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Adam Timm | The Healthy Dispatcher, 911 Culture Reform, & the Wellness Crisis · The Wilmac Wire

• Emily McNulty: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome or welcome back to the WilmacWire. Thanks so much for tuning in. I am so pumped that you decided to join us today. Now, we we talk a lot on this show about the technology side of public safety because that's where we live. but today we we went a little bit in a different line. you all know that I'm on the marketing, branding, culture side at Will Mac. So This conversation was really exciting for me today to hear about kind of an a different industry and how they consider that conversation, the culture conversation. So today's conversation is really all about the people behind the headset and what it actually takes to keep them healthy, supported, and in the seat. So realistically, the people and the culture aspect of 911 centers. So today we're sitting down with Adam Tim, founder of The Healthy Dispatcher. His story was. Really fun to hear, including the part where he almost got fired from LAPD. but what came out of that journey? So here's what you can expect to hear in today's episode. We talked about Adam's honest career journey, his story of burning out as a dispatcher, how he used to be known as Angry Adam, kind of the weight that the position and the normalcy that that it encouraged in terms of that anger and and burnout, and what that kind of turning point looked like for him. We talked about the stress reduction program that he built from scratch inside LAPD and what it taught him about culture and that foundation it built for his founding of the Healthy Dispatcher. We talked about what's driving the staffing and retention crisis in 911 and why technology alone won't fix it and why the people behind that technology are crucial and that partnership is crucial to its success. And we just lightly touched on where I AI fits into this conversation. So thank you to Adam and the Healthy Dispatcher team, especially Megan, for helping coordinate today's episode. We really appreciated Adam joining us on the podcast. Like I mentioned in the episode, if you attend any public safety conferences, definitely look out for the healthy dispatcher team as they put on some great speaking sessions. So I'll I'll wrap it up. Let's get into today's episode of the Will MacWire. Thank you so much for tuning in. All right, we'll get started with introducing our guest today. He is joining us from the West Coast out in Los Angeles, California. He's a former 911 dispatcher and trainer who spent 10 years under the headset at LAPD. During his time at LAPD, he created a meditation-based stress reduction program that contributed to a 45% decrease in sick time usage. He then left the LAPD to found the Healthy Dispatcher, which is a culture. consulting and training company helping 911 centers tackle burnout, low morale, and staffing crises. He's author of three books on dispatcher wellness and leadership, including an Amazon number one bestseller. He's a keynote speaker and one of the most recognized voices on culture reform in the 911 space. Welcome to the Will MacWire. Adam Tim. Adam, thanks for joining us. Adam Timm: Great to be here. Thanks so much, Emily. Emily McNulty: Wonderful. All right. Are you just ready to run through a wall from that one? I am. all right. So Adam, we're gonna kick things off with a brief icebreaker that we like to call this or that. Three questions for you. I'm gonna pose you two options per question, and you just choose which one you prefer and give a little context on why. So I'm sure Steve can give some context, but I think these are pretty easy ones. So all right, we'll start off with beach or mountains. Adam Timm: Ha ha ha Emily McNulty: Ha ha. Adam Timm: it's tough. but I would say I would say beach because the water is calming to me. And I live about a mile from from the sand here in LA and my run route is towards the beach. and I do that every not every day, but like every other day when I'm not on the road. and so that's why I would say beach. Now it was he I hesitated because the mountain is also mountains are also gorgeous, but Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Adam Timm: Being a road warrior, I think of any mountainous region as very far from an airport, which would be very difficult. Emily McNulty: Yeah, that's fair. Stephen McDonnell: Are you a surfer? Adam Timm: I have not got on a surfboard yet, no, but I am a snowboarder, and so that would make me think mountains as well. Emily McNulty: Really. Stephen McDonnell: yeah. Yeah. Emily McNulty: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I was just curious. I thought that was gonna be an easy answer for you. So I'm glad it was a little tough. okay, next one. Writing a book or speaking on stage. Adam Timm: I wrote a book so I could speed on s speak on stage. And so the it depends on it depends on your goal for writing a book. not not many people, in fact, it's lottery lottery winner rare to be a JK Rowling of the world with regard to an author writing a book. and so if you have something to say and you want to amplify your message, then writing a book to do it is a good way. Emily McNulty: Okay. Adam Timm: To do so. And then if you are a speaker and you have a book, you get it out to to more as well. So they work to they work in tandem. which one is more difficult? I would say that honestly, writing a book is more difficult than getting up in front of people, even if you care about your message, because people approach me all the time. I've written three, three, four books, three books now, and people approach me all the time at conferences, they say, Emily McNulty: Right. Yeah. Adam Timm: What do I do? I have a I have a bunch of great ideas and I'm I I'm I'm writing an outline and I'm putting all my ideas on pages and what I what do you think? What what what should I do? I said, Well, at some point you're gonna have to sit down and write a book. And that is the most difficult. It takes it it takes a very, very long time. