Improves tool

Members play a fundamental role in driving improvement in their services by deciding their policy priorities, setting the budget to meet those priorities and holding officers to account for their delivery as well as providing the voice of the community. The delivery of effective services to communities is at the heart of fire and rescue authorities, and in order to do this, services need cultures that are inclusive, where equity, belonging, and diversity are valued. Members and officers both have distinct but complementary roles in ensuring that this is the case. 

The questions set out below are for you as members to ask your senior officers about your culture improvement journey. They should allow you to gain an insight into the work of your services or your authority’s policy priorities, allow you to probe if you are unsure of the evidence, or need more information to make decisions and have assurance from your senior leaders.

The inspection framework provides a basis for delving into these issues, setting out what His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) expects from fire and rescue services. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) also have a number of toolkits and other products to support services with culture, the Inclusive Fire Service Group’s improvement strategies set out activities to undertake to aid improvement and the LGA’s Diverse by Design guide outlines steps to take to embed fair values, practices and behaviours in your organisations. The Fire Standards Board also has a number of standards relevant to these issues that Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) must be implementing as per the National Fire Framework.

Your improvement journey will be unique to your service and authority, therefore it is to be expected that different FRAs will have different answers to these questions. However, as representatives of your communities you will want to have assurance, rather than reassurance, that activities are progressing as you expect. 

Addressing issues around equality, diversity, inclusion and culture will take time and a commitment from both officers and members. We hope these questions will support the confidence of members to carry out their accountability work within the sector and to continue to push for the change on culture, which so many reports and examples have illustrated continues to be necessary.

I M P R O V E S

Questions to ask and discuss with senior leaders in your services.

I – Intention

How do we compare to the inspection framework? What would good look like for our service? What do our staff say good would look like in our service? Who are our comparators? Where are we now and where do we want to be in 6 months? In a year? 3 years? Who is championing equality, diversity, inclusion and culture? Do we have a member champion for these issues? What does championing this look like in practice, and what difference is it making? Are senior leaders and managers role modelling the sort of behaviours we want to see? To what extent are senior leaders and managers sharing the responsibility around EDI and organisational culture? In what ways? How are we supporting them to do so? Is EDI a part of our performance management framework? How are leaders delivering against the Leading the Service standard? How are they delivering against the Leading and Developing People standard? Are EDI matters and organisational culture part of our strategic vision/priorities/objectives?

M – Monitoring

What are we measuring? How can we track this over time? What are the trends? What are they telling us? Do we have a culture dashboard? Who sees the culture dashboard/EDI and culture-related metrics, and how often? What has happened or is happening in response? The NFCC have recently published a methodology for creating a local culture dashboard. Examples for data collection include overall demographics, tracking exits, promotions, training, disciplinary cases, employee feedback – monitor but also cross-checking data by protected characteristics to identify potential trends.

P – Policies and procedures

Are policies in place to deal with issues such as misconduct, complaints, whistleblowing etc? When were they last updated? Are they agreed? Are they being followed and understood? Do employees know where to go when there’s a problem at work? Are staff trained in how to use our policies and procedures? Are managers trained to deal with disciplinary issues and grievances? How do you get feedback on the safety and fairness of such policies and procedures? Is the Safeguarding standard embedded? What is our approach to Equality Impact Assessments? When and how well are these carried out?

R – Recruitment and retention

Are there any trends or causes for concern in recruitment and retention? Are there barriers to recruitment? What are our communities telling us? What’s the evidence telling us about how our communities view us? Are we reflecting the community we serve? What steps have been taken to attract candidates from historically underrepresented  into the service? What difference has this made? Are there differences in who we’re retaining and who leaves? If there are, do we know why? What are the biggest reasons (both positive and negative) that are impacting on staff retention? How are we responding to these reasons?

 O – Ownership

Improving culture takes collective responsibility and shared ownership. What steps have been taken to build collective ownership of the EDI/Culture agenda? Do we understand roles and responsibilities in the same way across the service and authority – what’s the role of the FRA, the Senior Leadership Team, and how does it all fit together? Which areas of the FRS do you think are least engaged in this agenda? What steps are being taken to address this? What support do you think they need?

V – Values and behaviours

Do we have FRA/FRS values and clarity about the sort of behaviours we expect in our workplace? Is the Core Code of Ethics embedded? How are we delivering against the Code of Ethics standard? How do we set the tone? How do we encourage colleagues to think about how we treat each other and work with dignity? How do we address this when it goes wrong? Do we know what to do in particular situations? How are all parts of our service’s being helped to embed the expected behaviours? Do we know how all parts of our services are progressing in embedding behaviours, are some further along than others?

E – Engagement

Engagement is both external and internal. What action are we taking to ensure we’re hearing and understanding the employee voice? At what point? How are you bringing employees on this journey? Are there staff networks and are they supported? Are you engaging with external organisations to identify toolkits, models, good practice, advice that can help you? (For example, the LGA’s Diverse by Design Guide, the IFSG Improvement Strategies, NFCC culture toolkits, ACAS and EHRC advice and guidance). How are you engaging with your local trade unions and working together on this? What difference has understanding the employee voice made to our direction, decision-making, policy? Are our staff telling us change is embedded?

S - So what?

So what? What difference are we making – and how do we know? How are we measuring improvements? How do we know what works? How will we embed and sustain progress?