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His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has recognised the positive impact of OARS (On-call Availability, Recruitment and Skills) software in strengthening workforce planning and on-call availability across fire and rescue services.
In its latest inspection report for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, HMICFRS highlighted the growing value of OARS software. The inspectorate praised the Service for its strong workforce planning processes, noting on page 40 that ‘innovative software such as OARS’ has become an integral part of how managers identify skills gaps and plan future availability.
The report described how one station manager used OARS to analyse staffing at an on-call station, identifying the firefighters that could most improve overall crew availability if given additional skills training. By running scenarios through OARS, the manager was able to demonstrate how availability could rise from 52.4% to 64.8% with the successful qualification of just two new recruits.
A section of the report on page 45 highlights the Service’s ‘good workforce planning’ and demonstrates how Lancashire uses OARS’ workforce planning tool to review staff shortages, upcoming retirements and training needs that may introduce risk. For example, the Service has increased the number of drivers in its workforce by sending more staff on driver training. OARS has also been used to identify those staff to put forward for the Safe to Command course who will have the greatest effect on availability.
Beyond its application in local workforce planning, OARS was also cited as part of Lancashire’s wider transformation programme. Inspectors noted that the Service is investing in digital systems, data and technology to improve productivity, including software such as the Dynamic Cover Tool and OARS.
OARS is used by strategic managers within fire and rescue services, and utilises data, analysis and modelling to provide actionable insights for strategic decision-making. It is already actively helping UK fire and rescue services to improve recruitment, workforce diversity planning and resource management.
If you’re interested in knowing more about how OARS can help your Service, please contact enquiries@orhltd.com.
Following the release of our On-call Availability, Resource and Skills tool (OARS) in October 2024, we are proud to announce that the tool has made the front cover of the Fire Gazette for April!
The story, titled ‘Overcoming On-call Challenges with Data-driven Solutions’ takes focus upon our study alongside re-enkindle to understand the difficulties associated with On-Call Firefighting; exploring how as an emergency service sector, fire services can effectively utilise this cost-effective and performance-benefitting practice.
The article also covers how OARS uses our data-driven methodologies to effectively test scenarios on alternative plans for recruitment, retention and optimise availability
The full article can be found on pages 27-30 and can be read by following the link here.
Alternatively, if you are a subscriber to the Fire Gazette, you can access the full magazine by following the link here.
To support ORH’s commitment to employee wellbeing, ORH is trialling a nine-day fortnight, as part of the national four-day week campaign pilot.
Since September, we have been attending training and workshops on managing the change to fewer working hours, to help ensure that the transition is a smooth one and that we can work more productively and continue to deliver effectively for our clients.
This is the second pilot organised by the campaign – the first pilot ran in 2022. Employers that successfully made the switch in the first pilot claim to have improved work-life balances for their employees, experienced higher productivity and been better able to attract new recruits thanks to the more flexible working arrangement.
We, along with other participants in the trial, are being tracked by academics at the University of Cambridge, Boston College in Massachusetts, and the Autonomy Institute.
At the recent National Fire Chiefs Council On-call Conference, ORH proudly introduced OARS – our new software application designed to optimise On-call Availability, Recruitment, and Skills utilisation. Developed in partnership with re-enkindle, OARS is the result of four years’ research into factors that make a measurable impact on on-call fire engine availability, including understanding expected availability and incident demand.
OARS enables fire and rescue services to use data more effectively to address critical challenges in recruitment, diversity, and workforce planning, particularly in the light of shortages of emergency response drivers and incident commanders, and a growing recruitment and retention crisis.
We’re very grateful to the National Fire Chiefs Council for giving us the opportunity to present this innovative solution to fire and rescue leaders across the UK, and to Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service in particular for supporting the inaugural project.
OARS is used by strategic managers within fire and rescue services, and utilises data, analysis and modelling to provide actionable insights for strategic decision-making. It is already actively helping UK fire and rescue services to improve recruitment, workforce diversity planning and resource management.
Listen here to the co-chairs of the NFCC On-Call Steering Group discuss OARS towards the end of this podcast:
In conversation with DCFO Steve Healey and ACFO Andy Cole – Priority Message | Podcast on Spotify
March 2024 saw ORH host its first ambulance client conference. The two-day event, held at the Select Car Leasing stadium in Reading, brought together representatives from seven ambulance services across the UK. The conference served as a platform for those involved in service planning to share experiences and discuss common challenges, and included a mix of speakers from ORH and our clients.
