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The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the extent to which the Trinidad and Tobago Fire

Service has implemented a flexible strategy to enhance its organisational effectiveness. Firstly

the motive for management developing the flexible strategies in efforts to respond to the

changing environmental factors will be explained, with reference to the changes in the labour

market and the demand for work/life balance. The different types of flexibility that exist will be

identified and defined and reference will be made to the ‘flexible firm model’ developed by

Atkinson in 1984. This model will then be applied to the Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service to

highlight the extent to which the Fire Service has implemented its flexible strategy. The human

resource management issues in relation to recruitment and selection, training and development

and other issues will be discussed and recommendations will be made on implementing different

forms of flexibility compared to the strategy currently used. Finally human resource management

will be evaluated in proving that it really can help organisations in achieving their strategic goals

and objectives.

The evolution of management theories led to the view of organisations as organisms

/systems affected by environment (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental

and Legal) factors. This was followed by development of strategies to cope with the changing

environment as in the Contingency theory. Management, in realising the need for organisations

to adapt in order to react to the ever changing demands developed flexible structures to facilitate

faster flow of communications and decision making and applied new strategies in managing their

employment of resources.

The demand for flexibility in organisations is partly due to increase in competition by

other organisations, customers’ insisting upon improved goods and services at lower prices,

shareholders seeking to increase profit maximization and the need for orginisation to ensure its
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continuous survival. These demands are not only restricted to the market for goods and services

but are also included in the market for labour where increasing numbers of organisations

compete for the limited labour resource (human capital).

Following the conceptual shift in the personnel management’s view that employees were

a cost by organisations and now a scarce resource, employees with greater levels of education,

wider skill sets and new psychological contracts are expecting more than just salaries such as the

fulfillment of their higher level needs (identified by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)

within the workplace. However because of this, employers have adapted a performance culture

that expects more and more in return for the investments made on human capital and utilisation

of its resources. As a result of this many employees sacrificed family and social life in the pursuit

of their careers which led to various forms of work related stress and health problems within the

workforce which affected productivity, attendance and incurred costs to organisations in the

form of loss in manpower hours, medical assistance/provisions, counseling and Employee

Assistance Programmes.

It was not until the late 1970’s that organisations such as New Ways to Work and the

Working Mothers Association in the United Kingdom cited in http//en.wekipedia.org began to

highlight the unhealthy choices that employees were making in choosing to neglect areas of their

lives such as family, friends and hobbies in favor of work related tasks. From this the expression

work/life balance was coined. Over the past twenty eight years counting from the 1980’s there

has been increases in the gender diversity of the labour market. The increase in women being

employed and opting career paths, led to a decline in birth rates globally, thus revealing

uncertainty in future labour market trends and the possibility of pension and medical schemes

collapsing. Compounding this was the formation of anti-discriminatory, equal opportunity and
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family friendly legislation, the shift in company loyalty and career to a skill vendor/career

mobility approach of employees, the increasing age of the workforce, economic forces

demanding greater efficiency in delivering goods and services, the increase in single parent

homes and the overall employee demand for work/life balance, forcing organisations to cope and

adapt.

During the turbulent economic times in the 1980’s which saw the development of

strategic human resource management rising out of studies such as the Peters and Waterman

excellence model, which led to the Harvard and Michigan models and the formation of the best

practice approach, also in the 1980’s gave rise to the different forms of human resource

approaches to flexibility where numerical, temporal, functional, financial, locational and cultural

forms of flexibility were developed. Numerical flexibility can be achieved by fluctuations in the

size of the labour force by the employment of non permanent staff, part time staff, short contract

staff or subcontracted staff to meet increase in demands for a given period and then laid off when

there is a decline in demand. Functional flexibility is the extent to which employees can be

transferred to different activities and tasks within the firm as compared with traditional

specialisation, one person for one job as suggested by classical theories. Financial flexibility is

a compensation system designed to facilitate the development of numerical and functional

flexibility, here remuneration packages are not decided collectively between employees but on

an individual basis. This can be achieved by individual pay, performance related pay and flexible

benefits.

The following approaches thus far have been developed to meet with economic factors

and reduce the cost and wastage of labour and can be seen as hard HRM. However as previously

mentioned the following were developed to cater to employees’ social needs to balance the
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relationship between work and other areas of life thus reducing labour turn over costs and

increasing in employee retention. Temporal flexibility is the deviation of working times from

the standard 8am-430pm/9am-5pm but flexible working arrangements suited around the

traditional 40hour work week over a period of 5 days. An example of temporal flexibility is the

same 40hour week concentrated/compressed into 10 hour 4day week leaving the extra day free

or possible variations/staggered in the time such as 6am-2pm/10am-6pm. These strategies as

well as others such as shift work can be used to maintain the work life balance and works on the

principal that employees will choose a rhythm that suits their lifestyle. Locational flexibility has

been on the rise since the development of increases in technology and more efficient internet

services. This entails employees working outside the normal workplace such as home based

work and eliminates unnecessary back and forth traveling to work and avoids traveling at

congested peak periods or particularly where commuting to work is difficult. This also may be

implemented for employees who have special family caring or disability responsibilities and

social responsibilities.

