Recommendations - Next Steps

Organisational Transformation

1. 1. Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service has made several notable in-roads in its quest to engage with racially minoritised communities and women across its area of service responsibility. The success of its recent recruitment campaign detailed in the Wholetime Recruitment Process 23-24 report, highlights that some of the initiatives and activities are starting to be productive.
  2. However, the NFRS Senior Leadership Team must recognise that the achievement of their aims for a more inclusive workforce over the next 10 years, and much better engagement with the community, requires stronger consistent leadership and organisation-wide transformation.
  3. Existing staff and partners are used to a markedly white-majority organisation, and senior leaders need to invest into the change that is required for inclusive transformation. There will inevitably be ‘ruffled feathers’ throughout the Service as change brings with it aspects of disharmony because the dynamics will alter too.
  4. There must be a clear and collective narrative from the most senior leaders at NFRS embracing the need for adjustment and the wider benefits of diversifying the workforce.

Challenges of Change

1. 1. Organisation-wide transformation is undoubtedly a leadership challenge and a fundamental modification in how diversity and inclusion have been managed to date needs to be recognised and approached as such. A determined repositioning of internal dynamics and relationships, along with a refresh of enabling functions must be undertaken before any adjustment in community concepts can be achieved.
  2. A prime example of the disparity between internal mindsets and outward-facing actions is epitomised in the tale by one respondent who said the recruiters talked about their commitment to attracting female firefighters yet continually used the term ‘fireman’.
  3. Enabling functions – in this case primarily the Community Engagement Team, Communications and HR teams – have a completely different remit during times of transformation compared to statutory business as usual. NFRS needs to focus on winning the hearts and minds of its workforce before it seeks to do the same with the communities it wishes to embrace.
  4. There is expected to be a significant number of staff (including supervisors and managers) that are quite content with the workforce the way it is. They will feel that it works – after all, they put out fires efficiently, they all get along, they undertake preventative work effectively etc., so why try to ‘fix’ what isn’t broken? Some will also assume it would mean reducing the standards for entry, which could ultimately put their own lives at risk; and others will feel it is a slippery slope towards them becoming the ‘minority’ within the workforce. These suppositions are misplaced but very common concerns and if they are not addressed early in the transformation process, they will eventually result in a climate of resentment, distrust, alienation and segregation.

Public Relations and Marketing

1. 1. The Community Engagement Team, Communications and HR teams would need to work simultaneously with the Senior Leadership Team (and Trade Unions) to develop a strategy of information dissemination, specifically to educate, allay concerns and increase awareness, that having a diverse, contemporary and progressive workforce is a business-critical imperative; and what that would and crucially wouldn’t mean for the existing workforce. Standards of expected conduct and behaviours would need to be clarified, reiterated and where necessary enforced, to show organisational commitment in practice.
  2. As is the case with most transforming organisations, the Communications team would need to temporarily adopt (or commission) Marketing and Public Relations (PR) functions. This is self-evident from the numerous responses that felt the style and breadth of communication from NFRS has failed to reach any prominence to date. Social media needs to be approved as a vital channel to reach out to targeted groups, ensuring that the style, experience and content are fit for current-day consumers. The utilisation of Marketing and PR skills will also reduce instances where NFRS would attend community events with good intentions but by default end up reinforcing the myths that it is a white, male domain.
  3. The Fire Service has done some notable work on safe and well visits and several respondents spoke positively about their experiences. One way to build on this is to let the community hear from itself. Consider doing short videos of recipients of the service speaking to its value and the positive experiences they enjoyed. This would convince other members of the community much more than the NFRS promoting itself in scripted formats.

Recruitment Process and Policy

1. 1. The Fire Service needs to proactively promote the available career opportunities and leverage Public Relations to show that it views itself as an integral part of the broader community and is committed to engaging with various minority communities. Consider forming partnerships with some of the organisations involved in this exercise, as they are actively interested in collaborating with the NFRS. Cultivate them to become advocates for the Service within their communities and in return, utilise their knowledge and experience to co-design some community-based services or activities.
  2. This research effort has been about winning hearts and minds but so far, the Service has approached engagement in a transactional manner, which has resulted in limited progress.
  3. Dialogue with the groups contacted as part of this review has to be based on more than their race, gender, religion or cultural beliefs. Their community have qualifications, aspirations, experiences and transferable skills. Communication should focus on acknowledging these attributes and persuading their owners that NFRS is a welcoming environment where they can grow, thrive and progress by merit. It should emphasise how they can utilise and enhance these qualities while also developing new ones.
  4. Recruitment processes have to be carried out through the lens of the necessity of diversifying the workforce and welcoming the broader benefits that brings, including increased credibility and being more representative of the community it serves. This can, and should, be done without compromising the quality of recruits but rather by improving the quality of recruitment. We would categorically recommend a complete review of NFRS current recruitment processes, starting with the job descriptions. We also recommend targeting the Nottingham area for your next recruitment drive, using the positive action provisions in the Equality Act 2010 and considering whether the 12-week training course can be held in a location that is within 5 miles of the Nottingham City boundary.
  5. Review the impartiality and objectivity of migrating on-call firefighters, who don’t have to go through the normal recruitment process into vacant positions given the disparities this is creating in your workforce. Strategically and operationally consider who this practice benefits the most, given current statistics that the majority of on-call firefighters live outside of the City boundaries and are white men.
  6. Given the diversity of backgrounds and educational attainment, the NFRS should consider different ways of entry to non-operational roles. Cadets, volunteers, government backed apprenticeship schemes, graduate trainee schemes, and direct entry to senior level posts are all tried and tested methods used by other large and reputable organisations in both the public and private sectors. These avenues may also be suitable for firefighter roles.
  7. A criterion for promotion should contain evidence of how the candidate has demonstrated EDI in service delivery and in the workplace.

Targets and Governance

1. 1. NFRS should set and publish aspirational targets that can be measured. The word aspirational is used here because it is important NFRS does not simply sway from one objective to another without ensuring the journey is robust and sustainable. It is critically significant that the targets can be measured because ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’, and you certainly can’t improve on what you don’t measure. Publishing the targets not only holds the Service to account, but also shows it is committed to those targets. Additionally, publishing them invites discussions from the community about progress against the targets. It signifies to all employees, partners and other stakeholders that having a diverse and inclusive service is one of NFRS’ fundamental values.
  2. We would recommend that the NFRS gives serious consideration to the suggestions obtained from the community engagement through this exercise, on what you should Start, Stop or Continue doing, as this will be the start of co-designing your strategic plans with diverse representation. Many of the community groups / organisations that we spoke to (Chayah, Patra, ACNA, Muslim Hands, Mojatu, and Juno to name a few), have extensive experience of working with Nottinghamshire Police and these groups are both willing and able to support the NFRS. Not taking advantage of their knowledge and experience in this area would indeed be a missed opportunity.
  3. We would also recommend that the NFRS long term diversity planning is not just a series of initiatives, but instead is reformatted into a strategic document that is enabled by duly diligent governance processes, strong leadership, a supportive and inclusive organisational culture, robust data and monitoring, and positive action and transformation.
  4. Last but not least is our strong recommendation, based on 53% of respondents who were women and people from ethnic minorities wishing to visit NFRS to view life as a Firefighter, that the communities we spoke to are contacted by the Community Engagement Team to follow up on this positive reaction to engaging with the Fire Service.