Day 1 was the AmbSim User Group session, where clients who use ORH’s ambulance simulation model, AmbSim, within their service planning team met to discuss the software. Sessions included forecasting and planning, getting the most out of the in-built visualisations, and discussing the approach taken by different clients.
A social networking event was organised in the evening of Day 1 to bring ambulance service colleagues and ORH staff together.
Day 2 focused on the challenges facing ambulance services, and included sessions on:
The event concluded with a round-table discussion about what the future holds for ambulance services, and likely challenges. Feedback from the event was very positive, and we will soon be planning our next client conference. If you’d like to receive any information on future events, please get in contact at enquiries@orhltd.com
This week we were delighted to be listed as one of the best small companies to work for in the UK by Great Place to Work®. We ranked 12th out of 80 Certified™ companies in their annual list, an incredible achievement of which we are hugely proud as an organisation.
At ORH we have always placed great value in our company culture, the skills and development of our staff and the way we work together to deliver high-quality projects to the public sector. To see this officially recognised in this manner is very rewarding.
To be considered eligible for Best Workplace™ recognition, companies first had to meet the Great Place to Work-Certified™ standard of accreditation. Once Certified™, each company undergoes a rigorous assessment of their culture, during which review any anomalies in survey responses, news, and financial performance of each business to ensure there aren’t any extraordinary reasons to believe we couldn’t trust a company’s survey results. More details on the awards are available here:
https://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/awards/uks-best-workplaces/uks-best-workplaces-2022/#Small
We would like to thank Great Place to Work for this recognition and for hosting a fantastic awards dinner in London. Most importantly, we are grateful for the support of our staff in delivering a thriving and enthusiastic work environment, which we can now officially say is one of the Best Workplaces™ in the country!
ORH has been recognised as a UK’s Best Workplace™ for Wellbeing by Great Place to Work®. We’re one of the top 50 companies on the Small organisations list.
See the full list here.
To determine the UK’s Best Workplaces™ list, Great Place to Work® culture experts analysed thousands of employee surveys, assessing their holistic experiences of wellbeing at work through fundamental facets of employee wellbeing, including work-life balance, sense of fulfilment, job satisfaction, psychological safety and financial security.
Evaluations also included an assessment of how well ORH was able to deliver a consistent employee experience across the entire company.
To have been considered one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing, ORH also had to:
At ORH, we place strong emphasis on developing the skills of our employees through exposure to interesting projects that have a real-life impact. We pride ourselves on our approachability and strongly value the different skillsets of our staff. As such, we’re incredibly proud to be ranked among the 250 organisations on the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing list, demonstrating that our people are truly at the heart of everything we do.
As leisure centres and sport clubs begin to re-open across the UK, ORH takes a look at the impact that Covid-19 has had on sport participation.
Sport participation data from Sport England’s Active Lives survey is crucial for calculating the demand from the population for Sport England and sportscotland’s Facility Planning Model (FPM), which ORH operates and maintains. However, for a third of this year, there’s been no participation in activities involving indoor facilities such as, swimming, badminton and squash, and no team sports (at amateur level). So, what have we been doing instead, and will we maintain this behaviour?
On 23 March 2020 the British public were instructed to ‘stay at home’ but allowed one form of outdoor exercise each day such as running, walking or cycling. This caused massive disruption to physical activity. Sport England began monitoring the change in activity levels with weekly surveys through April and May, and monthly surveys in June and July.
In Sport England’s first survey, for the week 3-6 April, walking proved to be the most popular activity undertaken for 59% of adults. With gyms and clubs closed, 44% of adults took part in fitness classes and activities online and offline, or just exercised informally in their homes instead. Activities such as running were undertaken by 18% of adults, and 8% cycled.
After guidance on the number of outdoor exercise periods was lifted on 13 May, we reached peak activity levels in the week 15-18 May. The proportion of adults cycling doubled from the first week to 16%, almost two-thirds of adults (65%) were walking, and one-fifth of adults were running.
In July, with restrictions easing and more activities like golf and tennis becoming available, the proportion of people walking had reduced to 58%, similar to the pre-lockdown level. The proportion of people doing home-based activities, which had peaked at the beginning of May at 48%, fell to 34%. However, cycling and running have managed to maintain some improvement since the start of lockdown, with 14% of adults cycling and 20% of adults running in July.
So, will athletes return to their previous patterns of sport participation or continue with the alternative activities discovered in lockdown? There definitely seems to be an intention to return to the same activities as pre-lockdown, but also to do more walking, running, home-based fitness and water sports. We’ll just have to wait for the next batch of data in 2021 to find out if people actually do this.
