Half Paid Half Volley issues

[EchoMikeTango]

So here is the story:

I am a supervisor for a mostly paid company with volunteers.

I over see 6 full time staff and a ton of Per Deims.

The volleys are here as well. They are the Captians and the chief, with my boss who is the asst. chief.

The issues we are having are this. We are constantly cleaning up after the volleys. We have no issues with them. We all work together well. However more and more we are staying late. 2 - 3 hours past our shifts to cover for them. We are coming in early 1 - 2 hours early so that they can go to work.

We understand that we get paid. BUt the daily task list keeps growing as the vol's stop doing anything around here and complain that all we do is sleep ( which is NOT true)

I just dont know how to handle this. I am middle management, and I am trying to help my guys out. We bust our asses and I feel as if the more we work, the more they want us to do. Its making it very tense around here.

any ideas?

 

[46Young]

So here is the story:

I am a supervisor for a mostly paid company with volunteers.

I over see 6 full time staff and a ton of Per Deims.

The volleys are here as well. They are the Captians and the chief, with my boss who is the asst. chief.

The issues we are having are this. We are constantly cleaning up after the volleys. We have no issues with them. We all work together well. However more and more we are staying late. 2 - 3 hours past our shifts to cover for them. We are coming in early 1 - 2 hours early so that they can go to work.

We understand that we get paid. BUt the daily task list keeps growing as the vol's stop doing anything around here and complain that all we do is sleep ( which is NOT true)

I just dont know how to handle this. I am middle management, and I am trying to help my guys out. We bust our asses and I feel as if the more we work, the more they want us to do. Its making it very tense around here.

any ideas?

The culture of volunteers expecting paid crews to take care of their menial tasks isn't pervasive, but does occur often enough, from what I see and hear, in both EMS and the fire service.

Anyway, assuming that you're not mandated to come in early or stay late (I hope you're paid OT for this courtesy) to cover them, I would go up the chain of command and explain that since the career staff covers the volunteers so as to remove the conflict of work hours outside the agency, the volunteers need to pull their weight around the station regarding chores, station/equipment checks and maitenance, etc. One hand should wash the other, period. If they are unwilling to change their habits, start coming in on time, maybe 5 mins prior to your real work hours. No more coming in early. If that fails to result in a behavior modification, then stop staying late as well. Tell them that you also have per diem jobs that you're coming from and going to, just like them. Or perhaps child care issues. No one can effectively argue against child care issues.

Yes, they essentially work for free, but the paid crew's time is no less important than theirs. They should not be catered to like little princesses that are above any work outside of running calls. You staff is enabling them, pure and simple.

If this line puts your job in jeopardy, then you basically have to leave things as they lie. Your choice.

 

[MaxExam]

Make it clear to them that more then just having plain old decency, any overlap between operational readiness (to include cleanup & restock) and patient interactions is at a very basic level, unprofessional and potentially dangerous. Just IMO offer up the possibility that any current & or future cert's & licenses might be jeopardized. Honestly a bunch of ways to handle this situation exist, personally i hate massaging ego's & wouldn't ever require that of myself...but, good luck i hope it gets sorted out

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

For years at my volunteer department, we never really had policies regarding this. We (at that time) had 5 paid fulltimers, 2 part-timers and about 20 volunteers. Since the volunteers aren't even required to be on station, it was regarded as the full-timers jobs to take care of the station. So in the morning, when the full-timers came in, it was their responsibility to do the station chores, check the trucks, etc. Volunteers were expected to clean up after themselves, but not to come in just to do station duties.

As time evolved, we added 2 more full time positions including instead of only having one ful-timer on station during the day, we now had 3. The problem started occurring that when those day crew full-timers weren't there such as weekends and when they took time off. Now that there were more duties to be done, when one person had to do the work of 3, it became an issue. But the full-timers would ask us volunteers to chip in, and we did and the issue quickly went away.

