Ensuring SES volunteers are fit for their roles
Australia’s first nationally consistent approach to State Emergency Services (SES) fitness standards is used to keep volunteers and staff safe from injury.
Being an SES volunteer can be physically demanding. But unlike professional first responders, there were no formal fitness tests to check whether volunteers could perform the tasks required of them.
Building on more than a decade of research into the fitness requirements of volunteers, we funded research to develop practical, usable measures that could be used to assess volunteers’ fitness for performing tasks in different scenarios.
The SES Fit for Task project brought together the Centre, the Australian and New Zealand Council for fire and emergency services (AFAC), all the SES agencies and the National SES Volunteer Association. The result was a nationally consistent, evidence-based program for assessing the fitness levels of volunteers.
The program was rolled out across state and territory operations, providing defined minimum physical fitness required to undertake certain SES tasks, supplemented with a set of physical fitness assessments SES units and groups could use.
Following on from this implementation, the SES Fitness for Role program was established in 2023, the first time state and territory emergency services collectively developed a single national approach to the safe physical fitness of first responders.
This program is now being implemented across all SES agencies to improve the health and wellbeing of SES members, to ensure safety as members perform required tasks.
Three Australian states, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania, have developed online platforms for volunteers and staff to undertake the Fit for Role assessments.
The SES National Operations group is developing deployment cards informed by this research, to be progressively rolled out to its staff and 40,000-plus volunteers nationally. The cards will outline the minimum skill level and physical fitness requirements that SES volunteers and staff need to safely perform various roles.
Cain Trist, Deputy Chief Officer, Victoria SES, says the program’s greatest benefit has been in having a formal way to assess exactly what level of fitness is required for volunteers to safely and effectively carry out tasks.
"What’s been really valuable too is how this research has created unexpected benefits – it has helped our medical and screening teams, our physios, and even GPs make better decisions about members returning to work after injury," he says.
"It’s been hugely beneficial for us across the board."
Acknowledging our funders and partners
- AFAC
- Victoria Sate Emergency Service
- National State Emergency Service Volunteers Association
- NSW State Emergency Service
- ACT Emergency Services Agency
- South Australian State Emergency Service
- Tasmania Fire Service
- NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services
- Tasmania State Emergency Service
- Department of Fire and Emergency Services Western Australia
- Queensland Fire Department