Walking the Talk on Recruiting & Retaining Diversity

		Debra Amesqua has 25 years of fire service experience—the last twelve as Fire Chief in Madison, Wisconsin. At the time of her appointment, she was one of only seven women chiefs among the 32,000 fire departments in the country. Debra has developed and presented a number of workshops and authored several professional papers on subjects related to executive officer career development and building a learning organization in the fire service. She has been a member of the IAFC Human Relations Committee for six years and is a past president of the Women Chief Fire Officers Association. Debra is Vice President of FIRE 20/20’s Board. Check out the rest of her impressive credentials..

In 2007, according to an IAFF research study, the Madison Fire Department was listed as the #1-most diverse fire department in the U.S. Debra obviously ‘walks the talk’ on recruiting and retaining diversity.

A short while ago, we interviewed Debra for our article titled Recruiting & Retaining Diversity: A Perspective from Some ‘Thought Leaders’ published in the September 2008 issue of Firehouse®. At FRI in August, she reviewed her department’s recruitment plan for increasing the awareness of “opportunities offered with the Madison Fire Department among the protected groups.” Her presentation inspired us to share more of Debra’s wisdom.

Diversity includes age

“Along with cultural diversity, I strive for diversity in age groups. Young people have the tendency to look at their lives just in the moment. Mixing up ages brings about the kind of nurturing I really like in the recruit class. The older firefighters have a tendency to watch a lot more and reach out to the younger people and be a role model whether or not they have fire experience.”

The Chief is the ‘chief recruiter’ 

“It’s not good enough to say, “Yes, I agree with diversity and we’re going to hire for diversity and then assign it to someone else. The chief must genuinely go out and recruit on a regular basis as the executive of the department.”

Market the department as a diverse organization

“We market ourselves as a diverse organization—this includes people of color, gays, lesbians; young people, older people. On all of our materials, we advertise exactly what it is we’re looking for. We think that’s a good strategy because it gives people a chance to self-select out of the application process if they see something that doesn’t square with who they are as individuals.  A self-selecting out is really important to the whole process. Likewise, selecting an organization that really does reflect your mindset and values is critically important.”

Select people with your core values; train them, nurture them

“In the recruit class, there’s a competitive aspect because all the recruits are vying for their place on the seniority list. The highest performer gets the next highest position as far as seniority is concerned. One of the values we train and measure is how to be a team player and to really care about whether your co-worker is successful. So when there’s a co-worker who is challenged in certain areas, we absolutely require that the other recruits not compete with each other but reach out to that individual to help. If a recruit is competing, we pull the recruit aside and say, ‘Your job is on the line. We don’t want you competing with your co-worker. When someone is challenged, you have a responsibility to help.’

“When you do that, there’s a total shift in their mindset. This doesn’t happen by my dictating from the office. I take the recruit trainers and expose them in a very real way on how to evaluate whether a person is meeting the core values or not.  And you have to measure attitudes against the core values. We take a lot of time in discussion in how we train individuals and how we train our trainers.  A lot of departments brush that effort aside. They put trainers in who may have ‘their tickets’. But what about training on core values?”

Team player, courage, fitness, well-being, caring, compassionate, honesty, integrity

“We identify our core values through our standard statement of purpose and also by displaying all of our core values in the way we decorate the training division. In other words, when you walk into the classroom, there are several items on the wall that display and demonstrate our core values in pictorial forms.

“In the classroom, there are also photos of crew members on the department who represent the diversity within our organization and photos of all the recruit classes. We have very, very few over the last twelve years of all white male classes.

“On the first day of recruit class, I go in and express my appreciation for their coming onboard and wanting to be a part of our department. I state our core values and what my expectations are for how I want them to develop and participate. Then, I do something that I think is critically important—I tell them why I hired them!

“I teach the class on sexual harassment and diversity with a training officer who happens to be African-American. So once again, they’re hearing about the core values directly from me and the importance of diversity to the department. I also draw the line in the sand—so to speak—as to what happens when they behave contrary to our core values.

“The kind of love and compassion that this department has grown into is happening because we’re focusing on it and focusing on it in very real ways. It’s not just lip service. I get cards and notes from citizens telling me about the caring and compassionate service they’re getting—about how paramedics called two or three months after incidents to see how to see how well they’re doing.

“I am so blessed to have this position and live in Madison. Our department is phenomenal.”

[“Phenomenal” is how we describe Chief Debra Amesqua!]