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. Stephen McDonnell: How yeah, how long does it take? Like your first one, it was probably the longest. Adam Timm: It Yeah, it took about a year. yeah. and it was about the same length as my second book, which took like seven, eight months. and the reason why the first one took a year, I think, is because I had to slog through a lot of self-doubt. And I every time I would sit down, I would get writer's block because I would say, like, wh who am I to Stephen McDonnell: A year, wow. Emily McNulty: Mm. Adam Timm: share this message. I I'm not an MD. I'm not a PhD. I have no cr traditional credentials that says that say that I am qualified to share this message. and I kept writing anyway because I had my own personal story. And so I think the second book I I knew what I was going to do. I knew it w who it was for and I had already done it before. And so I kind of the the the the the gremlins were still allowed. But I just said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, sh I'm gonna do this anyway. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: What do the editors give you advice as a first time when it was your first time? Are they like just try to get it all out and then deal with the editing and looking at it but just try to get all your thoughts out on paper? Adam Timm: Yeah, so the y you definitely are encouraged to not edit while writing 'cause there's two minds. There's the creative side and then there's the editing technical side. So yes, but that doesn't make your self doubt go. Emily McNulty: I can imagine. Okay. And last but not least, first day on the nine one one floor or first day at the healthy dispatcher? Adam Timm: first day at the Healthy Dispatcher because I have the unique opportunity here with with THD to to live my own path and it's my dream job and to share a message that is uniquely mine. And I'm helping people through this work. Much like under the headset, I was helping people, connecting people to the services that they needed, occasionally saving saving lives, but it was through the context of policy and procedure as dictated by the LAPD. this work is is different and it's challenging in different ways. Emily McNulty: And it's just you here. I know you have a team, but it's all on you. So I can I can understand that. But man, you you took some deep thought in that. I appreciate those those responses. I thought they would be rattling off. So I love that, but thanks. I guess I did. I that was totally my bad. I I set your expectations way too low on that. Adam Timm: Those are tough questions. I think you I think you're a liar. You intentionally wrote those to be thought reflective and yeah. Emily McNulty: all right, Adam. Appreciate you you hearing us and and running through that icebreaker, but we're just gonna start things off by having you tell us a little bit more about your background and kind of how you ended up working in public spa in public safety at LAPD. Adam Timm: Sure, yeah. I I was twenty-three, twenty-four, and the city of LA was hiring, basically. and a friend of mine who has who was born and raised in LA, who I had met a few years earlier, said the city of LA is hiring for this job that paid well, and they were testing it this was back in the days when a government job that paid a a decent nominal wage and you only needed a high school education could net hundreds of applicants every single month. And so I went in on a Saturday for a civil service exam that is decided designed to weed out the majority of people by by being ridiculously tough. And there was like a series of questions that you had to listen to and also fill out this test for memory recall and the pace t tested the pace of your thinking and I was also at the time working a job that I had also only needed a high school education qualification. And so I was making very little money. and ten months after I took that civil service exam, I got the job offer. So it took a very long time to actually get the job with the city of LA in the department, which is the Los Angeles Police Department, as a 911 operator, which they call at LAPD P a Police Service Representative. And I'm gonna be completely honest with you, I did not know what a police service representative with the LAPD was and did. And it was probably somewhere in the job posting, but like in a whole twist jumble of different like Personnel job posting language that I didn't I didn't really get. And so when I said, Yeah, that's when I started and learned that I'd be taking 911 calls. I learned that the job was much more difficult than I ever imagined it being, for a whole bunch of different reasons. So I would say that firstly I fell into it. Secondly, I did it for the money. thirdly, I did it because I felt like I didn't really have Emily McNulty: Yeah. Wow. Adam Timm: many other things going on at the time. Plus, I want I was living in Orange County at the time in Anaheim, and I wanted to move back to LA proper. And this was a a a pathway to do so. I think those are the the the nuts and bolts of the decision. But also I've always been a helper, a caregiver, and I saw this as a way to continue being a helper in in my professional vocation. Stephen McDonnell: I've I've two questions. The civic service exam. Did they give you anything to study or you just go in there? Good luck. Hope you know this stuff. Adam Timm: Yeah. So I think that there is guides for people who are preparing properly for the civil service exam in a particular job classification. but I didn't know about that. So yeah, it was for me it was just good luck sick sink or swim. There was there was one period of the of the test where or one section of the test where they played a recording that had a person record reciting a series of letter number matches and on the page you had to right fill in the circle of what they had said and the voice got progressive or the the pace got increasingly faster and faster and faster and faster until you were just like I I I can't even keep like I I just I I forgot where we were and I could feel you could feel the whole room just kind of go off Emily McNulty: All right. Adam Timm: Like impossibly difficult, yeah. Emily McNulty: That's insane. Adam Timm: It was intense. But I guess it makes sense. Stephen McDonnell: And then my other Yeah. And then are you from LA originally? Did you grow up in LA? wow. