The economic slowdown now gripping the country could eventually squeeze fire department budgets. And that means chiefs must take a hard look at all aspects of their departments, including their staffing model.

One model calls for keeping a large enough crew so as to not pay overtime to cover leaves. Another model calls for having smaller staff and using overtime to cover leaves. The latter has resulted in significant and ongoing fiscal savings. However, as the axiom goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Therefore, it is important to identify the fiscal results, non-monetary costs and unintended consequences of implementing the constant-staffing model. In tight or emergency budget conditions, constant staffing has been a life ring to grab on to. Its consequences have been slow to appear, but are real nonetheless.

Constant staffing means staffing an operation with just enough positions to cover all seats — leaves or vacancies are covered with overtime assignments for off-duty employees. Overstaffing also is a common staffing model. As the name implies, overstaffing means carrying enough personnel to cover leaves without incurring overtime expenses. Both models assume a base staffing for necessary operational coverage. Take, for example, a three-platoon fire department with three-firefighter operational (or minimum) staffing on each of its six companies. That results in daily operational staff of 18.

With constant staffing, the department would employ 18 firefighters for three work shifts or 54 shift employees. With overstaffing, the department would estimate the annual leave liability by aggregating annual employee vacation leave use, estimating likely sick leave use, adding any discretionary overtime use affecting operational staffing, and estimating on the job injury leave (often the most volatile leave and the toughest to estimate). This calculation can result in a wide variety of leave and staffing approximations (see right).

Rough estimates can serve for calculating leave. This example department would estimate its memorandum of understanding-allowed annual vacation use, plus an average of half the annually accrued hours of sick leave per employee, plus cost equivalent of two full-time employees of on-the-job injury for a staff of 21 per shift or 63 total. Put another way, constant staffing is three full-time employees per seat, giving 18 per shift, and overstaffing is 3.5 full-time employees per seat, giving 21 per shift. Some will simplify this by overstaffing to the number of allowed vacation leaves per shift.

By switching this department to constant staffing, the fiscal savings would come from the cost difference between nine full-time employees and annual overtime liability for operational staffing. In the example department, a fully loaded employee (salary plus benefits) costs 156%. Overtime costs are 150%. Therefore the savings equals the nine full-time employees multiplied by the annual salary savings of a fully loaded employee less overtime costs. The savings come because extra employees (known as vacation relief, spare, ship-out, rovers, etc.) cost more and are not always efficiently used. There are days when they are not needed, and they bring their own leave liability to the equation.

The positions have to be vacant to shift a department from overstaffing to constant staffing. A department can plan for this transition by holding open positions vacated through attrition, rather than laying off employees.

So, what are some other consequences of moving to constant staffing? There is a re-allocation of the cost of overstaff employees, less the savings, to all the remaining employees in the form of overtime. In the example department, there's $1.28 million for the nine employees with a savings of $375,000, which comes to an average of $16,759 per employee.

There is a lot of discussion in the firehouse about value of overtime compensation. These topics can include firefighters not raising their standard of living to the extra pay, that it's great, to not always count on it, some wanting to work overtime at one station but not another, and complaints of unfairly losing a place on the overtime list. On the up side, employees can earn more money on their primary occupation. On the down side, there is administrative, labor and contractual energy invested to ensure equity and reduce or prevent grievances. The equity of overtime compensation often is a point of debate — if it is absolute, if it is offered rank for rank, and if the department uses acting positions and fill behind. Questions regarding what to do about those who choose not to work overtime and how mandatory hiring works must be addressed.

This overtime compensation increase has other impacts as well. While base salary compaction doesn't occur, annual earnings compaction does. And while that's not a factor between ranks that can earn overtime, it matters greatly for ranks that do not. For example a battalion chief, who is exempt from overtime earnings, may earn 15% more than a captain. But that captain can earn more actual money than the battalion chief by working overtime shifts.

There evolves a new disincentive to promote to an overtime-exempt position. An officer may ask why make battalion commander, when he or she earns more money as a captain. The additional income also has allowed firefighters to move farther from their jurisdiction. The reasons are personal and understandable. But combining these consequences shrinks the pool of qualified internal candidates who want a promotion to the chief officer levels and of those who can be called back in an emergency.

The greater availability of full-shift overtime allows employees to be more discriminating in choosing to not work short overtime during the day, take department-driven special assignments, or even fire-relate side employment (such as instructing at a college fire academy). Rational self-interest results in people turning down short overtime in favor of the full shift.

One consequence of a constant staffing is more operational challenges. Some departments have seen an increase in mandatory hiring for short-duration overtime to accomplish critical department business. One college fire academy routinely has instructors not showing up because they've accepted or been forced into an overtime shift.

There is also the loss of the added capacity that overstaffing provides. On the days when the extra positions were available, coverage for things like special details and meetings was easy. In the constant staffing model, it is an overtime cost that is often unachievable. Mid-shift vacancies, due to emergency leave or department business, could be covered more easily in the overstaff model. In the constant-staffing environment, special consideration and arrangements must be made for reliable, quick coverage. On a number of occasions, companies have been short staffed for up to 12 hours while overtime replacements were sought. Those departments have considered paging available off-duty staff, but that may become a compensation issue.

