Problems Faced by Forest Service Coordinators of Volunteer and Hosted Program Workgroups, Page

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Problems Faced by Forest Service Coordinators of Volunteer and Hosted Program Workgroups

Major Safety and Liability Problems Faced by Coordinators

Safety and Forest Service liability are supervisors' primary concerns when working with hosted and volunteer crews. The increase of such workgroups has created numerous difficulties for coordinators. The problems discussed here are the most pressing because they directly affect the safety of the work crews and the liability of the Forest Service.

"Our system of supervision has changed considerably in practice," said a Forest Service safety coordinator from the Southwestern Region who went on to explain how the coordinator's job description was unclear. Safety was this coordinato's major concern.

Multiple Roles of Coordinators

The problems that existed in traditional seasonal crews, such as crew members getting along and the work ethic of individual crew members, also exist in volunteer and hosted groups. The supervisory skills needed to deal with these problems are outlined in Supervisor and the Work Crew. However, new difficulties have arisen when using hosted and volunteer workgroups. One major difficulty is the changing role of the first-line supervisor. During the interview process the project team found remnants of the old "crew dogs" who were supervisors in charge of specific crews, such as trail or timber crews, for an entire season. However, Forest Service employees who are placed in charge of hosted programs and volunteers no longer serve in one supervisory capacity. They take on multiple roles as managers, planners, coordinators, liaisons, and Forest Service representatives. For the remainder of this paper, all Forest Service employees placed in charge of hosted or volunteer groups will be referred to as coordinators.

As managers, coordinators organize and plan the projects that need to be completed in the field. As coordinators, they work with hosted programs and volunteers, setting up times and dates for projects and working with other staffmembers to arrange suitable projects for the workgroups. Coordinators also work as liaisons, acting as technical advisors for hosted programs. In this capacity they train the crews on job skills and safety. At times, liaisons are placed in situations where they have to take on the role of supervisor in volunteer and hosted workgroups. This happens when crews split up or when the hosted group's crew leader is unable to maintain control of the crew. Finally, a coordinator's role as a Forest Service representative is to observe crews directly to make sure they are following Forest Service policies, specifically safety regulations.

Coordinators often assume two or more of the above roles, which creates ambiguous job responsibilities and greatly increases concern for safety. For example, the same Forest Service employee who manages and plans projects often acts as coordinator and is responsible for direct supervision to make sure workgroups follow Forest Service policy. A coordinator in the Pacific Northwest Region told the project team that she was the direct supervisor and manager for 40 volunteers.

Collateral Duty Overload

In most circumstances, Forest Service employees placed in charge of volunteer and hosted groups have several other unrelated responsibilities. All of the coordinators interviewed by the project team said that managing and working with hosted employees and volunteers was only one of their many responsibilities. For most of these coordinators, working with these groups was a collateral duty in addition to their primary responsibilities.

Nearly all coordinators said they were overworked. A coordinator from the Southwestern Region spoke to us about her job responsibilities:

"My job isn't just working with these 40 volunteers…I have mailing lists. I have to be developing interpretive programs and educational programs for the district. I have to do bunches of different things. And like anybody else on the district…go out and pick up trash myself and give programs and arrange special events and stuff. So I can't do all of that on my own."

Because budget cuts lead to cuts in personnel, Forest Service coordinators have taken on many duties. A coordinator from the Southwestern Region told the project team that volunteer workgroups are only part of his many responsibilities:

"I try to coordinate that [volunteer programs] amongst my other duties...[the district] downsized from the two 11's, the 9, the 7 to just now an 11 and a 7. So I'm doing all the special-use recreation permits. When I came here that wasn't even part of my job. That's a whole job in itself. That's been added along with the trails, the development, the wilderness. I have to try to juggle all these things, and now the volunteers. I could whine like this all day, but I know I'm not the only one."

At times, some of the Forest Service workers who oversee these new crews are not field-crew coordinators, but members of traditional seasonal crews. One coordinator from the Pacific Northwest Region described what is happening to the "old trail dogs" on his district:

"Now these are old trail dogs, they used to work with me in the past on the trails. These guys are no longer working as a single crew during the summer. They're split up, each of them going out, one or two of them, and working with these other types of interagency crews. They're no longer just trail dogs who would work for the one supervisor, but each of them is acting as a liaison or as sort of a leader."

Most coordinators feel they are spread so thin that they usually cannot directly oversee hosted and volunteer crews working on projects out in the field. They said crews are often left unsupervised by any Forest Service employee. One safety coordinator from the West Coast said that the primary role of coordinators is no longer direct supervision. He said they are usually involved with planning the project, and supervision is a collateral duty. Volunteer or hosted groups often choose someone from their own group to be in charge. "A lot of them [leaders from within the group] are not prepared to provide the kind of classic supervision that motivates employees to be safe and monitors the behavior and corrects it," he said.