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Adam Timm: No, I'm from Minnesota, actually. I'm a Emily McNulty: Really? Adam Timm: a tran transplant from Minnesota. I moved here when I was about twenty and then just it s stuck here. I've been here now for going on my twenty seventh year. Stephen McDonnell: Okay. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. okay. Stephen McDonnell: We're in Minnesota. Adam Timm: Minneapolis metro area, but small town way out way outside in in a town that used to be about four thousand people. Now I think it's like fourteen thousand, so it's it's grown a bit. Stephen McDonnell: no. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Okay. I I was also curious too, why did you ever get an explanation as to why it took 10 months from the civil service exam to getting the job offer? Adam Timm: So when they when city personnel put puts out for these these f the exams, they're building a list of qualified applicants. And once they move to the next phase and the the money is available to start hiring people from the list, that's when they move to the neck the next phase. and so the civil service exam was just a design or or j just to capture who was minimally qualified and then I went into one paneled interview and then another paneled interview and then a background investigation. And so that sequence was a little bit qu happened a little bit more quickly than the exam to the first paneled interview. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Okay, interesting. Yeah, I was I was just curious. okay, so I'm gonna have two questions in this this phrasing, but what was it like working as a dispatcher at LAPD? And then I mentioned in your intro, but you created that a meditation based stress reduction program. How d where did that idea come from and how long into your tenure did that like start to come to fruition? Adam Timm: Well, they're both related. b the answers to those questions are related. firstly, the job for me was difficult in different ways than you might think. what we often hear about are the life and death decisions and the emergencies. and certainly those happen. Nine one one calls that are actual nine one one emergencies are placed to the nine one one system of the two hundred forty million calls or so that are placed to nine one one in the US alone each year. Emily McNulty: Mm. Okay. Adam Timm: Many of them, but not most, are emergencies that require a pace of handling that increases the intensity of those exchanges. What I was surprised to find is that the majority of calls at at the LAPD communications division, they handle about three million calls for service each year. 70% are non-emergencies. And I didn't know that most people call 911 for non-emergency matters. And it's not that they don't know what an emergency is, it's that the term emergency is subjective. We we we have always heard growing up, at least in this country, if you have an emergency, call nine one one. And so that that is a very effective marketing message. And when people need outside help in the form of the police, they call nine one one and seventy percent of the time it doesn't fit fit the criteria or the system of prioritization for what we would say at at the police department qualifies as a life and death emergency. And at the LAPD, the the way the job is divided as a 911 operator is you have 911, you have non-emergency, and then you have the radio. And we were cross-trained on all functions. At some agencies, they do call take only. And so you're a call taker first, and then once you have some call take experience, then you're trained to be a dispatcher, and then you can do both. at LAPD, you're you you're cross-trained from the early on the job training. On all functions, and then you become a a full-fledged sign a signed off full-fledged police service representative. And if you're assigned the phones for your shift, you're in assigned 911, either 911 for your entire shift or non-emergency for your entire shift. I had no problem working 911 for my entire shift. I had no problem working the radio for my entire shift. On 911, I felt like Those calls were calls that met my criteria for my attention. People had called 911, and even if they didn't have an emergency, I could transfer them to the non-emergency queue and get them out of my hair. On the radio, I could expect a certain level of professionalism from the officers out in the field that I could not expect from the citizens of Los Angeles. I had a really tough time on the non-emergency line. And I almost got fired for complaints coming from citizens on the non-emergency line. And it was at the seven-year mark that I got my third complaint and I got suspension days from it. And I got this warning from the watch commander who had me select my suspension days, my day my unpaid s paid my unpaid days off before I went back to the Com Center floor to log back into the call taking cue. He said Add a just a fair warning, you're getting dangerously close to the point in your career where your union can no longer protect you. And I finally got that message. I need to change my approach. And it was then that I looked outside of myself and I found a six-week mindfulness-based stress reduction class for me to begin to kind of learn how to deal with my own stuff. And What I learned in that six-week class firstly was that I was the common denominator where I had spent the first seven years under the headset blaming everybody else for the way things were turning out. I blame the callers for being so stupid and frustrating, causing me tension and anger and irritation. I blame my co-workers for being so lazy and not pulling their weight, even though I was shirking responsibility and not taking as many calls as I should have been. I was on not ready when I should have been ready and available for calls, especially on non-emergency line. I was blaming my supervisors for gunning for me, overlooking the fact that I was giving them ample ammunition. All of my complaints were founded because the complaint review process at the LAPD is exhaustive and there's no question that you did the wrong thing when it's compared to policy and procedure. by the way, I hope you've never had to experience this, but it's not a good look when you're sitting in the complaint review room with your watch commander, your immediate supervisor, and the recording of the call that a caller called back and asked to speak to a supervisor with regard to. It's it was never my best three minutes on display there. and so that six-week class, I like I I learned basically Stephen McDonnell: Fuck. Emily McNulty: Man. