Tag Archives: retention

Summer fire camps provide a great opportunity for girls and young women to discover what an exciting and rewarding experience being a firefighter can be. Camps also provide fire service organizations an equally great opportunity to begin "growing" the next generation of women firefighters.

Behavioral research shows that by the time they begin their school years, young girls and boys already have some pretty “defined” ideas of what men and women can or cannot do, especially regarding jobs.

While waiting for Mrs. Avsec to finish a dental appointment the other day, I slipped across the street to a McDonald’s restaurant in Dunbar, West Virginia to get a drink, a hot apple pie and use their free Wi-Fi to get some writing done. While looking around a bit, I saw things and thought of things that prompted these five thoughts on how what McDonald’s does could help any Fire and EMS organization to recruit and retain more people.

Think it’s not important to your efforts to recruit, hire and retain the right people? Here’s an Fire Prevention Demoanecdote from one of my fire service colleagues on Facebook, Firefighter Irene Silknetter Fitzkee, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania: