1 Introduction
Employers may agree to release emergency services volunteers at short notice in service of their communities.
If emergency services volunteer employees wish to attend call outs during work time, DFES encourages employees to make agreements BEFORE there is a need for the volunteer to respond to an emergency.
In many cases this may be a verbal arrangement; however, we encourage employers to formalise this arrangement so that both parties are clear as to the conditions under which the employee is being released.
EMPLOYERS MAKE THE FINAL DECISION ON WHETHER AN EMPLOYEE MAY LEAVE WORK WHEN CALLED TO AN INCIDENT OR EMERGENCY.
2 Benefits for Employers
Emergency services volunteers are highly trained and bring considerable capacity to the workplace. If your employee is an emergency services volunteer, they are likely to have well developed skills in some or all the following areas:
- Experience dealing with emergency situations.
- An ability to cope under pressure.
- Leadership and decision-making.
- Problem solving and analytical thinking.
- Effective communication.
- Experience working in teams.
- Work health and safety awareness.
- First aid skills.
- Motivated and engaged, leading to higher satisfaction and retention.
3 Benefits to the community
There are many benefits to the community when employers support emergency services volunteers to attend incidents and emergencies in the community. The key benefits are as follows:
- Increases local prevention, preparedness, and response and recovery capability.
- Helps to make the community safer and more resilient.
- It may reduce the cost of damage caused by fire and other emergencies by saving lives, properties, communities and the environment.
- Some communities depend solely on volunteer emergency response. Without this support these communities are more vulnerable.
- People, businesses and lifestyles thrive due to a higher level of community hazard risk awareness and ability to respond to a local emergency quickly, or support emergency response further afield (which may be reciprocated at some point in time).