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Adam Timm: Mindfulness meditation, if you don't know what mindfulness is, is basically sitting still and breathing for a period of time. The assignment was ten minutes once a day. and then the other assignment was writing in a journal, which is a fancy word for notebook. And I was writing in my journal and reflecting all the things that I was carrying around with me each and every day. And I continu my just in that first six weeks, my self-awareness had increased to the the point where I could actually apply. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Adam Timm: my self-regulation skills, both on and off the job. And I continued to practice these skills for six months, and my life had really transformed. I was demonstrating a different way of being and I I saw my coworkers see that and that that reflection was profound. so much so that I wrote a proposal. Emily McNulty: Right. Adam Timm: And it was to do a weekly stress reduction session. So that basically a mindfulness guided breathing session once a week instead of going to the pre-shift meeting, which was called roll call, a a group could voluntarily come to another room and I would do these weekly 15-minute guided breathing sessions. So that was the the stress reduction program that I that I pitched and I I handed that proposal to a wa my watch commander, a different watch commander than said then warned me that you're getting dangerously close to the point in your career where your union can't protect you. but a watch commander who had seen my change and he read the proposal in front of me and looked up from his desk in the watch commander's office and he said, I'll support this. I've seen the difference. Make sure you get the captain's approval. So I went to the captain. I said, Captain Justice, I'm gonna do this thing. Captain Justice was his real name, or is his real name. Captain Justice said, I'll support anything that makes life easier around here. And so we we launched it. And th and those sessions ran weekly for about 18 months. Over a hundred of my coworkers came through those sessions. and it's w was one of the things that people still remember. I left I re left the center now almost fifteen years ago, but I'll occasionally get messages from my former coworkers and they'll say, Hey, remember when we did those sessions in the in the conference room upstairs? So it it's so my my my challenge in the job is coupled with taking it out on other people and thinking that I was justified in doing so and then getting to a point where my old ways wouldn't work anymore if I expected to keep my good paying city job, which I was probably not in the right place. I probably should have had a different job, but after seven years and a union job. I was making good money. I had no other prospects. I was still working on my business degree. And so I had to change me. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Wow. Okay. Stephen McDonnell: Were were you aware that I'm assuming you weren't until you got into it, that a lot of your other colleagues were probably in similar situations to you and they maybe they had different reasons why they were so stressed out in the job, but that they had plenty of issues at as well and that this would go over as well as it did? Adam Timm: well, first I I saw myself as surrounded by people who were equally equally as crusty or disgruntled as I was. And so that was normalized. Like me being shitty to callers was normalized and often is, like, especially non emergency callers. Like I can drum up support in any room of dispatchers for why we might talk badly about non emergency callers. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Adam Timm: Well so that was normalized. what I w didn't realize is that people were struggling like I was, which was why we had normalized that poor behavior. And I knew and I kind of ventured out on on on faith on this one, I knew that the tool the s the tools were so simple, like sitting and breathing. Emily McNulty: huh. Adam Timm: Writing in a in a notebook the the insanity that's going on in your mind and then processing it on pages so you don't take it out on the world around you. It's it's so simple. It mu and it and it did so much profound internal work on me that impacted how I interacted with the world. It can't not help others. And so I was just like, let's see, and I I think I was really surprised. Like when I Emily McNulty: Yeah. Adam Timm: What the way we and I'm I'm using air quotes here because like the proposal wasn't a proposal. It was like a chicken scratch note on LAPD form fifteen seven, which was the form we had to write things on if we wanted to bring some something up the chain. It wasn't like a f a fourteen point plan or anything like that. It was like just a note. and the the the the program ended ended up being a series of very authentically Emily McNulty: Yeah. Adam Timm: shared sessions. And I was surprised to learn that when I rolled out the program, and it basically the rollout looked like me standing in front of the room during roll call and telling my story for the first time. And it was one of my first prepared speeches. It was 12 minutes and And when I first started speaking in front of people, I would write everything out kind of like a script because I had to say it the specific right way. If I didn't, it would be said wrong. And so by the way, anyone who's just getting started public speaking, move away from scripting, just use bullet points, it allows you much more freedom because you'll never say it the right way. There's no perfect. Perfectionism kills the the