THE BENEFITS OF SUCESSION PLANNING IN THE FIRE SERVICE essay
Article Title: Succession Planning 101: Are We Doing the Best We Can for Our Personnel?
Journal Name and Date: Fire Engineering, 2013.
Key Points: First of all, the article is showing the idea that many firefighters do not know the meaning of the term of “succession planning”, and such situation has a place because the departments of these firefighters ignore many aspects of succession planning, and take away from the workers a possibility to be prepared for numerous factors that may be out of their control. The next idea of the article is to prove the necessity of succession planning, giving a full explanation to the term, its description and other characteristics. To continue, the article presents a good idea that not only the chief of department or fire administrator is responsible for this planning because it is everyone’s responsibility to realize that succession planning is the part of daily operations. In addition, an idea to present 17 keys to succession planning (which can be used to check how the applicants for the position of firefighters match the job requirements) in a kind of specific blocks can be considered rather well, while a specific explanation of each key helps to realize seriousness of each described point.
Summary: Summarizing the article in several aspects, on the one hand, the article presents misunderstanding of the term by many firefighters, but on the other hand, the author demonstrates a position that people who are aware of this concept not going to take a responsibility for the process. Moreover, describing the problem with succession planning, the author is proving that succession planning is not a waste of time, but it is an instrument which helps to be sure that personnel hired and trained today will be able to react properly on the challenges of future situations.
Basing on the article, it also becomes understandable that the benefits of succession planning are great, and all steps should be well-thought and implemented into practice. For instance, starting point may help to begin the planning in the right way, while creating of individual development or experience opportunities may improve the situation in very short term.
Personal Evaluation: It is hard to disagree with the author’s ideas and arguments because everything is very good described and illustrated. Reading brief information about the author at the end of the article, I found that Steve Prziborowski wrote everything on the own experience (he has served in the fire service for more than 20 years), and everything has logical base and explanations. So, the author’s words make me to believe in everything he wrote, and I found many confirmations to them in different sources of information which I had read previously.
And finally, the article forced me to realize that everything should be done timely and according to special plan; so it is always necessary not only to create this plan and to follow it, but also to evaluate its effectiveness before using it in practice. Nobody knows what may happen the next day, but it is better to be prepared for everything today than to be sorry about own mistakes and inactivity tomorrow.
In conclusion, taking everything into consideration, it can be stated that the author described the problem in very easy and interesting way, exploring different sides of an issue, beginning with absence of knowledge about the concept in firefighters and ending with presentation of each step of succession planning with all details.