Coordinators who are spread this thin can experience burnout. Pressure and stress from the job create increased risk. All coordinators said that working with hosted programs and volunteers is stressful. One coordinator from the Pacific Northwest Region spoke about the pressure of his job and why he transferred to a different area in the Forest Service:

"I'm away from all of that because the pressure of that life, I got real stressed out and I just really couldn't do it any more because it is stressful, especially when you're doing the corrections part and Forest Service part and working back and forth with so many different objectives. I'd been into it and wasn't getting the cooperation that I believed I needed from management to survive and all of a sudden I was spending three or four days out of my week in the office trying to put out fires instead of working out in the field with crews like I loved."

Insufficient Training

Many coordinators talked about the lack of sufficient training for working with new types of crews. They were trained to work with traditional seasonal crews who generally completed one project before moving on to the next. Hosted and volunteer crews vary greatly from traditional seasonal crews. Coordinators lack the experience to supervise these new crews. All of the coordinators who were interviewed said they received minimal to no training before working with hosted and volunteer crews. A Pacific Northwest Region coordinator described the minimal training he had received:

"I was given the manual, the guy that was the coordinator for that program gave me the manual, said, 'Here's the manual, here's the van, here's a crew of 10 corrections people that are staying over at the house and you're their crew leader and here's the job. Go do it.' That was the training I had…. By the next year I was the coordinator, teaching other people how to do the job, but there was no training. Since then, I've had to put on training sessions for people in the Forest Service to work on a multicultural basis with people who are coming from a corrections background."

Working with new types of workgroups can be intimidating for a Forest Service coordinator, especially since most, if not all, coordinators have not received proper training. One coordinator stated that she had not been trained to work specifically with convict crews: "They hired me to run that program and work those guys. They did not have that when I started here, when I took the job." She said she wanted the position, so she accepted, and her training consisted of a lot of on-the-job trial and error. She said the job continues to be a "learning process."

Ambiguous Contractual Agreements

Several coordinators expressed concern about the lack of formal procedures when working with hosted programs and volunteer groups. Most coordinators said there is no formal contract for hosted groups working with the Forest Service. On some districts, the form used for hiring seasonal contract crews is also used for establishing partnerships with hosted programs. A volunteer contract agreement in the Forest Service does exist and, in almost all districts, volunteers sign the agreement. This printed agreement between volunteers and the district leaves many issues up in the air. When asked about this contract, a West Coast coordinator expressed her feelings: "There's no contract other than 'I'll come and work these hours and I will do this for you and you will pay me my mileage or whatever.' You don't have that black-and-white contract with them."

Many Forest Service coordinators are confused about how to treat volunteers and the types of projects to assign them. A coordinator in the Southwestern Region expressed her difficulties with this issue:

"That's probably the hardest thing, for me to train seasonals to do work with volunteers, making them understand that the volunteers are there to do work, not to sit around and talk with them, not to just kick back and watch the seasonals work."

Another hosted program and volunteer coordinator in the Southern Region discussed how unclear policies for volunteers led to a potentially serious problem when a volunteer carried his gun while working on her district:

"I said you can't play Barney Fife. Then I told my supervisor we need to put something down in writing and have this person sign it to cover…to make sure that it's on record that's he's been told, or whatever. So that was that thing. Well, a couple of them quit, 'Well, we don't want to volunteer anymore since we can't do this and we can't do that.' But at least I did what I had to do."

Unclear Lines of Authority and Workgroup Supervision

Coordinators have problems understanding the degree of control the Forest Service maintains over hosted programs and volunteer workers. Hosted and volunteer crews cannot be supervised in the same manner as traditional seasonal field crews. Individuals working on hosted crews often have a set of rules imposed by their own agency. Examples of such crews would be the Federal Corrections Institute or inner-city youth workgroups. Both programs have strict rules and regulations governing their crews. Outside agencies may be matching employment funds with the Forest Service. Some hosted agencies are paying the entire employment costs and have separate regulations governing their workers. The members on Federal Corrections Institute crews are paid entirely by the State.

One coordinator talked about these regulations for hosted and volunteer crews:

"Some of the crews have their own way of doing things, completely separate. Like, if we have a group from Marlen, which is a State school for boys in Saul, they have real tight security…. They only do their work in a certain way and they are not going to modify from that. So we have to be real compromising with that…. Not as far as safety standards, but just in terms of how they get things done."

One coordinator from the Northwest recalled a story of a coworker who was a traditional seasonal employee for the Forest Service. This coordinator had a problem with an inner-city youth crew slacking off on the job. However, he was working with the crew as a liaison for the Forest Service and did not have direct authority over the crew:

"My buddy, J.R., who no longer works for the Forest Service, was working with an inner-city crew out here…if they got tired during the day, would go sit in the van for half the day. J.R. blew up. He's been around for years, was raised over here in eastern Washington, was very conservative, if you didn't work, you got canned…. They just told him basically to stick it where the sun don't shine, they'd do what they want to do.... He was just a liaison, he wasn't really their boss. So he was really upset and he came and talked to a bunch of us that afternoon back at the work center."

The same coordinator discussed how crew leaders dealt with problem employees in the past and how these old techniques are no longer an option with hosted crews:

"A lot of issues where you might normally get in somebody's face and try to solve it, if you were on an old BD crew, you would've just stood up and said, "Get your ass back to work or you're history buddy." You know, that sort of stuff doesn't necessarily work anymore and so some of that stuff kind of needed to be put on hold."