this initial per initial success in public speaking. but anyway, I read this 12-minute speech and the la and it was basically a story of how I had gone from burnt out in pain with tension headaches and an ulcer and frustration and crankiness to something different. And so if you two, dear coworkers, want to be a better dispatcher, parent, friend, or whatever roles matter to you, then join me for the first of this series of sessions and Over 40 of my coworkers came to that first session. And so it like it struck a chord, and I and I and and I don't think it was anything that I was modeling because it was too new at that point. It was something that they heard for themselves. And in fact, as the the work continued, I learned that it was absolutely something that they heard for themselves that caused them to show up to that first session because. My co-workers during the first seven years of my career in the center had a nickname for me beh that they only spoke behind my back that I didn't know until I had like changed my ways and people felt psychologically safe to be real with me. Some one of my coworkers stopped me. So it was this is sometime in the last three years before I left to do to launch the Healthy Dispatcher. She goes, Hey, hey, Adam, I just I don't want to say. you're so much easier easier to be around. Back then we were calling you angry Adam behind your back. Emily McNulty: no. Yeah. Wow. Adam Timm: I know, I know. And I'm from small town, Minnesota. I thought I was a nice, friendly person. So Angry Adams Stephen McDonnell: yeah. Adam Timm: stands up in front of think of the this, it's how ironic. St stands up in front of the room and says, Hey, I want to invite you into the stress reduction program. and so like it was a perfect confluence of these factors that through sharing my own story, I think authentically and Emily McNulty: Yeah. Wow. Adam Timm: vulnerably invited others to be authentic and vulnerable with their own challenges and struggles that they were facing. Emily McNulty: Yeah, so it sounds like that kind of built the foundation of THD. So can for our listeners, can you how would you describe what the healthy dis dispatcher does? Adam Timm: Yeah, well it started out as training pro training s sessions and and classes. So the power of resilience was one of my first and still is a very popular session, how to beat dispatcher burnout. It's an eight hour class that basically tells my own story of of really un unknowing of how the job was causing my ulcer. and not the job. But the way I was thinking about it. And so I I didn't know that the job would take a toll. I didn't know that it would shape how I viewed the world. And those perspectives would then condition how my my body and my health. and that eight-hour class basically takes people through that awareness of what the stress response is and does, and how well we push ourselves towards burnout when we don't. give ourselves ample time to recover and how to use very simple ways to to boost our resilience. And the the the class roster grew over time. And now twelve, eleven, twelve years later, since the the the official launch of the Healthy Dispatcher, we not only do eight-hour training classes, we do ver virtual training as well. And we have a consulting arm. and we have resources online. Our cons our consulting s deals specifically with assessing culture. what we're finding is that much of the challenges that we deal with perennially at the agency level in nine one one. I said much of, I meant many of the challenges, have to do with culture. That's not tended to because culture perpetuates itself In the stories that we tell over time. And the stories that we tell about the last administration or those people down the hall, or what we think of admin, or what we think of the tenured people, or the new people, shape our expectations for behavior, which shapes our behavior. And if we normalize treating each other poorly, that is our agency's culture. And we help, we help agencies. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Adam Timm: get their minds around what that looks like, how it came to be, and we give them a very clear action steps on how to get on the path of redirecting the ship towards a a culture that's more positive, more generative than undercutting and toxic, which is is so often the case. So we have a whole host of of services now, but they're all Built around the goal of empowering dispatchers to do a very difficult job and continue to feel like they're seen, heard, and recognized by their leaders, also that they feel like their work is making a meaningful impact in the world for them personally. Stephen McDonnell: Do you so after you're so say you do your sessions, do you normally does someone come out of those sessions and sit for the certain PSAP and be like, you know what? I'm gonna be the Adam Tim of my PSAP and I'm gonna do these weekly sessions to make sure we continue this. is that common or is it more common you guys are coming back every six months, every two years to for refreshers? Adam Timm: I think both are things we've seen. And I think quite honestly it's uncommon for anyone to take meaningful action in a sustained way after going to an eight-hour class. And I and I couch this the message of the the class with that last kind of bit. I wish it were different, but an eight hour class isn't going to change anything. It's what you do in the days and weeks Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: yeah. Adam Timm: After this, that can make a meaningful impact. and so we will get messages from people, they say, Hey, how you you mentioned that stress reduction class, what does it look like? How can I do that? but it is infrequent, and I would argue that in a class of 50, if three people are very much ready for that message, meaning it like in Angry Adams case, they're about to get fired, they Know that they have something to do with it, they're also looking for a a different pathway, like think of the Venn diagram there, then they will have an added motivation, that added incentive to do something further. what we also see is training coordinators will come to our classes and they're looking to start something recurring. recurring touch points and they'll take some of the principles. We do a workbook in all of our classes and they'll take some of the principles out of the workbook and use those as recurring weekly or monthly touch points at supervisors meetings, team meetings to keep people kind of on on the path. