Deep Dive into Wildland Fire Culture

The Deep Dive into Wildland Fire Culture Project

Background

The Deep Dive into Wildland Fire Culture project is a centerpiece of a learning pilot program to build organizational learning capacity initiated by the USDA Forest Service in the spring of 2021. The specific focus of this project is on the role of the Forest Service wildland fire organizational culture in cultivating an inclusive, high-performing workplace. The intent of the Deep Dive is to inquire into the lived experiences of wildland firefighters as it relates to everyday work environment with the purpose of transforming systemic organizational cultural norms toward an inclusive, high-performing workplace.

During the 2022 fire season our Deep Dive project team, consisting of Agency personnel and social scientists with backgrounds in wildland firefighting and culture, used a proprietary online program called ThoughtExchangeTM to understand how the wildland fire community sees itself.
We asked wildland firefighters five questions, one at a time during the 2022 fire season. You can see our team’s summary of the data from each question by following the links for each question.

Number of participants: The number of individuals who followed the hyperlink to the ThoughtExchange platform and answered a few demographic questions. They were offered an opportunity to provide their response, we are calling them “thoughts,” to the question.

Number of thoughts: Participants could choose to provide one or more thoughts (limited to 150 characters) to each question or could choose to not to provide a thought and move onto the next step of rating other’s thoughts to the same question.

Total number of ratings: Participants were provided with a list of other participant’s thoughts to which they could give a 1 to 5 star rating to indicate how each thought resonated with them. Participants could rate as many thoughts as they like.
Number of ratings per thought: This is the ratio of the total number of ratings divided by the number of thoughts for each question. Ratios approaching 20 give us confidence in our evaluation of which thoughts resonated with the participants and which did not.

Cultural Norms

What do you mean by organizational culture?
Organizational culture is the pattern of shared but often unspoken assumptions, values, and practices that tend to inform and guide the actions of an organization’s members. Think of it as a group of characteristics that make an organization what it is; it’s sense of unique identity.
Why should we care about organizational cultural norms?
Cultural norms develop over time as those within an organization respond to the demands of the work they perform within the confines of their work environment. What the Forest service has found is that cultural norms often play a significant but not well understood role in unintended outcomes that occur. In addition, several studies outside of the Forest Service have found work environment-related issues, including harassment and discrimination to be a systemic problem in the wildland fire profession worldwide.

Question	Number of participants	Number of thoughts provided	Total number of ratings received	Average number of ratings per thought
Question 1: In the last 10 years, how do you think gender has made a difference in how people are treated at work?	628	514	10,854	21.1
Question 2: In the past 10 years, how do you think wildland fire culture has affected team/crew safety and performance?	420	289	6,941	24.0
Question 3: Diversity has been identified as a goal to strive for in wildland fire culture. If you think this is working well, tell us why. If you think it's not working well, tell us why not.	128	100	1,557	15.6
Question 4: What is your ideal future as it relates to cultivating an inclusive and high-performing workplace?	259	202	3,605	17.8
Question 5: Where does the wildland fire culture need to go from here and what are the action steps you think will get us there?	475	388	11342	29.2
Total	1,910	1,493	34,299	23.0

Project Update

In the next phase of the Deep Dive, the project team is working to convene a series of focus groups to help us make sense of the data we collected during the 2022 fire season and help formulate proposed action steps. By the end of April 2023, we hope to have convened at least 5 Focus Groups representing a wide geographic and organizational diversity. These focus groups will be made up of wildland fire personnel, from crew members to type 1 ICs from both operations and support roles within the community. The analysis and recommendations from these focus groups will inform proposed action items to present to agency leadership for implementation in the form of pilots during the 2023 fire season.