginning of 2006 marked a watershed for Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service with the appointment of a new Strategic Leadership Team to work with the fire authority in delivering its new aspirations and ambitions. At the outset it was determined that excellence is not just about achieving the CPA definition but is about a much broader agenda to be excellent in the true rounded sense so that, no matter who is judging the service, it will be described as top performing.
Planning
One crucial element in moving forward is the agreed view that excellence is about building a ‘Winning Team’ in which everyone has an important role to play, including not only fire authority members and senior management but all employees and their representative bodies as well as extended team members such as key community partners. Accordingly, the service is developing a strong team-based approach that gives everyone an opportunity to be involved in informing and influencing the progress of a wide range of initiatives. For instance, from the outset, a wide cross-section of the organisation have been involved in reviewing the service’s vision, strategic aims and core values. Subsequently, the existing vision to ‘make Derbyshire a safer place to live, work and visit’ was retained but the strategic aims were revised as: Community Risk, Our People, Communication, Effective Leadership and Teamwork. The national core values, which have been adopted locally, were further defined to describe them in terms that would enable stronger ‘buy in’ and ownership amongst employees. Other examples of the team approach include the service working groups reviewing the shift and day crewing duty systems, the group planning the design of new fire appliances, and the development of a new Employee Forum that will include the broadest practicable representation from across the whole service. The Employee Forum will meet on a quarterly basis to discuss service development, share information, ideas and concerns, and explore the best ways to take the service forward.
Building Capacity
Another critical element in taking Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service forward has been the building of the appropriate infrastructure and capacity to deliver such a broad, ambitious development programme. Following careful consideration of service needs, Derbyshire Fire Authority has recently approved a Service Development Plan that will see the addition of 62 new posts to the authorised establishment over the next three years. This will be a major step forward in building the service’s capacity to achieve excellence and the resilience to deal with unplanned events.
Funded mainly through previously approved efficiency savings, the additional posts will address shortfalls that have been identified by various internal and external reports and strengthen most departments across the service, including frontline teams and support functions. The new posts will be introduced over the next three years through a prioritised recruitment plan that will strengthen all four strategic divisions, namely: community safety, human resources, strategic development and corporate services. This includes the prevention, protection and intervention departments, performance management, civil contingencies, ICT, occupational health, corporate communications and finance. There is no doubt that one of the most important challenges facing the service over the next three years will be the roll-out of the Regional Control Centre and Firelink. It has therefore been agreed to form a local team of six people who will work in liaison with regional and national staff to ensure that Derbyshire has appropriate arrangements in place as one of the first services in the country to ‘go live’ in 2008/9. Similarly, two posts will be funded for the next three years to deliver New Dimension training locally now that the regional infrastructure has been reduced.
The recruitment of 62 new employees in addition to other more regular appointments will undoubtedly be a challenge for individuals, local teams and the service as a whole but it is regarded as very much a positive problem as the service builds an infrastructure with the appropriate knowledge, skills and resources to take it forward.
Leadership and Coaching
Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service has recognised the vital importance that positive leadership and individual coaching will have in achieving excellence. The service has adopted the new ‘Aspire’ model and is applying a transformational leadership approach, albeit whilst emphasising the need for a situational leadership approach when circumstances such as operational incidents or business continuity events require a more commanding style of leadership.
All employees are being encouraged to recognise that positive leadership throughout an organisation, and not just at the top level, is a prerequisite of success. After all, whilst effective strategic leadership is of course crucial, there is no doubt that the core of the service’s leadership at supervisory and middle management levels have the biggest day to day impact upon local operations and improvements. Accordingly, whilst the leadership strategy encompasses all levels, greatest priority during the early years of development is being given to supervisory level for wholetime, retained and support staff.
The service is also at the forefront of employee development in using personal coaching to develop individual, team and service performance. Strategic leaders benefit from one-on-one executive coaching from an external provider with ongoing real life experience in the private sector. Other service leaders, meanwhile, are now also being introduced to sessions with coaches that use the GROW model (Goals, Reality, Options and Will Do) to enhance work-based performance. Such individual coaching is wholly compatible with IPDS and its approach to selfowned personal development. The sessions consist of one-to-one development discussions that examine individual strengths and improvement areas in a non-directive, non-threatening manner. It focuses on self awareness, ultimately resulting in improving performance and enhancing individuals’ skills that support both organisational and individual goals.
Teamwork
An interesting and exciting new initiative being developed in Derbyshire to support effective team-working is that of Team Actioned Management (TAM). Initially introduced in 2006 to support the introduction of five new area managers, TAM enables the new postholders to work with other longer serving area managers in progressing various work-based projects that are identified through an employee engagement process.
Whilst relatively new to Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, TAM complements the service’s inclusive leadership style and is already proving its value by facilitating the development of a new Area Management Team and the delivery of service improvements. This will not only establish the role and working relationships of these important strategic leaders but should also help to improve organisational communications and progress important organisational improvements. Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service has also recognised the importance of external teamwork, working hard to establish itself as a valued partner with other key communitybased organisations on the basis that many community issues affect a wide range of agencies and can best be addressed by working together. Hence the firm commitment to LAAs and other partnership forums where the service has consciously brought forward initiatives such as the YES! (Youth Engagement Scheme) project and borne start-up costs partly in order to be regarded as a contributor to partnerships and not just an organisation that wants to take resources from others.
The future of partnership working in Derbyshire is therefore likely to see the Fire and Rescue Service develop further as an organisation that is fully involved in neighbourhood working, helping to address important cross-cutting social issues such anti-social behaviour, youth crime, healthy living and community cohesion by working closely in partnership with local authorities, the police and the voluntary sector.
Equality and Diversity
Like most fire and rescue services, Derbyshire has a lot of progress to make with a wide range of equality and diversity matters. This is not just confined to achieving the government’s recruitment targets for underrepresented groups but extends across the full range of gender, age, race and disability issues. It is clear that many of the above matters cannot be successfully progressed in isolation but must be integrated into the mainstream of service activities. The service’s community safety officers are, for instance, currently scoping out the implications of undertaking a broader firefighter recruitment role so that positive action becomes an ongoing process rather than just specific oneoff events.
Furthermore, the service’s construction of five new fire stations, in addition to other existing premises, will enable local communities to use purpose-built facilities on a regular, daily basis, as is the case at the award winning Staveley Community Fire Station. Regular engagement with all types of local communities will help to foster stronger and more positive relationships that should complement the service’s community safety and recruitment objectives. ‘Achieving excellence’ is undoubtedly an ambitious development programme for Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service but one to which they are fully committed. The service has confirmed its own definitions of excellence and is building a momentum that should see it delivering significant progress over the next few years. |
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