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Okay. So it like we've we've had a lot of our conversations on the Will Mac wire recently with people involved in the public safety space. We end up talking about wellness pretty often. And what we've been I guess more surprised about is how like wellness programming, it's on the 911 Center to figure out what they want to do. It's not like mandated or anything like that. So it really does come down to the people and what they care about. Have you like, am I incorrect in in saying that? Adam Timm: Well, I think even the term wellness program is a misnomer, because it's it's in most centers it's not a defined quote unquote program. It's a collection of different resources that that are all are that are all good in in and of themselves. So you might have a peer support program, you might have an EAP. You might have supervisors who care, you might have training that touches on the importance of understanding your stress, the importance of downtime, of saying no. But unless you have all of these things going on frequently and you have what I call a culture of wellness, which normalizes accessing these resources. Insofar as so I I'm a supervisor, I know that a team member just took a CPR call with a baby. It didn't result in a save. I also know that they have small children about the same age. I check in with that team member and I say, Hey, why don't you just step off the floor for just a second? I I I know the the the the lines are holding, but and then I I take them aside and say, Hey, I great job on that call. I know it didn't end well. Well, but I took a call like that a a while back and it really helped to have someone to talk to. And I just want you to know that I'm someone that you can talk to in this case. That normal those c those conversations are not yet normalized. They are normalized at certain centers that have established this culture of wellness. But until that's happening on the regular, we're going to have people who will not, and this happens very frequently. Will not access well-meaning resources that are put in place. And oftentimes we'll say, like, we have the EAP, we have pure support, no one uses them. I don't know why. What what what we've seen in our work is the reason why is because we're not talking about why it is important to access in the lead up to the need to access those resources. And so like I I would love that every agency has a formalized, standardized wellness program. but to your point, it's up to the agency to define what their wellness program is. and most think that if I have a couple of things, then that is a good that is good enough. And I think it's good enough if people are using them, but a more comprehensive approach. Stephen McDonnell: Extra. Emily McNulty: Check on the box. Adam Timm: is always needed if you only have an EAP, if you only have peer support. and what I see also is that in agencies that had peer support, the floor supervisors sometimes think that they can outsource the real tough conversations around mental wellness and mental health to peer support and they'll be like, well we have peer support for that. If they're not Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Adam Timm: Picking up those opportunities, I don't know what to say. Well, it's actually the floor supervisor, your direct your your direct supervisor's job to know you well enough to know if there is a deviation from your baseline level of showing up. Like if I if I took a tough call and then the next over the next week, I am normally very punctual. I come in late, I'm shirking responsibility, and someone doesn't talk to me because Emily McNulty: I don't know. Adam Timm: no one thought to, then that's an area of of action we can take. Emily McNulty: Right. Stephen McDonnell: What do you think about the general public knowing? I my feeling is, and my background is not nearly as in-depth in 911 as yours is. I have the past two or three years jumped into it quite a bit more. And I'm just surprised at everything I find. And I feel like the general general society maybe doesn't really understand the type of job this is and the emotional stress that these people are under. And they don't I mean it it it literally is part of public safety, being it's like being a police officer or or a firefighter. And I don't know if the general public really put that put that all together. And that might be more of an image thing that needs to be better put out there. Adam Timm: Yeah, for sure. No, I I I think that the the term, I don't know if you've heard it, just a dispatcher, comes from the public. The public would say to and still says to many dispatchers, I I want to talk to an officer. You're just a dispatcher. And i i because they think that we're some clerical desk jockey that isn't being exposed to life and death stuff. And part of that has to do with the evolution of the role. in in the the the the early times, so in the 70s and 80s, it was a different role. We weren't EMD trained, we weren't doing CPR as a as often. it wasn't like requ a requirement of the the job. Now in 2026 the public safety apparatus to your point does not work without the dispatcher. It is the center of the hub of the wheel of public safety. No incident gets worked without the dispatcher working it, whether it's call taking, whether it's working on the radio. and so there is a messaging that can be improved from the public's persona, public perspective, but we're also seeing that messaging Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Adam Timm: Is re requiring some rework even with regard to the federal reclassification. Even when it comes to the larger public safety apparatus that the dispatcher support. I I I'll I'll sh I'll share with you for even in at at risk of of n being unpopular in in saying so, but Emily McNulty: Mm. Adam Timm: Many of the most challenging