Fast forward a couple of years. We had made some full-time hires on the day crew that thought it was acceptable to sleep when they showed up to work. So the consensus amongst volunteers were that at 8'oclock (shift change for the 24 hour paid people) we would show up to the station. If the day crew people (who show up at 6) were not downstairs and helping with station chores by 8:10, we'd leave (or go to the dayroom and read the paper or do something else). The rationale being that we're not going to do something FOR people who are paid to do it, but we certainly will help to get station chores done so they don't take all morning.

For some reason or another, the paid members who had pick up the slack because their colleagues were sleeping never took it up with them, and it just resulted in station chores not being done well, or in some cases at all.

So now the Chief has mandated that volunteers who are on shift be able to help with station chores such that station chores are done by 9AM unless there is a run or other official business that needs to be attended to. This has the effect of causing the volunteers to go wake up whomever might be sleeping when we come in. Everyone has been pretty happy with the new arrangement (except the day crew people who think it's ok for them to sleep all day).

We still don't have any sort of rules on cleaning up after oneself, it just seems like a common courtesy to do so, but perhaps you guys need a rule about that?

 

[bigbaldguy]

Volleys should be held to the same standard as paid. What will happen and indeed is happening is that the paid folks are starting to resent the volleys and that starts a whole downward slide that will end with a huge mess. So the captain, chief and asst chief are all volleys? I think maybe you should try and arrange a face to face with all 3 of them and come at from the angle of "this is causing resentment that will affect the quality of care and the work we do". At the very least it sounds like you need a policy in place that specifically states what is expected from the volleys. In my opinion the policy should say they do exactly what the paid folks do but whatever they decide at least there will be guidelines to point to.
You might also try coming at it from the other angle. Try and talk to one or two of the volleys who do what they are supposed to be doing. Tell them something along the lines of "Man we really respect you guys for pulling your weight around here." Make kinda a big deal about it and make sure it gets back to the slackers. Nobody wants to be lumped in with the guys who get no respect.

 

[firetender]

One obvious glitch is this:

They (the volunteers) are the Captians and the chief, with my boss who is the asst. chief.

They are above you in the chicken-pecking order. They also set the examples for both paid and volly, so...

I'm thinking making up a nice poster at Kinkos that says something like this:

If you're here to work than you're here to:

Provide the best service you can to your community

Maintain, repair and improve the tools you work with

Become more proficient in your knowledge base

Teach and learn

Build good working relationships with your co-workers

Evenly distribute the responsibilities of the tasks at hand.

Clean up after yourselves

This is about the work and the people we serve.

---------------------------------

A thought is if you make the poster (or something like it) up, then meet with all the brass and present it as a boost to team spirit without pointing the finger at paid, volly or brass.

(Just thinkin' diplomatically here!)

 

[DrParasite]

I will say that with most places, they go from 100% volunteer, to combination, to 100% or near 100% paid (or a couple paid guys and only a phantom volunteer presence). As more paid staff are put on, more responsibilities are shifted from volunteers to paid staff, and from volunteer supervisors to paid supervisors. Basically, the mentality becomes "well, let the paid guys handle it, they are being paid to be there" and "the paid guy will do the job because he is being paid to be there, where the volunteer isn't."

remember, more often than not you have a line of people wanting paid jobs, while the volunteer list doesn't have anyone banging down the door with applications any more.

Also remember your agency's history. Currently

I am a supervisor for a mostly paid company with volunteers.

, but what was your agency set up 10 years ago? what has changed? has the upper management changed? and have things improved for them in 10 years?

People are hard to change, and without strong leadership (on both ends, paid and volunteer), that allows both ends to work together, and has both the volunteer and paid staff to be accountable for their actions (and their attitudes, on both sides), the situation will only get worse.

As an aside, look at the turnover in your agency, supervisors, full timers, per times, active volunteers, and not so active volunteers, especially volunteers who used to be really active and now no longer are. high turnover rates are usually not a good sign. Try to do exit interviews of employees and volunteers. maybe you can see a common thread that is the cause of such dissatisfaction, that can be rectified to make everyone happier?