Managing Diversity In Fire Department

in an attempt to increase the diversity the fire service have introduced methods such as appointing an equality and diversity officer to the community who is there to discuss and talk to women and ethnic minority groups about the career opportunities they would encounter if they joined the fire service. The service has introduced a 10 year strategy which has a goal of improving the way the workers treat each other across all parts of the Service but also the effectiveness of the relationship that they have with the public. The strategy has 5 different areas which the service aims to work on to improve diversity.The first is Leadership and promoting inclusion where they want individuals to ‘undertake their role in promoting equality and diversity and ensure any practice or procedure they have responsibility for is effectively equality impact assessed’. The second is accountability which will include the workers making ‘evidence available to the public annually on improvements to service delivery and employment practice, including progress against the employment targets through its website’. The third area is Effective service delivery and community engagement. This aims to involve community and voluntary groups in policy development including members of minority ethnic, religious, disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, men and women, and all age groups more within the work of the fire

Ernest Duenez, Jr. was killed by police officer John Moody on June 8, 2011. When Ernest pulled into his driveway, Moody shouted to Ernest to put his hands up and drop the knife. However, Ernest had no knife in his hands. Moody fired thirteen bullets and eleven shots struck Ernest on his chest, back and head. His family was completely devastated; they searched for justice for Ernest, while helping his widow with her child, who was just seventeen days away from his first birthday. Tragedies such as this one can be greatly reduced by body cameras. For example, the Rialto study, where police officers wearing body cameras resorted to physical force 59 percent less than those who did not wear body cameras. When wearing body cameras, police officers would not behave negatively in a situation where they may incriminate themselves.

Diversity in law enforcement has grown to become a hot topic within the law enforcement community. The demographic of society has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and with that law enforcement has been changing, but have they been changing enough? Different law enforcement agencies have their own ways of implementing diversity in their practices and procedures, some of them are better than others, but with issues that happen today it is important that they do something.

The artifact allowed me to gain knowledge in the approaches of diversity leadership issues. Thomas (1995) offers eight basic leadership responses as an approach to diversity. The foster mutual adaption response approach, “…unequivocally endorses diversity” (Thomas, 1995, p. 251). Thomas (1995) states that under this approach, “…the parties involved accept and understand differences and diversity, recognizing full well that those realities may call for adaption on the part of all components of the whole” (p. 251). Thomas (1995) purposes a diversity framework be used to as a, “… point of departure for evolving a framework to guide managers in making decisions regarding diversity mixtures of all kinds” (p. 252). The framework processes revolve around three objectives for leadership as recognize diversity mixtures present, decide whether a response is required, and select an appropriate response or blended response (Thomas,

From Hollywood to the the social sector, diversity, rather the lack thereof, has been a topic of conversation. Although many organizations have begun to advocate for diversity, more work must be done. Across the social sector,women and people of color remain severely underrepresented in leadership positions. Organizations must become intentional about creating a diverse workforce and implementing inclusive policies that foster positive work environments. When employees feel represented and included they are happier and more likely to contribute to fulfilling the organization's mission.

Three ways of gaining executive commitment to diversity are to gather data and to assess the organizations current commitment to diversity to show where and why there is a need for change. The development of diversity council can also garner executive support because it offers a way for executive members of an organization to have a dialog with other members of an organization about diversity. Systematic changes are also necessary such as hiring from a diverse roster of candidates when filling a position. (Moodian, 2009,

P5 Review the methods used by public services to ensure they have a diverse workforce

P5 Review the methods used by public services to ensure they have a diverse workforce

The case Vasich, et al. v. The City Of Chicago, the current present day employers are being faced with the challenging task of change and to redevelop their HR strategies as both levels of government continue to enroll new and strict policies in promoting workplace diversity. The International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Services is one of the organizations formed with an effort to invest more time and effort in increasing the number of women within the profession (Hogler, 2015).