centers that we've worked with in the past are embedded within a police department or within a sheriff's office or within some other public safety agency where ultimate decision making power, when it comes to the operation of the communications center, bubbles up to a chief of police or a sheriff who doesn't know anything about working in a communications center. The best centers in our country are run by people who. Come from under the headset, and they are what they call consolidated centers or standalone centers that the chief of communications or the executive director or director of the communications center has a seat at the same level of the chief of police as the chief of fire, as the chief of EMS, as the sheriff. And they're regarded in the same conversation as a leader in their line of work. And so There's a lot to be said about that from a messaging perspective. And I'm heartened to know that in the 23 years that I've been in in 911, that those conversations are are gaining momentum and they have teeth. We we are looking at very real change at at the state level, at the federal level, and the the people out there doing the advocacy work both at Nina and APCO. and the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch. There are working people are working tirelessly who come from the center themselves. and I'm not saying that there aren't great chiefs of police who are good at giving their power to the people at in the center who call the shots. That is happening as well. But there is still much more work to be done when it comes to Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Adam Timm: Qualifying 911 or emergency communications as a definitive career path, as like we we we are calling the shots and and when you call to you get a 911 operator, it's someone who is highly and specialized, trained to do their job. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't think I've ever thought of it from that way, the way you just talked about it as to where the PSAP lives in kind of the greater scheme. and I I kind of had a question around kind of the investment conversation as part of that, like the way where the PSAP lives, like obviously culture investment in a world where budget is very highly picked through. like how do you help A director make a case for an investment in cultural reform or those types of of wellness initiatives. Adam Timm: Well, every director and every city, county, state, depending on the the funding apparatus, that hires nine one one dispatchers knows they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on turnover due to culture. And so we insert ourselves into that conversation. If you can improve your culture, what would it mean to hold on to the majority of the next hiring group instead of losing 40 or 50% because of culture? That's an interesting question. And then if you can hold on to people for one to three years instead of losing them all within the first year of their employment, what would that do to your spending and the churn and the morale? And how does the current negative or toxic culture Show up when it comes to service delays, when it comes to customer service related complaints from the field or from the community. And so it becomes clear when it becomes most clear in these conversations when it comes to risk and liability. And what we often point out is that if you're not doing quality assurance. on your EMD calls, then you're out of compliance. And when someone dies, it's very easy to pin the the blame on the fact that we have allowed our standard to slide for years because we disbanded our proactive quality assurance program because of staffing. Often proactive measures are are s put out the window until we get to full staff or until the staffing situation cures itself. Which is wrong thinking because if we don't tend to the culture now, then we can't improve the staffing situation. so that's one way of talking about it. I think the other way of talking about it is in public safety, more than any other sphere of government, we spend money on redundancy all the time. There are very small police agencies in this country that have spent A million dollars on military equipment that they use once every five years because you never know when you'll need SWAT, right? Or there's gonna be a hostage barricade situation. and there's nothing wrong with that. We are currently experiencing a crisis in 911 with when it comes to connecting basic 911 calls. to a trained professional who is not working a sixteen hour shift seven days in a row because we haven't spent the the resources, the budget, the time tending to the culture, which has been bad for twenty years. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: Yeah. That makes that makes a lot of sense. and the the wellness conversation, like you said, in terms of the hiring, how we we've spoken with quite a few nine one one directors who talk about the the implications of that, how much it costs to bring someone new on, how quickly they leave, like it definitely builds up. And I have to ask this question because we live more so in the technology space and we're starting to see those like pieces connect more and more with the wellness component. But I guess how do you think about the relationship between technology and culture and nine one one and how that's evolving? Adam Timm: It's always been, and technology changes and evolves over time, but we've always had it in 911. And every single wave of technology has promised to be the next thing that alleviates the immediate challenges of those under the headset. And what we're saying is that new tools will help. And they will help insofar as we can use them for the task at hand. You can have the very best CAD, you can have the very best consoles, you can have the very best location triangulation system, you can have the now we're we have instant transcription for instant QA due to AI, but None of them will cure culture because culture is about people, the way people feel coming into work. And you can give the the team your you're down 50% from a staffing perspective. And you can give everybody the very best tools without any additional context and without additional