Daily staffing for the Peoria (Ariz.) Fire Department used to consist of battalion chiefs and support officers spending up to several hours each morning making dozens of phone calls while buried in reams of paper rosters.

Then the department found a better way. An automated system now helps to manage the daily staffing needs of seven fire stations; three shifts of employees; part-time and full-time operations; and multiple ranks, assignments and specialties, all at the click of a mouse and a ring of the telephone.

To put it in perspective, under the old system employees would submit leave requests on paper to the department timekeeper, who then would check the available leave balance, log the request and send it to the shift battalion chief for approval. Then the cumbersome task of finding a replacement began.

If a qualified rover wasn't available, or the shift battalion chief couldn't play musical chairs with the existing staff to make a rover work, he would have to phone each member who met the specialty and rank requirements until someone accepted the overtime. This had to be done in accordance with a slew of labor rules to avoid inequity, or perceived inequity, in the distribution of work. If the vacancy resulted from a last minute call-in, the time crunch to get someone in made the process that much more nerve-racking.

Waiting for return calls and managing leave slips, overtime lists, and the roster of daily activities and training further added to the already lengthy process. Paper, paper, paper. Can you feel the pain?

The department needed an alternative and began researching the feasibility of using an automated system. In 2001, a software vendor came, not unlike an encyclopedia salesperson, to present the benefits of using that company's system. Intrigued, department representatives contacted other cities that had implemented the product to see if they were successful and if they had any friendly advice to offer. Each contact told a slightly more intimidating story. Most of the other departments reported that they were not fully automated, and some were only using the system as a very expensive electronic roster. Some had scrapped the program entirely.

If Peoria could overcome the implementation challenges and make the system work, they could look to the day that the fire department was constantly, accurately and fairly staffed — something it had yet to achieve.

First steps

Researching what did and didn't work, Peoria came to see the importance of early planning, early involvement from labor and rigorous attention to every detail of the implementation. Today, Peoria fully automates its staffing processes and has been doing so for over two years, saving considerable hours each day for battalion chiefs.

Labor buy-in is key

Take the time to involve the labor group up front, starting with the decision to purchase the system. Include labor in the preliminary discussions and explore what the system can do to make firefighters' lives better. Once they become stakeholders in the process, they have a vested interest in its success.

In Peoria, one of the burning issues for the union local was equity in the distribution of overtime. Once the labor group saw that the computer would take the subjectivity out of staffing policies, they understood that the software would result in a more fair and consistent distribution of work. Because the software system would be customized based on unique labor rules, the union was happy to participate in making sure it was set up correctly.

Pick your implementation team carefully

Assign a project lead, a staffing expert, personnel and payroll officer, several labor representatives, and an information technology expert to work together on the implementation.

The project lead will coordinate all the moving parts, so it should be someone with project management experience. The lead should understand the big picture but doesn't necessarily have to be a staffing expert. This person should serve as the single point of contact with the vendor and have decision-making authority within the organization. It's also helpful to select someone who doesn't work shifts to ensure availability during normal business hours — preferably salaried because there will be a lot of hours to put in!

The staffing expert should be someone who's responsible for staffing the companies each day and knows the department staffing rules inside and out.

Several labor representatives from across the organization also should be included, even if your department has a weak labor group. A project is bound to fail if labor isn't present for input.

The person most closely associated with executing personnel actions and payroll functions should provide input on these issues while learning how to set up and maintain the system. This person will manage the system on a daily basis, maintaining all employee information and ensuring the system performs according to specific staffing rules. This department “super-user” should be analytical, as this work can be quite complex.

Someone representing the information technology department also should be on the team to take on the responsibilities of costing, ordering and setting up the hardware components. This is the person who can speak “IT language” with the vendor when it comes to installing software, connecting telephony components, setting up scripts to run when needed, and interfacing with payroll or records management software.

System setup

Departments should go into this process prepared to modify their staffing rules, at least to some extent. The computer system will have limitations, and there will be some staffing rules that the software won't be able to accommodate. The best way to work through these issues is to realize up front that some things will have to be renegotiated. Both the labor and management sides will need to compromise on what those staffing changes will look like. They may end up working better than your previous practices.

Document, document, document

Put pen to paper and flow chart every conceivable staffing scenario. It's not enough to know how the staffing processes work; they must be written down. As you convert these processes into something the computer can execute, keep a record of all of the setups. When you tweak the setups at a later date — and you will — document the reasons for and the steps you took to make those changes. You may regret it later if you can't remember why you set things up a certain way or made changes in the first place.

Limit who attends configuration training

You can expect at least a week's worth of training, probably at the vendor's offices. Peoria's included two days of end-user training to familiarize everyone with the basics of the system, followed by three days of intensive configuration training to learn how to set up the system with the department's staffing rules.

This isn't the time to hash out how to apply various staffing rules to various staffing scenarios. It's a time to absorb information, learn how to set up your staffing rules in the automated system and to learn how to use the system. No matter how much preplanning you do, there will be new issues that come up. However, if you have labor representatives, chiefs and administrative staff arguing about how these things should be done, you'll waste precious (and expensive) training time on issues that can be dealt with back home.

Test the system

Allocate several weeks in your implementation schedule to ensure that the software will hire exactly the way you would intend it to under every conceivable scenario you can think of. Be prepared to spend many hours on the phone walking technical support through how your department staffs so they can walk you through the best possible configuration. The time spent in setup and testing will be well worth it when the system just works upon roll-out.

Allocate time for thorough training

Develop training materials specific to your system. The vendor's training materials probably will be generic, which will just confuse your end-users.

Instead, take screenshots of your unique system and staffing scenarios and incorporate them into the vendor's manual. Distribute cheat sheets with quick references on how to perform key functions or lists of pertinent work codes.

Schedule interactive training sessions so each work unit can perform key tasks before leaving. Use these sessions to raise the end-users' comfort level with the new system. To maximize the overall time line, train concurrently with the testing of the system.

Work out the bugs

For several weeks, Peoria's configuration team spent each morning at the station with the battalion chiefs monitoring everything the system did to see if it worked correctly. There will be bugs as the software begins working on its own, but nothing that can't be resolved. As bugs are encountered, deal with them immediately and be persistent until the system works correctly. You have come too far to give up now.

A successful implementation will take a lot of commitment and a lot of work. Remember to recognize and celebrate the project team, labor group, management support and IT liaisons. After all, their efforts have resulted in an improvement in one of the most critical fire department processes.

Paper staffing and timekeeping now are antiquated within the Peoria Fire Department. What began as an arduous paper process is now a smoothly performing automated scheduling system.

A simple click of the mouse begins a chain of staffing events that is self-sufficient and reliable. No longer are there stacks of paper to rifle through to figure out who's next in line to take leave or be hired for an overtime opportunity. Nor do battalion chiefs place manual phone calls to staff trucks, squandering precious hours every day.

The process was not without its mistakes and obstacles, but with substantial effort put forth by all involved, a lot of tenacity and a little patience, any department can have the same success.

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Karen Daines is the administrative services manager for the Peoria Fire Department, where she has worked since 2001. She develops the departmental budget along with long-range and strategic planning. A member of the International City Manager's Association, Government Finance Officer's Association and Peoria Rotary Club, Daines has a bachelor's degree in social science and a master's degree in public administration.

Amanda Garfield has worked in administration division of the Peoria Fire Department since 2000, handling the personnel needs of the department: payroll, personnel actions, staffing trend analysis and staffing software management. She has a bachelor's degree in English.