As the world gets busier, industry and business rely more and more on utilizing staff on call to respond to a work place or emergency. Being on call can be quite intrusive to family and social activities. Frequently staff on call complain that the current systems of swapping or managing this availability amongst colleagues is rigid and unnecessarily restrictive.
Managers are often reflecting that the management of on call staff is stressful, time consuming and a major contributing factor to difficulties in retaining staff. As processes become more sophisticated, the skills required by staff are more advanced which is being reflected in higher training costs. Retaining staff is therefore a major financial as well as Social consideration.
VACS was originally developed in response to the requirements of the NZ Fire Service which has approximately 450 volunteer based fire brigades nationally throughout NZ.
Fire Service Volunteers and in particular those in composite (combined Paid/Volunteer) brigades in provincial or metropolitan cities often work prohibitive distances from their stations. Chief Fire Officers often have difficulty with staffing or ensuring consistency of availability, skills and experience with the staffing of fire appliances.
Using current technology a volunteer firefighter may be available for some part of a day but because of the need for total reliability of response and the limited capability of the systems utilized, must choose to be unavailable for all of the day. Because this inconsistency is inherent in the system and does not always indicate that a crew is not available, the dispatcher may choose to dispatch a volunteer appliance to test their availability if other resources are unavailable. This can therefore delay the response from another (distant) or commit another appliance unnecessarily.
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