FENZ, or Fire and Emergency New Zealand, is a government agency responsible for providing fire and emergency services throughout the country. It was established in 2017 and brings together over 40 different organisations to ensure a coordinated and efficient response to emergencies, including firefighting, rescue operations, and hazardous material incidents.
FENZ uses incident reports to gather and analyse information about emergency incidents and spot patterns. This information informs public awareness campaigns and organisation planning to ultimately help make New Zealanders safer.
There are around 3000 officers required to create incident reports within the Station Management System (SMS). However, FENZ identified that many team members did not know how to report on incidents or understand the importance of the information. FENZ wanted a solution that would help officers see how valuable incident reports are, as well as give officers the skills they needed to competently complete them.
The solution had to be suitable for new and existing officers, cover the main uses of the system and really hit home as to how incident report data can help keep people safer.
After consulting with FENZ leaders, we formed a blended approach around the premise that through incident reporting is like another piece of life-saving equipment, i.e. hoses, smoke alarms, incident reports all save lives.
Our blended solution included the following elements:
We created an intro video featuring Leigh Hart to give an overview of how good incident data helps FENZ save lives, using humour with a serious message.
We designed an interactive scene that officers could investigate before being led through the end-to-end incident reporting process.
Here we created scenarios that increased in complexity where officers could build their skills and confidence in making the correct system decisions when reporting an incident in the SMS.
We developed a guide for team leaders on how to use the suite of training materials to upskill their teams in incident reporting. This enabled team leaders to tailor the training to the needs of individual learners and make full use of existing resources.
To ensure the in-system prompts were accessible and effective, we reviewed and advised on updating the tooltips material.
To help reinforce the learning, we designed a poster for all fire stations that would remind officers that incident reporting is a tool to save lives and property.
FENZ now have a solution that:
