STAFF VIDEO NEWSLETTER
When I became chief of the City of North York (Ontario) Fire Department on February 1, 1992, I identified a need for an effective mechanism for communicating with and keeping up to date all staff members. With 18 fire stations, six divisions, and almost 700 full-time personnel, my annual personal visits to all locations on each platoon (72 station visits plus support divisions) in themselves were not sufficient to maintain a well-informed organization. 1 felt notices, memorandums, and other written communications were not personal enough. The department consequently introduced a video newsletter.
Equipment. The department had much of the basic equipment needed for the video newsletter, except that needed to reproduce the videotapes, in place. All the fire stations have a television and videocassette player, courtesy of the firefighters association; the department owns a couple of camcorders; and some basic editing equipment is in house. We found that it is more costand time-effective to have a commercial operation produce the 25 videotapes we need from the master tape.
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