A stressful working standard
In just a single generation the working standard has shifted from households with a single breadwinner to dual earner situations [1]. This has greatly increased pressure on workers to flexibly mix and organize their responsibilities both at work and at home. This has led to the emergence of a new field of research, which aims to support the existence and management of self-organizing teams with state of the art web-based technology, Artificial Intelligence and Human Agent Collectives [2].
The work-saving-lives balance
The setting of the voluntary (retained) fire brigade is an exemplary setting of the aforementioned complex balancing act of social and work related responsibilities. The key challenge is to offer workers as much flexibility as possible, while guaranteeing that a set of conditions is met in terms of availability and operational readiness. In the end, reliable operational readiness is a key condition for effective and efficient disaster response.The setting of the voluntary (retained) fire brigade is a perfect example of the aforementioned complex balancing act of social and work related responsibilities. The key challenge is to offer workers as much flexibility as possible, while guaranteeing operational readiness of the fire brigade. In the end, reliable operational readiness is a key condition for effective and efficient disaster response.
Back in 2006 the problem became apparent for the first time and a team was formed to come up with a solution. This team consisted of fire officers with over 20 years of experience in the field as well as IT professionals. Eventually, their combined efforts resulted in the founding of Brandweerrooster.nl, a company which supports firemen in balancing their work, life and fire brigade duties in an easy, non-intrusive way, while guaranteeing the readiness of the fire brigade.
It all started with a study in 2006, which was performed at a fire station close to Amsterdam to analyze this challenge. Two key findings were:
- There was no or insufficient insight in whether the continuous responsibility of operational readiness was met. This frequently led to situations in which the response to an incident was severely delayed due to understaffing or lack of proper certification of the available crew.
- Individuals complained about the difficulty of combining work and private responsibilities with their role as firemen, due to rigid, unclear, or complex schedules. The inability to guarantee adequate readiness as a team only further decreased their motivation. This, in turn, led to a decrease of volunteers, further exacerbating the problem of understaffing.
The SaaS that saves lives
Based on this problem, we suggested a solution that offers volunteers to flexibly manage their own availability. A SaaS solution was to provide multi-channel access via web, phone, SMS, smartphone app and pagers. Algorithms were implemented to flexibly compare the demand of personnel with the availability, constantly looking for the best possible way to combine resources and assure operational readiness of multiple vehicle crews. In addition, communication channels were added to facilitate the sharing of knowledge within the community of firemen, and to support the process of self-organization. Right after implementation some interesting behavioural patterns and effects were found.
Making the difference
One of the first results was that individuals started to take responsibility over group readiness, using personal flexibility in their schedule to step up when others are unavailable. While some of the volunteers initially perceived the schedule as a reduction of their freedom, they soon found out that it actually provided more freedom. The main reason for this was the reduction in stress when registering unavailability in cases where an abundance of team members was available.
Motivation leading to availability, and vice versa
In the longer run we started seeing an increase in motivation in the team. There is a great appreciation for the single volunteer that makes the difference between the entire station being out-of-service due to understaffing or not. This was previously invisible. To add to this effect, in case of an incident this individual is guaranteed of having a place in the truck, which is why volunteers volunteer in the first place: they want to be part of the action.
Social accountability
While the solution is primarily facilitating self-organizing teams, the supervising or management layer above has come to appreciate the initiative as well. Insights in station readiness provides a way to proof commanders are ‘in control’, which gives them an instrument to openly express accountability towards regional administration as well as local social accountability. Gut feeling creates a weak business case. However, commanders experienced that with actual data and evidence about structural shortages in the crew in hand, new recruiting- and training campaigns were initiated faster and more effective.
Service-as-a soft ware
As mentioned earlier, challenges and eventually the solution described above led to the founding of Brandweerrooster (Firemen Schedule). Since 2006 Brandweerrooster has shown steady and sustainable growth by a small team of experts. The most important factor for success has been the proximity to the end-users (eat your own dogfood). Listening to the user and turning feedback into fast and agile delivery iterations is key to build trust and appreciation. My advice: don’t even start without an end-user inside your team. Closely related to this is the realization that in the end, everything you do (or don’t do) on internet boils down to service. Don’t just provide service, but excel at it. You can be assured that service will lead to marketing and sales, without spending money on it.
A boundary condition for success has been the adoption of SaaS. It has provided us with quick and easy accessibility and rollout. Throughout these years the company delivery methodology has matured, embracing version control, continuous integration testing with thousands of ‘specs’ and ‘features’ and automated continuous delivery.
Currently, this company assures the availability of over 150 fire stations and over 6000 firemen. The app is translated in multiple languages and has started rolling out into other fields as well. And… oh yeah, we also saved uncountable numbers of lives of people we will never know.
References
- http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/inkomen-bestedingen/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2011/2011-3291-wm.htm
- http://www.orchid.ac.uk/eprints/198/1/CACM%2520HAC%2520ARTICLE%2520%2520final.pdf
About Cor Klaasse Bos
Cor completed his master of Applied Physics at the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2005. By that time, he had already 10 years of experience in designing and delivering web applications in a commercial environment. In the next 8 years he expanded his experience in business application development and delivery as senior programme manager for Deloitte Consulting. In the same period he learned about the challenges that are experienced by voluntary firemen. This would lead to the founding of a company to analyze and address these challenges, eventually saving lives and protecting property.
