Aldebol asks about retention strategies and EMS career ladder

here with us today and thank you chair Ariel.

I have a question about retention just following up on Councilmember Ressler's question about recruitment.

You get them in the door, how long does it take for them to actually, once you recruit them, for them to get actually hired and then

What are you doing about retaining your workforce?

Do you have any ideas of how you can keep that workforce here?

I understand that EMTs leave being an EMT to become firefighters.

That's like the next step.

The next progression, but there isn't anything in between.

Like there isn't within the EMT service steps or promotional steps or, or,

salary steps or, you know, for them to progress through, to have, to stay in a career in EMS.

And are you thinking about that and thinking about retention strategies for this workforce?

Yes.

So I...

I would push back a little bit on saying that becoming a firefighter is the next step.

People join EMS, right, because they have a passion for the work.

And I think that everything that's been discussed here talks about a little bit.

wage and that being one of the main reasons why people have to leave, right?

They leave for other reasons.

Maybe they have other goals.

Maybe they wanted to become firefighters or they wanted to become a nurse or they wanted to become police officers.

But EMS should never be viewed as like the starting step.

To something else, right?

It needs to be its own career.

We have recruitment periods.

Once those recruitment periods end, we process the members.

They go through physicals, and then we put them right into the next class.

It's been stated multiple times, you know, none of us sitting up here, nor the commissioner, has, you know, a role in pay, right?

But we fully support

that being a driving factor to increasing that to be able to make sure that we retain people.

But what we can do as leaders within the fire department is try and change the quality of work life that our members have.

And I think that we're taking a real hard look.

The commissioner has a long story.

The commissioner is a longstanding veteran of the emergency medical service.

All of my staff have more than 20 years on the job.

We speak frequently with the unions, and we try and address the quality of life issues that we can address within our capabilities.

And that's just one side of what's going to make people want to stay.

Want to do the work and they enjoy coming to work, they're going to

to stay.

And if they're able to pay their bills, they're going to stay, right?

So we will work on our part about making sure that we're doing everything we can to improve their quality of work life while the unions and the city are working on the pay side.

And in the EMS, there are significant promotional opportunities.

As you come in as an EMT, you can stay in our HAZTAC, which is some specially trained hazmat people.

You're able to promote to paramedic.

You can become a rescue medic, a HAZTAC and medic.

And then we promote up Chief Miano and Chief Werner, promote it up through the EMS side, up to chief of EMS.