Fire Department Employee Counseling - Aspiring Fire Officers

Employee Counseling

The secret to managing an Employee Counseling scenario is having an established system. In the Employee Counseling section, members start by viewing AFO’s instructional video to learn the 8-Step Process. These steps help our members prepare for and manage a counseling session with even the most difficult employee.

Learn from nine Employee Counseling videos that depict a fire officer managing a personnel issue that you are likely to encounter during your assessment center or after you are promoted. Battalion Chief members have access to an additional five videos that build in complexity and require multiple interviews to identify and correctly manage the problem. The videos review the disciplinary process, provide you tools, demonstrate how to conduct a counseling session, and implement the appropriate corrective action or discipline commensurate with the infraction.

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Each video begins with the narrator reading a scenario while it is displayed on the screen. The officer interviews the employee about the situation presented in the scenario, then follows the 8-Step Process to conduct the counseling session. As the officer progresses through the counseling session, a banner displays which step the officer is currently in, allowing you to track the progress throughout the video. This helps to reinforce how to use the 8-Step Process.

The videos show scenarios that are typical of those used in exams throughout the country, including citizen complaints, poor driving, unacceptable conduct, performance issues, injuries, station banter, preaching, and undermining the officer’s authority.

The scenarios build in complexity, and require you to identify the issues or policy violations and redirect the employee back to the expected behavior or department policy. A couple scenarios require you to interview multiple people to identify the issues and properly address them.

AFO videos follow the typical assessment format of using a role player to play the part of the problem employee. Each person playing the role of the problem employee is a firefighter and has been instructed to push back and sometimes challenge the officer. This adds realism and complexity to each scenario and prepares you for a difficult role player or employee once promoted. AFO members will learn to keep the role player on point and challenge him when he steps out of line.

A Fire Assessment Center candidate is often directed to complete the appropriate documentation following the counseling session. AFO members can review the documentation for each scenario, which describes the appropriate level of discipline or corrective action that the officer would impose as a result of the violation or infraction. The documentation ranges from a notice of discussion up to a written reprimand.

The employee counseling videos, using the 8-Step Process, followed by the written documentation, give our members a distinct advantage over their competition when managing problem employees both during the assessment center and once promoted.

View the bonus video Understanding Raters to gain insight into how the assessment center operates from a rater’s perspective, and how raters from outside organizations are able to effectively score your assessment center.

Employee Counseling Sample Videos

Introduction

5 Things To Remember

FREE video scenario - Late to Work

Free Scenario:

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Chief Fedak is a Battalion Chief with the Orange County Fire Authority. Due to state conflict of interest laws, the services provided by AFO may not be offered to current OCFA employees holding the rank of Battalion Chief or lower.