Scaling Work and Workers Together in the Wildfire Resilience Space

The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in California has prompted multiple emergency declarations, missives, taskforces, and policies to address and mitigate negative wildfire impacts, seeking to help communities live more safely with wildfire. But the best-laid plans and most robust projects can only be implemented with a willing and able workforce – a workforce that is compensated fairly and whose well-being is maintained. People are one of our greatest resources in wildfire resilience, yet people are leaving the field in search of better working conditions and higher pay in other fields.

Personnel must be valued if we want to implement bigger and better projects.

In partnership with the Sierra Business Council (SBC), the Watershed Research and Training Center (WRTC), via the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity program, has identified seven recommendations for the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Taskforce to support employees throughout their careers. These recommendations were shaped by 65 subject matter experts and focus on increasing employee retention, job satisfaction, and the quality and quantity of work implemented. The recommendations also emphasize the importance of consulting with Tribes and tribally-led organizations as leaders in the application of beneficial fire. The philosophy these recommendations are based on is broad, viewing a person within the scope of their entire career lifecycle, from recruitment into entry-level positions, professional development, retention and advancement, and ultimately evolving into a mentor, trainer, or teacher. 

What is a “good” job? The lead authors of these recommendations, WRTC’s Allison Jolley and SBC’s Emily Blackmer, define good jobs as, “jobs that are known and understood, accessible, competitively compensated, sustainable for employees, and physically and psychologically safe [that] also provide stepping stones to prosperous careers.” To attract people to this field and retain them, employees must be able to meet their financial, material, and personal needs while experiencing upward career advancement.

Providing for Human Resource Development: Mentorship, Accessibility, and Leadership

One theme identified across employers in the wildfire resilience sector is a need for robust human resource development (distinct from human resources management) to bolster organizational capacity, promote healthy workplace cultures, and support employees at every stage of their careers. A common observation made about the current organizational capacity in the wildfire resilience sphere is that our personnel are overloaded with planning and implementation demands, and thus often unable to mentor their employees.

Small organizations in particular could see their workforces benefit from adoption of clear job descriptions, compensation guides, onboarding processes, employee and supervisor reviews, employee-centered professional development plans, and supervisory training, among other human resources development efforts.

By bolstering the support systems in an organization, employees are more likely to have their needs met, and see a path forward that caters to their unique skills, strengths, and interests, which ultimately leads to organizational and/or sector loyalty and longevity.

Pathways in the wildfire resilience field need to be accessible to more people via broader geographic and demographic outreach. Individual job application processes and portals would benefit from more human connection/coaching throughout, and job qualifications listed on applications could be better aligned with the specific skills actually utilized to perform the job. 

In addition to bolstering HR systems and improving application processes, wildfire resilience organizations would likewise benefit from investing in leadership, mentorship, communication, and team-building training and support systems to build a healthy workplace culture. Interviews with people who work, or formerly worked, in the sector reveal that “a toxic work environment” is often a critical contributing factor leading them to exit the field. Cumulative experience suggests that, “Either assimilating or leaving the sector are the options.” Conflict resolution, communicating across differences, emotional intelligence, and mentorship training could contribute to a paradigm shift, favoring a work environment that welcomes all employees. 

Reimagining Funding and Addressing Wrap-Around Supports Across Sectors 

Improvements in systems and personnel training will require investments in capacity. The vast majority of the dollars distributed in this sector are for implementation projects, not career development, and often include insufficient indirect cost recovery, steep match requirements and truncated timelines for grant applications and project implementation. 

Personnel investment could manifest as orientation that grounds the work in the larger picture of resilience across landscapes and communities, on-the-job training in leadership, field/office cross-training, or other activities that illuminate lateral or vertical career advancement opportunities. 

Money for implementation and workforce development need not, and should not, be separated; they can be awarded concurrently to scale work and workers together.

Systemic issues confronting all workers, such as the lack of affordable housing, also impact the solutions we need to develop. Current housing conditions have forced many employees to commute long distances because they cannot afford to live where they work. Not all of these issues can be addressed through the scope of these recommendations, but it illustrates the intersecting obstacles that have pushed qualified people into other careers.

It will take buy-in across agencies and organizations to shift the culture of the wildfire resilience workplace, but it must be undertaken to retrain, support, and advance the people who get the work done. Providing paid time to attend inter-agency, cross-organizational, and professional networking events would ensure such opportunities are regularly attended. Our communities and landscapes depend on these investments.

To learn more about WRTC and SBC’s recommendations, review the full report here.

The work upon which this publication is based was funded in part through a Regional Forest and Fire Capacity subaward from the Watershed Research and Training Center, by a grant awarded by the California Department of Conservation.