In the public safety arena, citizen confidence is paramount. The people that PSAPs, local law enforcement, EMS, and firefighters serve have to feel that these organizations are holding themselves to the highest standards - otherwise, the system just doesn’t work well.
That’s one reason that the strongest public safety organizations place such emphasis on accreditation. Accreditation is one way that public safety groups can prove their current excellence, as well as their commitment to continually pursuing that excellence.
Having the right technology in place can be of great help to agencies pursuing accreditation, as well as help defend themselves should litigation arise. Here are a few ways that software can help organizations streamline this important process.
Technology that can keep track of documents like internal policies, memoranda, and more allows agencies to see who’s accessed or signed off on what. This can help supervisors ensure that all staff are familiar with protocols, rules, and agency policies. Then, when the time comes to renew or apply for accreditation, supervisors can be confident that the agency will be prepared.
Ongoing training and e-coaching are vital if an organization wants to keep its standards of service high. Workforce management software, like Verint Media Recorder for Public Safety, can help you focus on individual professional development opportunities for your staff as well as group learning.
Verint Media Recorder allows supervisors to use recorded interactions as “learning clips,” editing bits of audio into segments that can be sent directly to an employee’s desktop as a training tool. In addition, the software’s coaching tool lets supervisors schedule, track, review, and report on coaching sessions for call-takers or other staff.
Having these sessions and training opportunities documented can not only help an organization internally, by allowing supervisors to see whether and how continuing education goals are being met. It can also help boost public safety agencies’ applications for national accreditation.
Good public safety software will allow users to search for incidents as needed, enabling supervisors to stay apprised of their organization’s overall performance, as well as that of individual employees.
This feature is especially important should litigation arise, as the organization will have the audio, video, text, or other assets necessary to defend themselves if the need arises.
Reliable recording systems are also valuable during the accreditation process, however. If an employee is failing to meet the national or international accreditation standards that the organization is maintaining, it can jeopardize the organization’s status.
Being able to identify any unprofessional behavior quickly allows for quick handling of the issue, whether through training, coaching, or if necessary, punitive action. This makes it easier to avoid a potential loss of accreditation.
Too often, public safety organizations that want to become accredited find themselves rushing to institute a host of new and improved practices to meet the necessary standards.
This puts a huge amount of stress on everyone.
Supervisors have to formulate new protocols and rules, as well as ways to train employees on them and enforce compliance.
Employees have to change the way they do their jobs to meet a new set of policies that, if they’ve been put together hurriedly, likely seem arbitrary.
Organizational leadership has to ensure that the new processes are moving along efficiently, and put out fires as needed.
Then, once accreditation has been achieved, these organizations may look at the policies they spent so much effort creating and find that they’re actually not the best possible fit.
On the other hand, if organizations can review their own policies on an ongoing basis, they stand a much better chance at ensuring that the protocols they uphold make sense and are relevant for their employees and the community they serve. With the data that public safety software makes easily available, supervisors and leadership can commit to regular review and recalibration of their policies, as needed.
To learn more about how public safety software like Verint Media Recorder for Public Safety can help your organization, read our whitepaper “Emergency Communications Training.”