Throughout management practice the application of the varying flexible approaches were

found to be incoherent with each other. For example such as; numerical and functional flexibility

where organisations tried to induce employees to make better use of their skills and at the same

time trying to contract or expand the size of the workforce according to demand. These

approaches were found to be incompatible. J. Atkinson in 1984, along with N. Meager in (1986)

cited in EDEXCEL HNC/HND Business Human Resource Management Course book (2004

p.246) developed one of the modeled solutions to this problem by budding from the core and

periphery model of workers. Atkinson‘s ‘Flexible Firm Model’ centers on organisations’ need

for and seeks to integrate functional and numerical flexibility. Functional flexibility is drawn
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from the core group of workers for whom job security is guaranteed and methods such as job

rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment and self managed work teams are employed, which

also make up the tenants of the high commitment and high involvement models. Numerical

flexibility of the model lies within the periphery group of workers used to buffer against changes

in demand with both full time and part time employees making up the first and secondary

periphery groups respectively. Temporal flexibility as previously explained can be implemented

throughout the entire model with variations in the core and periphery groups depending upon the

nature of the enterprise. Financial flexibility can be implemented mainly to the periphery group

where different reward packages and benefits may be use for core staff.

The application of HRM strategy to both core and periphery groups of employees though

labeled under the same heading is different in practice. An example of this is the reward

strategies used in both core and periphery groups. Core employees may be rewarded with

promotions and buy ins to company shares thus fostering commitment, however for periphery

employees there may be greater on emphasis monetary rewards and performance.

The advantages of the application of the flexible firm model to organisations are reduced

turnover and cost of labour, short term and long term savings, reduced risk and training of

employees, increased employee morale, increased productivity and potential recruiting success

because of the offer to balance work life. Functional flexibility allows management to respond

more flexibly to future changes. Some of the disadvantages include administration costs and

coordination of employees, and costs in the development of employees in promoting functional

flexibility. The advantages of flexible working to employees are that they are given greater

freedom to balance their work and personal lives, a reduction in employee stress, more

interesting and varied work and the feeling of empowerment. However some potential
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disadvantages may be that core employees in exercising functional flexibility may become burnt

out and there can be the increase in job insecurity, unfair and unequal treatment and the decrease

in promotion and career advancement for periphery workers.

The Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service (T.T.F.S.) is an unarmed contingent of the

Ministry of National Security and its existence was one of the requirements for Trinidad and

Tobago to gain independence in 1962. It is a formal, non-profit, public sector organisation which

means that it was formed and entirely funded by Government in the interest of the general

community. In earlier years a fire-fighter’s duty in Trinidad and Tobago fell under the realm of

the Police Service. The fire service was officially separated on January 1st, 1951, and the

opportunity was offered to Police Officers, so inclined, to begin new careers as fire officers

The Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service (T.T.F.S.) currently comprises of 2641 members

who are referred to as Professional Fire-fighters. Females were first indoctrinated into service in

1992 and to date there is a strength of 245 female Professional Fire-fighters. There is an auxiliary

arm of the fire service which until recently comprised of 754 men and women but the figure has

been reduced to 600 auxiliary firefighters following the absorption of the difference into the

T.T.F.S. Civilian staff are also employed by the T.T.F.S. and make up the compliment of 120

employees. Their functions comprise of accounting, clerical and administrative duties,

mechanics and janitors.

An application of the ‘Flexible Firm Model’ to the T.T.F.S and in analysis, professional

firefighters are the core employees with the auxiliary staff and civilian workers falling into the

periphery. The members of the auxiliary arm of the T.T.F.S. are contracted and these contracts

are renewed periodically upon the discretion of the Chief Fire Officer. Auxiliary firefighters are

used for artesian skills such as plumbing, electrical instillation, welding, carpentry and masonry
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and can be called upon to augment the strength of professional firefighters in emergency

situations, however the actual firefighting is left to professional firefighters due to their

experience, expertise and legal and compensation issues. They are also used in periods of high

demand for fire protection/prevention and crowd control such as Carnival, other large public

gathering events and parade/ceremonial duties where a large show of strength is needed so that

the trained professionals can be concentrated to responding to actual emergencies. This need for

core and periphery workers stemmed out of wage negotiations between Fire Service Associations

(trade union) and the government (Chief Personal Officer) where it was argued that firefighters

should not be paid a firefighting salary for artesian or clerical skills hence the employment of

civilian staff administrative workers outsourced by the Public Service Commission and the

contractual employment of mechanics and janitors by the T.T.F.S.

