Failure to address performance gaps in emergency dispatch can have catastrophic outcomes. There are many examples with results ranging from deaths, injuries, lawsuits, and even criminal prosecution of emergency dispatchers. Preventing the eventual catastrophe requires having a system that provides a clear picture of your center’s performance.
Have the following performance gaps happened at your communication center? An address not being verified, an incoming call ringing excessively before being answered, failure to use pre-arrival protocols, radio traffic going unanswered, incorrect information being exchanged among center team members, and a plate being run incorrectly. How often will these performance gaps happen in the future? The public expectation is never.
Whether or not we’ve specifically promised the public that, we’ve not corrected their belief that their communication center delivers accurate and timely service 100% of the time. No communication center has ever put out a press release, “911, we get it right most of the time.” Or “911, we usually don’t get it wrong.” Think about being a member of the public needing help for a loved one’s medical emergency. A communication center fails to verify the address and sends the field response units to the wrong address, which contributes to a bad outcome. Would you accept “This was a tragic error, and we’ll learn from it,” or would you demand accountability?
A performance gap is the difference between the current state of performance and the desired state of performance. Creating accountability to the performance standard begins with measuring performance by using a system that removes as much human subjectivity as possible. Let me be clear: I am a training junkie, I love to attend training, I love to create training, and I love to provide training. That said, before we can look at training as a solution for a performance gap, we need to ensure the other factors have been addressed.
The first question to ask is, “Is the desired state achievable under the current environmental conditions and organizational structure?” Specifically, “Is the necessary equipment and software consistently working correctly to empower your team to achieve the desired state of performance?” Also, “Do the policies and procedures support the team achieving the desired state, or do they create obstacles?” I have been told by many dedicated emergency dispatch personnel that they have routinely violated policies when they believed it was the only way to provide the level of service necessary. They should never need to violate policy to feel they are providing quality service.
When your team believes that violating policy is the only path available to provide the needed service, it is a leadership failure. The policies must, in fact, help them to provide service, and they must understand and believe how those policies do so. Any attempt to hold personnel accountable for achieving a standard of performance that the environment or organizational structure prevents them from achieving will lead to frustration, burnout, and a lack of faith in leadership. Don’t kid yourself, leaders, they know when the environment and organizational structure are lacking.
For purposes of a productive conversation about how to close performance gaps from a personnel performance perspective, we will assume that you have already addressed the issues of environment and organizational structure: ALL the equipment is working per its design, policies are reviewed to ensure they support the mission, and crucial system failures have been prevented by proper planning. Now let’s establish a process for identifying and closing those gaps, which can be remembered with the acronym CATAC:
- Clarify—Clarify the expected service level and establish metrics that directly correlate to those levels. Metrics should be broken down into specific categories:
- Needs immediate attention due to the impact on safety.
- Needs attention due to the impact on quality.
- Needs future attention due to the impact on productivity.
- Align—Ensure that anyone with supervisory responsibilities is aligned on how the metrics will be interpreted.
- Train—Provide realistic and challenging training so team members will be prepared to perform to the expected levels.
- Analyze—Establish a regular schedule to analyze metric reports.
- Coach—Adopt a coaching model to be used by all supervisors. Address gaps in performance with consistency for all team members (the perception of favoritism is one of the best fertilizers for toxicity). Ensuring your supervisors know how to coach is one of the best investments in your team that you can make.
I want to revisit supervision being aligned on how metrics will be interpreted (see #2). Without naming any system by brand, we know there are many systems currently in use within emergency dispatch to measure center and individual performance. Truthfully, capturing raw data does not appear to be a problem in emergency dispatch. That said, we also know that data is only as good as one’s ability to interpret it.
Anecdotally, after hearing frustration voiced by line staff, this appears to be more of a gap in the industry than capturing data. Leaders need to stay engaged to ensure that those responsible for interpreting the data are doing so correctly and in a productive way, rather than slacking off. Training supervisors and quality assurance personnel how to engage in conversations in a productive way will increase line staff’s acceptance of the validity of their data interpretation.
As a consultant, I spend a great deal of time speaking with line personnel. Since I am not in their chain of command, and they know I will eventually go away, they speak frankly to me. I want to share with the leadership out there some of the recurring messages I hear from them.
- If a policy is not being enforced, either enforce it or get rid of it.
- Broken equipment not being repaired or replaced with urgency tells them you don’t care.
- Emergency dispatchers and calltakers bring humanity to the job (also called caller management); don’t let protocol block that asset.
- They do not mind being held accountable if the entire team is being held accountable.
Don’t let your team be a part of a catastrophe. Empower them to provide the expected service by identifying performance gaps, training them to perform, and holding yourself and your team accountable to the expected standards.
