Feedback: Do We Really Listen? — Many National Park Service employees feel that surveys are a waste of time and money because all too often the results end up as documents sitting idly on a shelf. Even where surveys do guide change, that change is often at one level/organization — human resources, budget and finance, contracting — but the actions taken by people at this level might not be clear to others.

In both of these cases, the full value of a survey is not realized. A survey can spur lasting change at all organizational levels, and it can be a strong communication tool, not only from employees to the organization but also the other way around.

I conducted a survey recently that was sent to all members of my park’s Administrative Services Division (approximately 40 employees). The four main purposes of surveying the employees were 1) to gain a better understanding of what each thought of his/her job and how he/she contributes to mission accomplishment; 2) to hear what each thinks is important around here as the first step toward understanding where we are headed and why they want to be a part of it; 3) to have each employee provide a vision of excellence and describe the obstacles and/or opportunities for reaching excellence; and 4) to give the superintendent and the management team an indication of the variety of opinions and ideas of Administrative Division employees.

After gathering the completed surveys, I prepared a report that not only summarizes the results of the survey but also facilitates some real changes and improvements in business practices we can make in our operation. Each employee took some time and effort in completing the survey, and it is important to use the survey data to improve our organization.

The survey was developed as an assessment tool to 1) take the “pulse” of administrative employees and obtain employee needs information; 2) motivate and guide change efforts and identify the most promising opportunities for improvement; 3) determine the effects of organizational and/or other changes; and 4) diagnose organizational climate, teamwork, and management style problems.

Surveys are tools that enable managers to truly understand the needs and desires of employees and how employees want to contribute to the organization. With this understanding, managers are in a position to make decisions to satisfy those needs — and this will lead to improved performance.

It is important to listen to and respect the views and concerns of our employees. Consider these commitment and retention statistics to see the potential benefits that can be realized from surveys like the one given to this group:

1. Less than half of all employees feel a strong personal attachment to their organization.

2. Sixty percent of employees don’t feel their organizations develop them for the long term.

3. Only 40 percent of employees feel their organizations show care and concern for them.

4. The average employee has 12-15 jobs during his/her career and five to seven by the time he/she turns 30.

5. Only 24 percent of employees are truly loyal to their organizations, meaning that they have a strong personal attachment to their organizations and plan to stay for the next two years.

Interesting? Compelling? Thought-provoking? These five statistics, gathered during the U.S. National Employee Relationship Report Benchmark Study of business, government and non-profit organization employees, are all of these and much more.

Individually and collectively they paint an important — and enlightening — picture of today’s employee: Not easily satisfied. Conscious of alternative opportunities. Ready and able to make a move. Willing to take risks.

The worst outcome of a survey would be having the results ignored, or discussed but never used, and not communicated back to employees. This would obviously frustrate employees and would give them the impression that their input was not really wanted. Telling people what happened to those sheets of paper they filled out shows respect for their time, cooperation and feelings. Gathering feedback from employees is the first step to understanding how employee involvement, commitment, and retention can be improved in our organization.

If you are interested in the report, please contact me, and I will send it to you. Although all parks and employees are different, the results should give you an idea of what we face in Yosemite. This survey was intended to be the first guide for our park to join together and make some important decisions about our work and workplace.

Through this survey, we saw that the administrative employees have desire to help customers (both internal and external), want to create a workplace where people will start communicating and working together, and want to be assured that they can make decisions on their own.

While two-thirds of the world’s employees are proud to work for their organizations and feel part of the family, only slightly more than half feel a strong personal attachment. Even worse, only six in 10 believe their organization deserves their loyalty. We must work to improve our workplace so employees are proud to work for the National Park Service.

Interpretation

Interpreting to a Captive Audience — Approximately 2.5 million years ago, humankind experienced its first great idea when an unwitting Homo habilis snatched a river cobble from the ancestral Olduvai Gorge and fashioned the first stone tool. With each subsequent innovation, the number of potential great ideas in the world has decreased by one, leaving fewer original thoughts to be generated with each passing year. Perhaps my opinion is tainted by the fact that I can count on one hand the number of times that I had a truly new and innovative idea that would fundamentally change the face of interpretation, the NPS or the world. But with each of these instances, a bit of research led to the discovery that my idea had already been implemented or was, simply put, harebrained. My most recent original thought was dispelled on a trip to the Smithsonian last year.

Though the Visitor’s Bill of Rights tells us otherwise, I have long felt that interpreting to a captive audience could be an effective means of instilling a take-home message. True, we do not want to inflict interpretation on visitors, glomming onto an unwilling visitor’s leg while he or she tries to escape our unsolicited exposition. But there are more subtle means of endearing your resource to the unwitting visitor through the crafty insertion of a non-personal interpretive service into an intensely private setting. Yes, let us meet our sovereign visitors where they are — and judging by the most popular question we receive at the information desk, park visitors are in the bathroom.

