Diversity

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer This is the title of a recent post from my fire service colleague and attorney, Curt Varone, on his blog, Fire Law: Fairfax County’s Highest Female Officer Resigns From Women’s Program Officer Position WOW! There’s no other word that even comes close to describing my thoughts after reading Chief Stanley’s letter of resignation. After ...

By Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Bringing more women into your fire department is not going to add value or capabilities to your organization unless your department’s leadership recognizes and addresses its barriers to inclusion. In a recent piece for FireRescue1’s on-line trade journal, 7 steps to an inclusive fire department culture, I wrote: Diversity is about counting people. Inclusion ...

Diversity is about counting people. Inclusion is about making people count. Diversity is about the ingredients, the mix of people and perspectives. Inclusion is about the container – the place that allows employees to feel they belong, to feel both accepted and different. To achieve success today and tomorrow in meeting the challenges it faces, a fire department needs a group of people who think differently – in a place that's safe to share those differences.

I submit for your consideration that fire department leaders will not find the “fix” until they recognize that those new members (outsiders) are being exposed to the behaviors and expectations of the firehouse clan from Day #1 with a department. Who’s teaching them in those entry-level training programs? Who’s working with them at the firehouse when they come on board?

Maybe, just maybe, we'll all start taking a much different view of claims of sexual harassment--and all other forms of harassment in the workplace for that matter—and especially those brought forth by women in the fire service.

Much is being written and discussed about the fire service and its culture of risk-taking and the influence of that culture on firefighter deaths and injuries. But there is also the culture of the firehouse, and that’s the culture that’s influencing the inappropriate behaviors, on and off the job, that are resulting in careers being ruined, lawsuits being filed, and in the worst cases, firefighters taking their own lives.

Come again? Without admitting guilt? I don’t know about the average citizen, but when I see a local government paying $1.75 million to a plaintiff in a sexual harassment case, I see “guilty”, how about you?

But the problem of acceptance in the fire service goes beyond that experienced by women. People of color (men and women), those who are gay or transsexual or just somehow just “different” are not as readily accepted—if they ever are—by the white male majority.

In just the past few days another woman firefighter filed a lawsuit against the Fairfax County (Va.) Fire and Rescue Department claiming not only that was she sexually harassed and stalked by her captain, but she was retaliated against when she reported his behavior. That’s right, the same department that Nicole Mittendorff worked for before she took her own life.

The confidence that I gained to be able to work through any tough situation, not just firefighting situations. I’ll never forget the slogan that was on our camp T-shirts and all the equipment that we used, “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll understand. Involve me and I’ll remember.” Been more than four years now and I still remember that.