Workplace culture is formed by the individuals within the workplace. As individuals interact with each other in response to behaviors, workplace stressors, policies, norms, and values, organizational culture begins to take shape. Organizations can have specific organizational cultures, such as those surrounding safety or inclusion. These specific facets of culture can impact worker health and well-being, thereby impact their job satisfaction and the ability of employers to retain them.

Safety Culture Assessment

The culture around safety in any organization is a strong predictor of injuries. Safety culture has been used by other industries such as healthcare, construction, and manufacturing to gauge and improve safety performance. Given the evidence regarding safety culture's predictive validity, it follows that improvements in safety culture will result in subsequent improvements in safety behaviors along with a reduction of poor safety outcomes including near-misses, injuries, and line-of-duty deaths. Research also finds that improvements to safety climate result in improvements to organizational outcomes like turnover, job satisfaction, employee engagement, and morale.

But, departments cannot manage what they do not measure. To provide an evidence-based approach to understanding and improving safety culture, FIRST developed FOCUS—the Fire service Organizational Culture of Safety survey. FOCUS collects data at the department and station level to provide a snapshot of safety climate. With a final report, departments can lead with data to secure gear, staffing, apparatus, and behavioral health resources. To date, the FOCUS survey has been taken by almost 600 fire departments and over 70,000 firefighters in all 50 states.

Departments of all shapes and sizes—career, combination, volunteer, urban, and rural—are encouraged to participate in FOCUS. With an understanding of department safety culture, leaders can advocate for whatever they need to keep their members safe.

Recruitment and Retention Assessment

Organizational inclusion culture matters to the fire and rescue service, as put forth by several fire and rescue service organizations. By fostering an inclusive workplace, departments can bolster their recruitment and retention of highly-capable, qualified employees that engage in top-tier community service. FIRST developed an education, assessment, and training toolkit to guide departments toward a more inclusive workforce.

One component of this toolkit is the DEI Departmental Assessment. Developed in partnership with the IAFC Metropolitan "Metro" Fire Chiefs Association, the assessment is a diagnostic tool departments can use to gauge their culture of inclusion, allowing them to have an understanding of areas of success and improvement within their department. This Assessment is currently being expanded and is now called the Recruitment and Retention Assessment. Check back here for an announcement of when the Assessment is available.