According to the National Association for Continence (a real organization—I really could not invent such a name), 59 percent of men and 48 percent of women regularly read in the restroom. Reading materials range from periodicals and novels to the ingredients of shampoo bottles or the contents of one’s wallet. If more proof were necessary, there is an entire subset of the publishing industry that caters to the habitual water closet intellectual (and if the corporate world sees profit in a phenomenon, you know that it is more than just an aberration). So, perhaps it is time to consider interpretive waysides in park restroom stalls as a service to our scholarly visitors.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History already provides non-personal interpretation in their restrooms (yet another great idea already implemented). In fact, these interpretive panels chronicle the great and noble history of the toilet itself. However, these waysides are posted at the entrance to the restrooms as opposed to in the stalls (and as I forged intellectual and emotional connections to the loo, I found myself to be in the way of other harried users) so there is still room for further innovation and experimentation.

This summer, with many parks facing service level adjustments that have reduced the number of seasonal employees that we are able to hire and programs that we are able to present, perhaps we should seek to get interpretive messages to the public in any way possible. I will be giving restroom interpretation a try in some of our campgrounds using graphically and textually interesting waysides printed in-house, laminated, and affixed in stalls with double-stick tape. True, some waysides may be vandalized or stolen, but paper, laminant and tape are relatively inexpensive. And as interesting as toilets may be, I intend to interpret natural and cultural features of interest on our panels. Perhaps there are some other visionaries (like the Smithsonian) that already provide interpretive services to audiences in dispose. Or perhaps I can put this idea squarely in the “harebrained” column.

Maintenance

Getting It Done — The most important part of any effective maintenance program are the people. These dedicated folks undertake dozens of tasks to keep a park running day after day. Cleaning restrooms, collecting trash, running and repairing utility systems, repairing buildings, roads and trails and a myriad of unplanned emergency repair work are the most obvious. All of this requires dedication to working safely and efficiently. But there is so much more that goes on during the course of a day or week that all maintenance crews and supervisors adjust and respond to that make the job of keeping the park clean and safe for visitors and staffs one of the most difficult.

During the last few years the National Park Service has worked hard to implement a facility management software program to help parks document existing workloads, create and implement preventive maintenance programs, generate accurate cost estimates, and most of all, plan and implement effective work planning. The Facility Management Software System (FMSS) is the current program; its predecessor, for those who can remember that far back, was the Maintenance Management System (MMS).

The general purpose of these programs was and is to help parks plan their work while at the same time ensure that available resources are directed toward the most mission-critical maintenance activities and facilities.

A basic objective of this Internet-based computerized work planning effort is to reduce what is called the maintenance backlog. A pretty big job to say the least.

Everything I have seen and heard from the field is that FMSS is working well. It can be a labor-intensive effort to get the basic program up and running, but once there it is a very valuable and useful tool. Combined with the current increase in servicewide construction programs to rehabilitate and replace failing park infrastructure, FMSS will greatly help parks and maintenance operations better manage and reduce their current maintenance backlog.

What challenges today’s maintenance staff is that they are still trying to play catch-up with the work at hand. In addition, most maintenance operations are still significantly understaffed. It is one thing to say we should focus on only the most critical maintenance needs as defined by FMSS and the mission of the park, and it’s another to convince field maintenance staff that some things are just not going to get done due to a lack of staff or funds. Most maintenance folks I know and have worked with over the years have difficulty with the concept of “service adjustments”. If something goes unrepaired or cleaned less frequently, the impression by visitors or sometimes even other park staff is that maintenance is not doing its job. Like any profession, they take a great deal of personal pride in the work they do and find it difficult to accept anything less than full-service to visitors or staff.

During this transition to a new paradigm of managing and controlling work using FMSS while at the same time making necessary operational adjustments due to flat budgets and staff shortages, it is important to be aware of the effects this has on the person in the field getting the job done today. Your park maintenance staff is out there everyday trying their best to accomplish the work that needs to get done. They are continually trying to adjust and respond to all the park needs no matter what kind of budget and staffing shortages they may be facing. It is not in their nature to let something go undone or unattended to.

I know that most, if not all, parks already understand and appreciate their maintenance staff and all the good work they do. But it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves from time to time that, like you, maintenance staffs are working very hard, under difficult conditions, to make their park a safe and enjoyable place for all who decide to visit or work.

Protection

EMS Clinicals and Ride-Alongs — Unlike full-time EMTs and paramedics, most ranger/EMTs do not treat patients every day they go to work.

Some work at parks that are busy year-round, such as Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah, and see their share of sick and injured people. But often, the ranger/EMT is able to transfer patient care to ambulance personnel within five minutes of arriving on scene. Plus, they frequently bear scene safety, traffic direction and accident investigation responsibilities.

Others work at parks in remote settings where ambulance personnel may not have access to patients, such as Lake Mead and Glacier, in which cases the ranger/EMT usually is the primary care provider for extended durations. But oftentimes their EMS caseload is significant only during peak visitation periods, not year-round.

We are committed to providing the highest quality of treatment to our patients. The best way to achieve this is to maintain our skills. In turn, the best way to do this is to treat patients often. So, we have a quandary: How do we maintain our perishable EMS skills, thereby ensuring our patients receive the highest quality of care?

One answer lies in clinical rotations and ambulance ride-alongs. This means we immerse ourselves, several times a year if possible, into an environment where we are surrounded by full-time medical professionals, we observe them as they work, and we treat patients ourselves. Lots and lots of patients.

