Now Hiring: Bunkroom CEO
January 2012
By: Nick Bailey
FDLiveIn.com
If you are a leader in your departments live-in program, I really encourage you to treat it like you’re the CEO of a small company. Instead of selling a product, your company or bunkroom in this case provides a service and a professional one at that. We all take immense pride in providing that service when we are out on the street, but preparing the crew for that fire or cut job starts inside the firehouse on a day-to-day basis.
As a CEO, promoting communication between members of the crew is one of your most important jobs. Communication is incredibly important in the fire service, especially on calls. I would argue that the better a crew is at communicating in a nonemergency environment, the less they will have to communicate on the fireground and the more effective and safe they will be. The communication within the firehouse can and should happen on several platforms. There should be the constant bantering between the guys at the dayroom table or in the engine bay, and then there should be the virtual communication via email, text and social media.
One of the biggest problems with PR that departments face is the inappropriate posting on social media by their own members. Citizens film us on the street all the time, and have the right to. There is nothing we can do about that other than remain professional while on the street. All too often firefighters post videos or pictures from inside the firehouse that the public doesn’t need to see. I am not condoning all of the happenings in the privacy of a typical firehouse, however much of what does go on, while in the public’s eyes is inappropriate, is in fact often harmless and needed for crew integrity and overall sanity. To get back on track here’s my proposed solution to your social media nightmares: create a separate, private Facebook group that only bunkroom members have access to. When live-ins post in this group, only the members of the group can see it. Now your live-in members who feel the need to post every thought and picture can do so to only those who should see it, not the public and not the leadership of the department. Furthermore, this group will provide a platform for important information sharing and conversations to take place.
In treating your bunkroom leadership responsibility as a CEO, you can take advantage of actual business practices and apply them to your live-in program. This is a method that Tiger Schmittendorf introduced to us a couple of years ago and is working with much success. I subscribe to online and print publications with a focus in business. One of my favorites is Inc Magazine, with the option for daily emails of their top articles, you don’t even have to remember to check the website from time to time. Their articles are engaging, short and to the point, with a wide variety of topics. You can either post links to those stories on your bunkroom Facebook group, or apply it to your operations yourself.
The more well rounded you are as a person, the better and more effective you will be as the leader of a live-in program. Any officer can tell their crew which hoseline to pull and get to the seat of a fire to put some water on it. It takes significantly more effort and creative thinking to bring a group of individuals from across the country together and turn those individuals into an unbreakable group that shares a bond few will ever experience.
Nick Bailey is a live-in Sergeant with the Hyattsville Volunteer Fire Department in Hyattsville, MD and Co-Founder of FDLiveIn.com.
You can follow Nick on Twitter @nmbailey1 and on Facebook: facebook.com/baileynick