The T.T.F.S because of its bureaucratic structure due to its linkage with government and

the nature of service provided has little need to exercise market competitiveness; however in

attempts at reducing government expenditure and its obligation to meet all stakeholder objectives

it has adopted strategies in increasing its flexibility in order to achieve the optimum use of

human resources. The flexibility strategy primarily engaged is the use of temporal flexibility

partly because of the need to provide 24 hour protection but in the staggering of the common

work period from 8am to 430pn to 9am to 6pm during the day and at the night shift from 6pm to

9am the following morning which allows the traffic congestion to clear up and ease in

commuting. There is also consideration for the work life balance where firefighters on shift work

one day 9an-6pm followed by a day off, then the night 6pm-9am followed by two days off. This

still total to 48hour work week and the total of the extra hours are given as compensatory days.

There is also ‘leave in lieu’ of public holidays when shift work falls on these dates. There is also
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the option of Monday to Friday 8am-4pm at certain technical departments and for senior officers

but who are on call at emergency situations.

Along with temporal flexibility and numerical flexibility highlighted in the explanation of

the auxiliary staff, functional flexibility is practiced with the use of job rotations so that

professional firefighters have a wider knowledge/skill base and job enlargement preceding

promotions to facilitate the transition in the new rank. The development of the specialised

multidisciplinary work teams concept has also been adopted from the matrix structure and its use

is variant upon specific tasks encountered by the T.T.F.S.

Pressing human resource management issues have arisen from the implementation of

flexibility strategies. Recruitment and selection; core employees have to be willing to work

flexible time arrangements and great distances throughout Trinidad and Tobago. Civilian staff

periphery employees outsourced by the Service Commission may not fit the organisation’s para-

military/bureaucratic culture. Training and development within the T.T.F.S is mainly afforded to

professional firefighters with the exception of induction training of auxiliary firefighters and

further development of periphery employees is often neglected. Supervision and control of

periphery staff have to be coordinated by senior officers who have to be assigned to the

management of these departments and take away limited resources from concentrating on core

functions. Currently there are no reward systems in place for periphery workers with the

exception that there may be the promise of induction/absorption into the T.T.F.S for auxiliary

firefighters and civilian staff. Promotion for civilian staff is dependant upon the Public Service

Commission. The promotion process for auxiliary firefighting staff is very slow and based upon

length of service. Contracted workers as well as auxiliary firefighters may feel insecure about

renewal of their contracts.

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Because of the heavy reliance on core, professional firefighters and the importance of

drivers of the appliances (water tenders and tankers), without the drivers firefighting crews

cannot respond. There is need for further functional flexibility of core employees trained in

driving extra heavy equipment; but there is fear of responsibility for such expensive equipment

and current grievances in the present proficiency paid for such skill and responsibility, resulting

in the decline in the number of applicants qualifying and volunteering to drive. One possible

solution is that drivers can be outsourced and financial flexibility in the determination of

remunerations for contracts can be implemented. However there is speculation on government’s

ability to pay the current market price for skilled drivers and the psychological message that will

be sent to employees as it would be economical to increase the proficiency for drivers.

Though not all forms of flexibility apply to the T.T.F.S which after analysis is greater

suited to profit based production of goods and services enterprises it can be seen that these

methods will increase the organisation’s ability to reduce unwanted costs and efficiently utilize

their resources of capital, labour, and cash with the application of strategy consistent with

strategic human resource management. According to (Atkinson 1984) the aims of flexible

strategy should be to develop a ‘flexible firm’ by providing for greater operational role and

flexibility. The aim of many employers is to create increased flexibility in the management of

their resources so as to increase organisational effectiveness. It is evident that the increase in

ability to change to market needs and reduce input labour cost, balance the work/life equation

and simultaneously decrease the factors that lead to workplace stress and its associated costs,

secure employee retention, morale and commitment can really help organisations achieve their

strategic goals and objectives.

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In conclusion the extent to which the T.T.F.S have implemented the different forms of

flexibility have been analysed. The need for work/life balance was highlighted and a brief

evolution in the development of flexible strategies was discussed highlighting the shift in labour

market trends such as increases in women being employed, the ageing workforce, single parent

families, and implementation of legislation restricting discrimination to name a few. The

development and types of flexibility were identified as numerical, functional, financial, temporal,

locational and cultural and were then explained. The ‘Flexible Firm Model’ was made reference

to and expounded. This model was also applied to the T.T.F.S and the types of flexibility and

key human resource issues were identified. Recommendations were made in improving the

flexibility of the organisation in enhancing its effectiveness and human resource management

was evaluated in its ability to achieve the organisation’s strategic goals and objectives.