Case study
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Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ)
Post-Incident Reporting
Increasing completion and accuracy of post-incident reporting to mitigate risks and trends.
Industry
Emergency Services & Response || Government & Public Sector
Focus area
Policies, Procedures & Compliance || IT & Systems Training
Approach
eLearning & Digital Learning || Immersive & Experiential Learning || Performance Support & Workplace Tools || Video & Animation || Coaching & Development Toolkits
Service
Targeted learning solutions
At a glance
What was the challenge, and what changed?
The challenge
What we built
The result
The full story
How did the project come together?
About our Client
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.
Their Brief
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.
Our Role
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:
Intro Video
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.
Incident reporting and eLearning
We designed an interactive scene that officers could investigate before being led through the end-to-end incident reporting process.
Scenario-based system practice
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.
Coaching guide
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.
Updating 'tool tips' (in-system prompts)
To ensure the in-system prompts were accessible and effective, we reviewed and advised on updating the tooltips material.
Reinforcement poster
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.
Their Results
FENZ now have a solution that:
- motivates officers to record complete and accurate incident reports
- reduces the time for officers to get up to speed on incident reporting
- makes reporting more accessible for lower literacy users
- dispels any myths that incident reporting is a box ticking exercise
In their words
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