Diversity at Target, like everywhere, is a work in progress. Target is ahead of the national average in terms of minority hiring. Additionally, the company has a higher percentage of minorities in management positions than the industry average. “The Strength of Many. The Power of One,” is Target’s tagline for diversity. It is realized that we need many points of view all working towards the common goal in order to be successful. The goals set forward in this plan are: to increase diverse hire mix by 30% over last year; improve retention rate by 30% over last year; and to develop high potential diverse talent in the ST. Louis market. This can be done

Diversity within the work force has been a topic of discussion for several years since corporations have identified that diverse teams produce the best results (395). This fact is not only true for large private sector businesses but also for those entities engaged in the enforcement of laws and public service, especially considering the unique challenges they face daily. In a profession traditionally comprised predominately by white men, women and minorities have been historically underrepresented. This is problematic because it has further bred a sense of distrust between the police and the population it is sworn to protect. Diversity can assist in building trust and help the police force regain the confidence of the public in a time of doubt and fear.

After several years of a hiring freeze, the Fire Department(FD) is seeking to expand its firefighting personnel ranks by recruiting approximately 1000 candidates to be eventually hired. Currently, the Fire Department is predominantly male-Caucasian of either Irish or Italian descent in a long history of dedicated fire fighters which goes back generations. Contrastingly, a significant number of minorities have been unable to meet the expectations of the FD’s outdated recruitment practices which lack standardized procedures hence, few minority (women, African-Americans, Hispanics) firefighters. Now, the city’s estimated population is 1 million of which, about 30% are racial of ethnic minorities (mainly African-Americans and

Today’s management in the workforce is composed of all types of people verses thirty years ago when white males held a majority of upper-management positions in companies. These positions are now held by a mixture of ethnic back grounds and women who hold just as many if not more management positions then men. Just by looking at the changes in management demographics shows how important it is for people to understand cultural competency in the workplace. Dr. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. (1999) stated, “Diversity is the collective mixture of whomever we have in our workforce characterized by their differences and similarities” (p.11). Managers and supervisors must understand the characteristics of a diversity mature individual; they also need to be

Most people assume that workplace diversity is about increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation -- in other words, recruiting and retaining more people from traditionally underrepresented "identity groups." Taking this commonly held assumption as a starting point, we set out six years ago to investigate its link to organizational effectiveness. We soon found that thinking of diversity simply in terms of identity-group representation inhibited effectiveness. Organizations usually take one of two paths in managing diversity. In the name of equality and fairness, they encourage (and expect) women and people of color to blend in. Or they set them apart in jobs that relate specifically to their backgrounds, assigning them, for example, to areas that require them to interface with clients or customers of the same identity group. African American M.B.A. 's often find themselves marketing products to innercity communities; Hispanics frequently market to Hispanics or work for Latin American subsidiaries. In those kinds of cases, companies are operating on the assumption that the main virtue identity groups have to offer is a knowledge of their own people. This assumption is limited -- and limiting -- and detrimental to diversity efforts. What we suggest here is that diversity goes beyond increasing the number of different identity-group affiliations on the payroll to recognizing that such an effort is merely the first step in managing a diverse workforce for the

Discrimination in employment regarding sex, race, religion and age has been protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate impact is often referred to as unintentional discrimination. This occurs when policies, practices, rules or other systems appear to be neutral but have an unbalanced impact on members of a protected class (EEO: General, 2016). The Fire Department has shown a disparate impact by presenting an entry exam which consisted of a series of essay questions that were made up by officers of the fire department. As the statistics show, the fire department is overwhelmingly white and male, and are the sons and nephews of former and current firefighters. This issue is that the questions were stored at the fire station and possibly given in advance to those whom were applying by the family members that currently worked there. Also, the minorities did poorly on these essay questions as a result of being educated in under-resourced schools in economically deprived neighborhoods. Cognitive ability and knowledge tests can disproportionally screen out non-white candidates and for this is the reason why I would not recommend this method to be used. I would also recommend to not use the word of mouth recruiting method as the disadvantages are: limited audience, the “word” spreads slowly, and tracking issues (Mooney, n.d.).