Journal Article

Employment Standards for Australian Urban Firefighters

Mott, Brendan J., Taylor, Nigel A.S., Fullagar, Hugh H.K., Groeller, Herbert, Sampson, John A.

2015

Overview

OBJECTIVE:This communication is the first of four describing the development of defensible firefighter-selection tests. The purpose was to identify a subset of essential, physically demanding tasks performed by contemporary urban firefighters. METHODS:From existing procedural documentation and job analyses, 11 fire-station visits and interviews with 106 firefighters, and one focus-group meeting, 31 physically demanding tasks were identified and incorporated into a workforce survey. Using this tool, firefighters rated the importance, perceived difficulty, typical task durations, and annual performance frequency of each task. RESULTS:Data from 989 respondents were analyzed, enabling a consolidation of these tasks into a subset of essential activities. CONCLUSIONS:These processes yielded a content-valid list of 15 essential, physically demanding tasks covering the full width of duties performed by urban firefighters from Australiaʼs largest fire and rescue organization.

• Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a business of Wolters Kluwer Health,Copyright by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Ovid Technologies
• Subject: Adolescent / Adult / Aged / Australia / Decision Support Techniques / Employee Performance Appraisal - methods / Employee Performance Appraisal - standards / Employment / Female / Firefighters / Focus Groups / Humans / Male / Middle Aged / Original Article / Personnel Selection - methods / Personnel Selection - standards / Physical Fitness / Surveys and Questionnaires / Task analysis / Task Performance and Analysis / Urban areas / Urban Population / Work Performance - standards / Young Adult