Talent management in wildland fire response: Why a proactive approach is necessary to recruit and retain wildland firefighters
Talent management in wildland fire response: Why a proactive approach is necessary to recruit and retain wildland firefighters
Canada faced one of its most serious fire seasons in recent memory in 2023 — and your organization needs to assess its recruitment and retention strategies to ensure you have enough wildland firefighters to protect our communities. You can get started by:
- Investing more in workforce planning
- Repositioning the job experience
- Creating a clear communication strategy
- Providing continuity for employees
Learn more about each step toward refining your recruitment and retention strategy — and explore an example showing how a wildland firefighting organization can implement these solutions to achieve success.
Canada experienced one of its most serious wildland fire seasons in recent memory in 2023. This experience highlighted the importance of wildland firefighters, who play an essential role in protecting the public and preventing the destruction of homes and communities.
While recruitment and retention has never been an easy task for wildland firefighting organizations, many are now struggling to recruit and retain enough talent to fully staff fire crews. What steps can you take as a leader to ensure you have the resources you need to keep your communities safe?
A proactive approach toward workforce planning is necessary to recruit and retain new talent within your organization. Let’s review several of the obstacles facing wildland firefighting organizations today and the steps you can take to overcome or further mitigate these challenges. We will also share an example of how an organization can refine its talent management strategy to achieve success.
What challenges impact wildland firefighting organizations?
The competition for skilled talent has greatly increased as organizations across Canada struggle with the current labour shortage. Wildland firefighting organizations also face additional challenges due to the unique seasonal nature of the work and sector in which they operate.
These are just a few challenges your organization may be facing:
Less time for strategic planning
Your organization is focused on controlling wildland fires from May to September each year — leaving little time left to step back and take a strategic approach toward recruitment and retention. It may be difficult to refine existing processes and complete strategic work before wildland fire season begins again.
Compressed schedules
The hiring season for wildland firefighting positions often begins in January and training generally starts in the spring. This leaves little time to onboard employees, gather feedback on training programs, and update your hiring and training processes before your focus shifts to wildland fire season.
Labour shortage
Fewer applicants are applying for wildland firefighting positions due to the seasonal nature of the work, remote working conditions, and challenging labour. Additionally, wildland firefighters are retiring from the workforce more quickly than they can be replaced — causing organizations to lose valuable wildland firefighting experience.
Organizational silos
Wildland firefighting is frequently siloed into a branch of a larger organization — and these siloes create difficulties in leveraging organizational resources. Additionally, wildland firefighting often struggles to be seen as a priority within the larger organization and may face challenges to obtain buy-ins at multiple levels. These factors can delay decision-making and hinder organizational progress.
Seasonal positions
Wildland firefighting is a seasonal position, and wildland firefighters may obtain other positions during the off season and leave your organization. This results in your organization losing valuable experience, impacts your ability to fully staff crews, and may also disproportionately impact crew leader positions — where the training and experience to lead new wildland firefighters is needed.
What are the steps to take?
Organizational leaders need to actively address these challenges to recruit and retain to help protect your communities during fire season. A proactive strategy toward recruitment, retention, and talent management can help your organization overcome obstacles and improve recruitment and retention.
These practical tips can help you get started:
Invest more in workforce planning
Investing more in workforce planning may include creating a specific role within your HR team to focus on recruitment and retention strategies throughout the year. If you are not able to create a dedicated position, consider allocating specific organizational resources toward strategic workforce planning. This helps ensure you have at least one individual within your organization assessing and refining your workforce planning strategy throughout the year — even during busy fire season.
Reposition the job experience
Wildland firefighters work in remote locations and engage in challenging and frequently dangerous labour. While this may drive some people away from this career path, there are many others who desire exactly this type of meaningful work experience.
Evaluate how you promote wildland firefighting positions to appeal to potential applicants — especially the younger generation. Promoting the outdoor experience, self-sufficiency, and essential work that wildland firefighters do to protect our communities can help reposition the job experience to appeal to more applicants.
Create a clear communication strategy
More applicants are prioritizing growth opportunities and a supportive work environment when they consider a prospective offer. Evaluate how you can clearly communicate opportunities to grow and the potential to transition into different positions within your organization to your employees.
Additionally, it is important to make information about what your organization is and what it stands for readily available — especially to frontline staff such as wildland firefighters. Frontline workers frequently feel disconnected from the overall organization due to not working in an office environment. A clear communication strategy can help foster a greater sense of connection to your organization.
Provide continuity for employees
The seasonal nature of wildland firefighting positions in one of the key challenges organizations face in retaining valuable experience year after year. Additionally, more employees are prioritizing job stability in an uncertain economic environment — and seasonal positions may not meet their needs in today’s world.
Ask yourself how your organization can move past a seasonal employment model to retain staff throughout the year and provide them with a full career path. There may be opportunities to redeploy wildland firefighters to other areas of government after fire season ends and recall them to their positions when it begins again — improving retention.
Get clarity on today’s most pressing issues
Talent management strategy in wildland firefighting
MNP has worked with multiple wildland firefighting organizations to review their recruitment and retention strategies. The story below highlights many of the recruitment and retention challenges that wildland firefighting organizations are facing today. It also shares some practical steps your organization can take to overcome these challenges and ensure you have enough wildland firefighters to protect our communities.
Example: How to implement an effective talent management strategy
Wildland firefighting organizations across Canada are receiving fewer applicants for wildland firefighting positions and struggling with short hiring and training deadlines. Imagine an organization facing these challenges — as well as strategic and operational silos within the larger organization that it operated within.
Similar to many wildland firefighting organizations, this organization did not have access to a dedicated HR branch because of these silos. Therefore, it brought an external advisor on board to help guide its recruitment and retention strategies.
The advisor reviewed the current recruitment, retention, and training areas within the organization. They also walked through each step of the application process to identify areas where the organization could integrate new technology to streamline the process for applicants.
Additionally, the advisor reviewed the organization’s current state and mapped out its existing recruitment, retention, and training models. After this assessment, the advisor made recommendations to help break down organizational silos, align departments, and create a cohesive experience for employees.
Applications for wildland firefighting positions increased after the organization integrated new technology to simplify the process. The organization also updated its programs to streamline the onboarding and training process for new wildland firefighters when hiring season begins in January. While it may take awhile to see the full benefits of this strategy, taking these steps helped the organization achieve promising early results.
Take the next steps
It is vital for wildland firefighting organizations to take a proactive approach toward workforce planning to ensure you have enough resources in place to keep Canada’s communities safe. For more information, contact a member of MNP’s Consulting team. Our advisors have the experience to help you create workforce plans, develop recruitment and retention strategies, and adopt a proactive approach toward your organization’s future.
Kelsey Bjorndalen
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