The coordinator explained that the major problems liaisons have with hosted employees have to be taken to the coordinator (if the coordinator is separate from the liaison) and the coordinator will discuss the problems with the hosted group's crew leader and the hosted organization.

Sometimes the individuals employed by hosted programs to supervise their own crews are not qualified for the job. This makes working with these crews even more difficult for the Forest Service coordinator who is acting as a liaison. When describing some of the external crew leaders, one coordinator stated they were "not very swift with what's going on."

Several coordinators said volunteer and hosted workgroups are frequently left without a supervisor or a Forest Service representative because the coordinator is unable to go into the field and directly oversee the crew. A coordinator explained the limited contact he has with some of the workgroups on his district:

"They tell me, "Well, there will be a group tomorrow coming in. Meet them up there, take them all the bags…they are going to be doing the trails. So I'll go up there and give them that and they're gone. Sometimes I don't even see them, I just leave the stuff there with the host and I'm gone to do something else."

When volunteer groups and hosted programs choose their own leaders from within their group, problems often develop. One coordinator said, "Sometimes groups kind of think they have a leader, but they ain't. And that gets pretty touchy." He stated that such situations call for "delicate negotiations." He gave the following example of a volunteer who was not suited to lead a crew:

"We've got a group and we've got an individual that is the [leader]. He's kind of coordinated this volunteer effort for probably 5 or 6 years now. And he's very good at getting people, coming out, doing the work, getting them excited about the work. But he doesn't have a very good work ethic, and so when he comes out he's kind of the natural leader of the group…. But when it comes to working, common sense isn't one of his big points."

Because volunteers are not paid, situations involving authority over them are frustrating for many coordinators. A coordinator from the Pacific Northwest Region said, “You can't take anything away from them and say, 'If you don't shape up….'" That same coordinator told of a situation in which she was having difficulties with a volunteer who was giving misinformation to visitors and not helping the other volunteers:

"It's really hard to fire a volunteer. You can't just say, "This is your performance. It's not acceptable. We're going to have to part ways here." With a volunteer it's a whole different thing because they are giving you their time…there's nothing like salary to deal with. There's no arbitration point…. We can't take anything away from them."

The coordinator said the situation was ambiguous and she felt confused about how to deal with the problem.

On some districts, however, volunteers are disciplined the same as seasonal and full-time employees. A coordinator from the West Coast said a district near hers had a "military-run volunteer program." If the volunteers did not pull their weight, they had to leave. Sometimes volunteers in this district were given performance ratings.

High Turnover Leads to Constant Training

Coordinators are continuously dealing with a variety of outside crews. These crews come and go and generate many different safety and liability issues. Diverse types of crews make it difficult for coordinators to train crew members to do the job and do it safely. Also, production is slowed down significantly due to the constant training that is required. A coordinator from the Southwest described what happens when different types of groups want to work on her district and the kinds of safety hazards coordinators have to look for with such diversity of volunteers:

"We have church groups that want to come out, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, swim teams, but that's what I get on a constant basis. I have four classes of 4th graders that want to come out and do public service. Well, you know, with 4th graders on a field trip their basic thing is just to go out and run. They don't want to be doing work…. "No, we don't want you picking up any hypodermic needles or condoms or something like that in a campground." That's just going to blow past them. How do you guarantee the greatest amount of safety and minimize risk for all these groups? So you have people that are trained, the crew coordinators for each one of these groups has to recognize that it's constant turnover, that it's constant reintroducing those safety aspects with every group, and you can't assume that people know what to do."

Crewmembers of hosted programs and volunteer groups frequently change as some members leave and others join. Sometimes the individuals on crews will vary from day to day. This problem forces Forest Service coordinators to retrain crews during a project, sometimes daily. One coordinator said, "It can be very complicated, I think, working with all these people, that some of them only work twice a month and some work once a week or twice a week all season long. It's a wide variety of people." Obviously, these sorts of workgroups have little—if any—cohesion (Driessen 1986, 1996). This is a critical element in work group safety.

Planning is a critical element of completing a project out in the field. Safety depends on planning. As one safety coordinator said:

"Where you've got a mixed crew coming together, to take time to give them a proper safety orientation is critical. You can't do it if you don't have a good plan in place. And then you have to take enough time to really let them know what their responsibilities are, what's expected of them. And all of that takes time. When you have crews mixing and matching and you don't have a system for orienting somebody before they go out to work that day or the next day, it's a mess. And so the easiest thing is to ignore it."

Crews habitually in flux present major liability issues for the Forest Service and for the field crew leader. A coordinator explained how easy it is to neglect major safety precautions when crews are in flux:

"Your liability and your control for safety just gets more and more diluted because of the variation, and also for the volunteer groups…. These aren't people that are coming back year to year. If you get a [FCI] workgroup…they are different guys every week. Their community service is up last week so there's a new guy, so you're training them again."

The coordinator explained that it is her responsibility to recognize any new people on a hosted crew. If there are any new folks, the safety training has to be repeated, over and over; that is a very time-consuming task.

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