Doing More With Less in Public Safety
January 03, 2024 by Carbyne
Public safety staff numbers continue to decline, creating a short-staffing situation in most public safety agencies.
The global environment over recent years has decimated the ranks of most public safety agencies. Long hours, stagnant salaries, and exposure to the most difficult scenes the brain can conceive have made a career in public safety much less desirable.
There is a generational gap to contend with while attempting to fill the ranks of your agency. Baby boomers have hit retirement age and are walking out the door with many years of experience.
Generation X continues to fill the ranks, but many have taken advantage of early retirement or positions that better suit their family lives.
Millennials have weighed the option of a 30- or 40-year career in public safety versus a career in the private sector that offers more money and better work-life balance. Public safety is losing this debate amongst millennials.
Generation Z is expected not to give much consideration at all to a career in public safety due to the draw of working in the high-tech industry. Workforce management has taken on a whole new form and will continue to evolve over the next 5-10 years.
One of the solutions to these workforce management challenges in emergency response is technology.
Modern emergency call-management solutions enable public safety telecommunicators to do more with less using live caller video, pinpoint caller location, and silent instant messaging.
Call-takers and dispatchers can now use silent instant messaging to communicate with callers who are unable to speak aloud and avoid lost-in-translation errors during an emergency.
Law enforcement officers can view the caller’s pinpoint location to eliminate incident location entry errors and minimize delays in arriving at the right location to provide emergency assistance.
Paramedics and firefighters can view live caller video to determine the severity of the emergency prior to arrival.
The net result is significantly improved resource management, thus enabling your agency to do more with less.