Fundamentally, in the constant staffing model every single vacancy — hourly, daily or longer — requires a personnel move that may include hiring. That could mean rank-for-rank hiring of relief or moving qualified reliefs into the vacancy and backfilling the source with overtime.

“On the flip side of the lean staffing example, if overtime dollars are available and used for staff assignments and special projects, you could wind up masking a real need for 40-hour staff positions,” says Gerry Kohlmann, a retired fire chief from Redwood City, Calif.

Departments have a wide variety of systems and norms. Even the periodic hiring of new firefighters, and their placement as probationary firefighters, can result in moving a permanent employee. Some departments have negotiated which stations are “probie” stations, and others deal with it case by case. For departments that have enjoyed flexibility in assignments, the constant-staffing model may mean less opportunity to make such an adjustment, and employee expectations must change.

Health and wellness also can be affected. More 24-hour overtime shifts means fewer nights at home. Kevin Gilmartin's book Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement documents the effects of increased work shifts on what he calls a hyper-vigilance cycle and reduced recovery time. He also points to the loss of diversity in individual's lives, meaning less resilience when challenges occur. Those challenges apply to the fire service as well and can be personal or organizational.

Continuous work hours policies are exercised far more in a constant staffing environment. No matter what the shift rotation is, departments run into situations where employees choose, or the employer mandates, continuous work hours. There are frequent cases of 72-hour work lengths, 96-hour slightly less so, and 120-hour within many agency guidelines. From time to time there are situations where employees work far greater hours. And, including shift-trade hours in continuous-work policies has the potential for trouble. There was a recent on-duty apparatus accident involving a driver on duty for several shifts. Initial reports in the media said that those hours could have been a factor.

A weakness in the constant-staffing model is its susceptibility to over-work employees if department staffing is not managed. That is, too many vacancies drive more overtime as employees begin to de-select from voluntary overtime or use leave on regularly scheduled shift days in order to recover from too much overtime. The anecdotal assessment seems to be that if vacancies are over 5% of the total staffing level, overtime will drive more overtime. However, there are employees who will work every possible minute of overtime if allowed by policy or practice. Departments must assess if that behavior is a risk. One department requires employees to sign a document verifying fitness for duty prior to working extended hours.

Most departments went from a two-platoon to a three-platoon schedule in the 1960s based on increasing workloads and the need for rest. Much of this push was from unions and for health and safety reasons. However, if firefighters were willing to work overtime, what would a fiscal analysis of the two-platoon system show for future savings? The largest fire department in California works a 72-hour shift in operations in both its rural and urban stations.

The firefighter union's desires are intertwined with the consequences of constant staffing, which may not be homogenous. Some members value income generation highest. Others value maximum personal flexibility. The union may value off-duty access to employees for labor purposes. Employees accustom overstaffing, with arguably greater work assignment flexibility, have felt more constrained or unfairly treated when their personal desires get less attention in a constant-staffing environment. Memorandum of understanding language around staffing issues must be more explicit in a constant-staffing department.

Just as there is no homogenous deployment or staffing formula implemented across fire departments, there also is no one way to fill staffing. Perhaps a hybrid of staffing drivers and officers at three per seat and firefighters at 3.5 per seat offers a balance. Nonetheless, careful contemplation of the pros and cons of staffing strategies, and an explicit understanding of the why's and how's help departments operate efficiently, safely, and with satisfied employees, elected officials, and citizens. A panic implementation of the constant-staffing model may save money, but it may cost in unexpected ways.

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Bruce Martin is fire chief in Fremont, Calif., and has 27 years in the fire service. He has been fire chief in San Rafael; captain in Redwood City; battalion chief in Mountain View and Palo Alto; and deputy chief, fire marshal, and emergency services coordinator in Sonoma County. Martin is an assistant professor of fire science and fire technology coordinator at the College of San Mateo. He instructs command and management classes for chief officers at the California Fire Academy. He holds a bachelor's degree in business from the College of Notre Dame and an associate's degree in fire science from Indian Valley.

Staffing Calculations

2004 Jurisdiction Population	Budgeted Field Operations Positions	On-Duty Staffing	Firefighters per 1,000 Population	On-Duty Staffing per 1,000 Population	Firefighters per seat
38,953	66	20	1.69	0.51	3.30
76,000	105	29	1.38	0.38	3.62
80,000	60	20	0.75	0.25	3.00
93,000	84	25	0.90	0.27	3.36
93,100	78	23	0.84	0.25	3.39
103,300	69	19	0.67	0.18	3.63
107,204	153	39	1.43	0.36	3.92
145,800	157	39	1.08	0.27	4.03
209,000	128	38	0.61	0.18	3.37
409,000	470	131	1.15	0.32	3.59
759,000	1637	341	2.16	0.45	4.80
940,000	677	193	0.72	0.21	3.51
Information provided by Gerry Kohlmann