There are five arrangements available to most ranger/EMTs. Of course, each is contingent on an approved agreement among supervisors, the cooperating entity and park medical directors.

• Emergency Room Clinicals. By far, spending time in a hospital ER is the most effective way to increase hands-on, face-to-face interaction with patients. Though not the best setting for improving field skills such as patient packaging, it cannot be surpassed in terms of patient volume and its wide spectrum of chief complaints, medical and trauma. Outstanding opportunities exist for conducting patient assessments (an imperative skill that is often glossed over), airway management, CPR and other procedures. For park medics, a 12-hour ER shift will usually yield six to 10 IVs and meds administrations. With every patient, lay a hand on their wrist, obtain vitals, listen to breath sounds and ask lots of questions. Spend time with patients and listen to them.

• Operating Room Clinicals. In many cases, rangers can augment their ER time with time spent in the hospital’s OR. The primary — and often only — procedure rangers will perform in the OR is endotracheal intubation, and this will be limited to parkmedics, paramedics and possibly intermediates with advanced airway management training. Additionally, the OR is a sterile setting, and rangers can learn much about sterile fields simply by observing OR personnel at work. Though the scope of skills covered in the OR is more narrow than that of the ER, its value to ranger/parkmedics is indispensable: In several hours’ time, one can perform maybe a half-dozen intubations. For most ranger/medics, it’ll take a year or more to do the same number in the field.

• Ground Ambulance Ride-Alongs. Second only to time in the ER in terms of overall value is time spent doing ride-alongs with a local ambulance service. Ranger/EMTs will not only contact a lot of patients, they’ll do so in a field environment, and they’ll usually be permitted to perform any skill they’re certified in. Additionally, they will acquire a fair amount of exposure to radio transmissions between paramedics and ER docs — again something most rangers do not do enough of. It’s amazing how much we can learn just by listening to the medic call in his or her patient assessment and to the physician’s questions and orders.

• Air Ambulance Ride-Alongs. For parks close enough to an aeromedical ambulance service, conducting ride-alongs on flight missions is another medium in which rangers can expand their EMS experience. Often rangers are limited strictly to observation. However, much can be learned from watching, especially considering most incidents requiring air evacuation are serious in nature, and flight personnel are often the best of the best. And as a bonus, rangers will further their helicopter experience, which only serves to strengthen us as well.

• Ski Patrol. Rangers volunteering as ski patrollers can also improve their EMS skills. Again, not all rangers work near ski areas, but for those who do, volunteering as a patroller provides an almost ideal setting, one that in many ways mimics some of the problems rangers face in backcountry EMS incidents, such as similar injuries, inclement weather, rugged terrain and possibly limited equipment.

We can never provide care for too many patients, and each one we treat increases our experience level and confidence. We have a responsibility to ourselves and, to a greater degree, our patients to remain as skilled rescuers. The above efforts will help us emerge as more competent EMS providers. Our patients deserve that much.

~ Kevin Moses, Big South Fork

Resource Management

Park staffs should be forewarned that, after a long dearth (or respite, depending on your perspective) without new Resource Management Plans, the draft Director’s Order on the revamped version, Resource Stewardship plans, was out for review this spring. The DO calls for all parks to prepare these documents to guide resource management programs in parks, and emphasizes that the plans should not just be for or by resource managers or those with lead responsibility; they should be interdisciplinary in nature and inclusive in preparation.

The Natural Resource Challenge had several primary initiatives, one of which was a new emphasis on research or science and learning centers. The original hope was to have one in each of the 32 networks established across the NPS, but to date only about a dozen have received funding. Nonetheless, efforts continue to build — figuratively, if not literally — not only those initially approved centers but others.

There has been fairly widespread confusion about the intent and purpose of these centers; even within the NPS a common assumption is that these entities are to be environmental education centers primarily designed for secondary school students. Instead, the goal is to promote credible research in and for parks, and also to enhance the transfer of scientific information from and about parks to many audiences.

A common model of the NPS Science and Learning Centers, such as the one at Point Reyes or Rocky Mountain, has both a science adviser and an education coordinator who work together but also “broker” research and educational efforts with varied users and audiences. Acadia is working with new non-profit organization who will help run its facility, while Crater Lake, which has not received Natural Resource Challenge funding, is actively working with a variety of partners to develop a science and learning center.

With the impetus of the 1998 National Parks Omnibus Management Act language calling for parks to use good science for improved decision-making, these and other science centers will likely become even more important in the future.

Employees and visitors often question the hows and whys of research studies permitted in parks — and resource managers should ensure that indeed research proposals are suitably scrutinized for quality and minimum impact. But critics should also know that the demand for good scientific information, related not just to immediate park management questions but for the broader advancement of understanding about the world’s natural and cultural resources, is a growing need and expectation of parks.

“Parks for science; science for parks” is part of our mission, even as we protect park lands and the visitor experiences they offer. The NPS website has some helpful science links to anyone interested in reading more about learning centers and/or research in parks.

~ Sue Consolo Murphy, Yellowstone