The Farmington Fire Department is located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, where it protects an area of 27 square miles and provides support to other fire departments within the Four Corners region. FFD serves a community of 47,000 residents with an influx of over 100,000 people from neighboring communities during business hours. For over 100 years now, the department has prided itself on serving the Farmington region with the highest level of valor, integrity, and commitment.
Challenges
Using a Rolodex of firefighter names and contact information, a captain at the Farmington Fire Department in Farmington, New Mexico, spent six hours daily calling the department's professional firefighters to fill three shifts at six stations. Firefighters sometimes worked six or seven days consecutively, creating fatigue issues. Overtime also wasn't awarded equitably, as firefighters known for accepting overtime got the calls or some accepted overtime and then passed it on to friends in the department.
Solutions
Using the UKG TeleStaff™ solution, Farmington Fire Department is optimizing scheduling of public safety personnel according to collective bargaining agreements, helping the department create equitable schedules and overtime assignments, improve communication and compliance, and centralize real-time labor data to help control labor costs.
"UKG TeleStaff calls who it needs to, rotates people on multiple sign-up lists or overtime lists, and notifies them at the end of the day which position they're working or it calls them to offer them the position. It handles over 90% of our scheduling."
Mark Mordecki
Engineer
Results
After purchasing UKG TeleStaff through a grant, Farmington Fire Department now takes just 30 minutes daily to double-check the solution's scheduling assignments. Extensive solution automation has enabled the department to train multiple people, including stand-ins, to easily manage the roster. Configurable fatigue rules ensure firefighters work no more than the maximum number of regular and overtime hours before taking required time off. Built-in overtime rules assign firefighters overtime equitably, rotating them to the bottom of the list after an assignment. To curb rapidly rising overtime costs, the department used the solution to adjust and shift staffing while providing safe coverage. With an audit trail that tracks all solution communication and staffing modifications, firefighters feel confident that assignments are fair.
