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Within this theme, survey responses for the statement “CFA provides enough training opportunities in formats, at times and at locations that make it easy for me to participate” have generated the largest gap for the 2014 survey, consistent with having the second largest gap in 2013.
This same statement also received the lowest performance score for any survey statement in 2014 and second lowest score in 2013. The respondents scoring against this statement clearly indicates an ongoing dissatisfaction with the current level of service received from CFA in respect to training.
While written comments for other themes in the survey are brief and sometimes quite individual, the commentary for ‘training by CFA’ is detailed and focussed on common recurring concerns.
These recurring comments refer to a lack of training availability and opportunity, with negative comments on the frequency and timing of courses. Some comments refer to unsuitable training formats and a lack of access to specific training requirements outside of the standard operational training packages, such as leadership training and conflict resolution training.
Written comments also refer to the time taken between attaining qualification and receiving the personal protective equipment required to turn out, once qualified.
Survey responses express this as creating a frustration in volunteers who have made time available to train but are then unable to utilise their training and support their brigade.
These written comments in the training theme are reflective of responses under other themes relating to sense of worth, recognition and treatment of volunteers.
Of the written comments received, few were positive. One of the positive comments reflected an appreciation of the size of the training tasks in CFA and suggested that volunteers and brigades could be more proactive in identifying solutions.
An improvement in performance scores against a stable importance score has seen the gap decrease over the past three years. The biggest influence underpinning this improvement is in the area of leadership training for volunteers, people management and conflict resolution and mentoring.
The difference between gap scores Region by Region for this theme are greater than any other.
South West Region’s positive performance and markedly smaller gap in relation to training may warrant further investigation to determine what is contributing to the success.
