HFD Advantage
Approximately 20 years ago the city leadership established their vision for the city to be America’s premier community – and they have done a great job working towards that goal. The City of Henderson is consistently rated among the best places to live in America, the safest cities in America and the best places to retire. As a fire department we realized very quickly that we can’t become America’s Premier City without a premier fire department, so we also adopted the vision to be America’s Premier Fire Department.
In establishing this vision, we realized that nobody stumbles upon significance, so we became intentional at becoming great. We knew that there is no success without action. To meet our vision, we researched successful organizations both within governmental services and in the private corporate world, and discovered that high performing organizations have been able to effectively answer 4 basic questions and institute those answers into the DNA of how they operate; starting with the Fire Chief and flowing to every other department member. Those questions include: Why do we exist?; How do we behave?; What do we do?; and How will we succeed? The answers to these questions are the HFD Advantage.
Why do we exist?
Because People Matter.
All emergency response organizations exist for one simple reason – because people matter. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be emergency response organizations. You would be on your own. Our existence is based on the universal belief that human beings have inherent value. That is why people throughout this community, state and nation are willing to pool their resources together to ensure somebody will show up when tragedy strikes their home or family. We understand that we protect the most important thing in the lives of people – the relationships between people who love and care for each other. We stand guard to ensure people have another day together.
How do we behave?
With Compassion, Integrity & Respect, because we are sworn public servants.
Our compassion is best described by our commitment to “get down into the pit” to help those in need. We are willing to get dirty and to get involved in the problem in order to become part of the solution. Our integrity reflects our goal to always “align our actions with our values” – that we walk our talk and do what we say. Respect is our acknowledgment that “it is not about us!” Our job is always about others.
What Do We Do?
We prepare for, respond to and mitigate all requests for service. We will maintain excellence with our response capabilities in fire, rescue, EMS, hazmat and technical rescue. We will strive to meet and exceed best practices in all our assigned disciplines.
How will we succeed?
Our actions must be safe and effective, our strategy is based on four foundational principles:
- Standardization – Creating standard behaviors and practices is our best opportunity to achieve safe and effective outcomes – period. The lack of a standard approach to complex problems creates confusion, chaos, unpredictability and in coordination of effort. We will strive to apply a standard action to a standard condition to obtain a standard outcome.
- Consistency – This is our commitment to apply our standards consistently. This will create predictability, and predictable actions are always safer and more effective than unpredictable actions. A consistent application of a well thought out, planned and practiced standard in operating procedure provides us with the best chance at a positive outcome.
- Coordination – This is our commitment to teamwork and the understanding that we are exponentially better together than we are as individuals. A coordinated response is always safer and more effective than an uncoordinated response.
- Accountability – This is our commitment to each other, to our organization and ultimately to the people we serve, that we know and can perform our jobs. This is the critical component which holds the entire system together. Without being leadership driven and intentionally committed to accountability, we will never achieve a high-functioning, safe and effective emergency service delivery system.