Every organisation experiences voluntary worker turnover, for both volunteer and paid employees. The purpose of my mixed method sequential explanatory study at Fire and Emergency New Zealand was two-fold. The quantitative component examined the relationship between volunteer chief fire officers’ leadership styles, perceptions of organisational support, and voluntary firefighter turnover. The qualitative component explored strategies that volunteer chief fire officers use to reduce firefighter turnover. The theoretical frameworks that grounded this study were transformational leadership theory (TL) and organisational support theory (OST). The quantitative results showed a significant statistical relationship between OST and turnover (p<.001), and no statistically significant relationship between TL and turnover (p>.001). The qualitative results yielded five themes for strategies that reduce firefighter turnover: family acknowledgment and involvement; a positive culture and satisfaction; robust vetting and induction processes; flexibility in training, and; communication and recognition. During the session we will explore the connections between these findings and discuss approaches to improve satisfaction and turnover rates among workers.

About the presenter:
Mark has held senior roles within private, NGO, and government organisations for more than 10 years and is currently the Principal Advisor for People, Capability, and Leadership at Fire and Emergency New Zealand. He is passionate about enabling leaders to enhance their influence and empowering organisations to be bold in developing strategies that promote a people-centred approach. Mark has a doctorate in organisational leadership and recently received the Doctoral Study of the Year Award, 2019. He has three articles in the final review stage for publication in volunteer and emergency management journals.

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Any queries please email: luisa.acheson@vuw.ac.nz