Empowering EMS Career Dreams: A Leadership Imperative [2024 EMS Trend Survey]

Editor's Note: In August 2024, EMS1 and Fitch & Associates released their annual EMS trend survey, What Paramedics Want, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Anthony Minge, EdD, senior partner at Fitch & Associates. 

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Channel the energy and ambition of EMS professionals to foster a thriving and motivated workforce

Many people enter the EMS profession seeking a fulfilling career in which they can meaningfully impact the health and safety of their community. They sign on with a department or agency full of energy and vision, to treat the sick and injured, set on making a difference in the world.

The more seasoned staff in our ranks who’ve long since passed the registry and proudly carry the badges of validation that come with years of service carry the torch, leading committees, attending conferences and seminars, bringing back new ideas and methodologies. Like that Farmer’s Insurance commercial, “they know a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two!” Powerful resources one and all!

As leaders, we have the opportunity and duty to harness these providers’ vivacity and use it to make positive changes, allowing our profession to keep pace with progressive technologies, advancements in medicine, and even appropriate recognition and treatment of a changing social populus.

Channeling providers’ passion

Are we as leaders taking full advantage of this great and powerfully dynamic prospect, channeling our people’s sometimes almost unbridled energy to serve our communities to the fullest?

Are we welcoming and promoting charismatic and enthusiastic behavior, recognizing, showing appreciation and promoting the vigorous pursuit of employee goals?

Are we asking our EMS professionals what they want from their careers and how we can help them to achieve these goals?

Or are we to focused on the day-to-day routine and stuck in the rut of a “we’ve already tried that … it won’t work” mindset to really take the opportunity to entertain the idea that our employees may have goals and career dreams and ideas that might just solve at least some of the dilemmas that regularly plague our services?

We have a responsibility as leaders to ensure we are listening to, understanding, recognizing, promoting the pursuit of and even growing our employees’ dreams to grow beyond their current roles. Those in positions of power often fail to recognize that dreams and goals will come along at different points in each member’s career path.

As a leader, you must be willing to regularly lend your experience and seek to assist your employees in achieving their career dreams. Failure to do so can lead to lackluster performance and can be costly in terms of retention, recruitment, and even lost revenue.

Here are some tips for assisting your employees as they aspire to accomplish more.

1. Engage employees in career conversations.

Establish an honest and open dialogue about employees’ skills, interests and career goals. Encourage them to reflect on their strengths and areas for development. This requires active listening skills that may need to be developed. If you are talking more than your employees, you’re not doing this well.

2. Set goals and encourage ownership.

Work with employees to set SMART goals – these are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound goals. Employees who take part in creating the path of their destiny are more inspired to accomplish their goals.

3. Provide regular feedback.

Continually communicate with constructive feedback at regular intervals. Focus on both strengths and areas of improvement, offering tips and tools to keep employees on track and make continual progress towards the attainment of the goal.

4. Foster purpose.

Help employees to find meaning and purpose in their current work by connecting it to their goals and the overall goals of the agency. This will improve job satisfaction and you will likely see greater engagement and often improved performance.

5. Support professional development.

Encourage continual learning. Provide training opportunities. Send employees to classes, seminars, and conferences. Consider adopting creative scheduling processes that will allow providers to attend school to further their degree.

6. Align individual and organizational goals.

When employees understand how their goals and dreams contribute to the success of the organization, they have a sense of achievement and accomplishment that will keep them motivated, benefiting both parties.

Even if the goal may lead employees to a career outside your organization, if you do not support their dreams, it may lead to unsatisfied and disgruntled employees. Supporting employee dreams and goals leads to improved satisfaction and often develops loyalty.

There are many stories of exceptionally successful people who started at the lowest levels of an organization, who were encouraged to pursue a dream by a supervisor, manager, or some other leader, and went on to greater heights. Some of those were internal to the original company, and some, even though they had left the agency, went on to be prominent in other areas but were still impactful in being able to promote and support the organization (and leaders) that originally encouraged and assisted them in pursuing their dream.

A key element that most all successful organizations share is that they create an environment in which employees feel valued and motivated to pursue their career aspirations.

Some benefits your organization may realize when encouraging employees to pursue their career dreams include:

• Increased employee engagement and satisfaction
• Improved retention rates
• Enhanced productivity and performance
• Positive cultural change
• Improved recruitment and talent attraction

Reflecting on our own career journeys, we most likely owe a debt of gratitude to at least one leader in our own career development who supported our dreams and encouraged us to pursue them, even offering advice and support along the way. These people were crucial to our success. You can thank them by paying it forward, embracing the opportunity to inspire your employees to pursue their career dreams and—along the way—provide guidance, motivation, and emotional support to help navigate the path. You won’t be sorry you did.

Download the full digital edition: What Paramedics Want 2024

About the Author

Anthony Minge, EdD, is a senior partner at Fitch & Associates. He has more than two decades of leadership, revenue cycle management, compliance and healthcare business operations experience. Prior to joining the firm, he was the business manager for Northwest MedStar in Spokane, Washington.

As compensation and benefits remain an overarching issue that impacts many aspects of the EMS profession, staffing and retention are consistently ranked as a critical problem. Check out the results of the 2024 EMS Trend Survey.