any additional conversation, you are going to continue to be down 50%. Unless you work on the specific relationships that cause people to feel like no one cares about them, that they're not seen, they're not heard, they're not recognized, that leadership doesn't care, that leader that those in their particular roles, if their roles require them to have. Difficult conversations if they are not skilled and then thereby trained to skillfully have difficult conversations with empathy and compassion so that people want to grow and develop after a growth and development conversation, as opposed to the tough love, hey, you messed up, don't do it again. that's this what we're seeing is a skills gap there. We don't We need tools, we need the best tools. Don't get me wrong. But when it comes to people, we need to develop skills to help people feel seen. And that's never going to go go away. I as long as people need to grow in their development of emotional intelligence, and you can't Do a chat GPT conversation to grow in your emotional intel develop emotional intelligence. You actually have to have conversations with real human beings. w my my team at the Healthy Dispatch is gonna have work to do. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Wonderful. Well thank you, Adam, for for sharing about that. Steve, is there any other questions you have for Adam before I start to wrap us up? Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, I don't want to dive into the AI too much, but one quick question going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation, 70% non-emergency. And obviously, I'm sure you're not the only dispatcher out there that that was frustrating for. And what we see, we don't do this technology, but we see a lot of these conversational AI companies popping up into into the PSAP world. getting acquired by the larger vendors, but they're they're out there and they're saying, Hey, I'll just take the non emergency. Have you seen it, tried it? Is it fully working, you think? Is it still years away from actually being able to take a human off of non emergency calls? Adam Timm: No, it already is happening. Yeah. I mean, you've got a couple of companies out there. I've got friends who work for the for the the vendors that are doing this work, and we are seeing them reliably be able to triage 60 to 70 percent of non-emergency calls and handle them completely. I I think that there's some challenges with regard to the public per public perception of that. but I think it's a good thing because if we can eliminate some of that weight off the dispatcher call taker, and at a lot of centers, they're doing both call take and dispatch at the same time. So if I'm working a fire dispatch channel and I've got a a a structure fire going on and the phone rings and it's it's a rollover, that means it's a rollover nine one one call. So I have to take that call. and then it happens to be a non-emergency call that got through, that's a problem. And so if if a Aurelian solution can help with that, if if Motorola's hyper solution can help with that, great. Now, I think that there is something to be said also about the rollout of these tools from the perspective of a values-driven approach. So we say, hey, we are empowering you to do your best work. And so we're looking for tools. here is one of the tools that we found. What do you think about this? So I'm having a conversation with my team. I'm not saying, hey, I just want you to know tomorrow we're going live with this solution. we're gonna we're gonna outsource half your job to AI. Like that creates fear because change in it when it comes to type A overachieving perfectionist, which is most people who work in this profession, they don't like change. So there's a way to handle that that's better than than than not. So to your earlier question, yes, it's happening and it's a good thing, but we still need to be mindful of the people that it's impacting and we need to take them into consideration. Stephen McDonnell: All right, awesome. Emily McNulty: Question. All right. Adam, before I wrap us up, is there are there any other initiatives or programs that you're running at the Healthy Dispatcher or in that greater nine one one wellness space? Any message that you'd like to share with our audience? Adam Timm: I mean there's there's so much. We there's there's the individual level, you gotta t keep taking good care of yourself so you can care for the world. don't be afraid to say no and whatever that means for you. at the the leadership level, keep doing good work, keep caring about your people, even though it's hard to do so shift after shift, year after year. at the agency level, we're we're looking for leadership. People need need leaders at every level of the of the organization, and the your efforts make a difference even though it sometimes feels like you're also in a quagmire of of of politics and things outside of your control. but yeah, I mean w th this is this is the work that we do. We we we love it and we're we're we're all over the place, thehealthy dispatcher dot com and all across social media our resources are out there. But if there's anything that I personally can do to anyone who's who's tuned in here, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm very accessible, Adam at thehealthy dispatcher dot com. Emily McNulty: Thanks, Adam. It's very refreshing. Cause we, like I said, we live in that technology space. And yes, we do talk about people, but to have someone like you come in and share that people first perspective, it's it's refreshing. So so thank you for sharing more about your story. and like Adam mentioned for our listeners, you can connect with him also on LinkedIn at Adam Tim, Tim with two M's. you can find the Healthy Dispatcher on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Instagram, and X if you've attended any. Public safety-oriented conferences. Check them out because they're likely speaking. Like Adam mentioned, their website is thehealthy dispatcher.com. And we did talk about some of Adam's books. I wanted to call out the Healthy Dispatcher series, which you can find on Amazon. That is Dispatcher Stress: 50 Lessons on Beating the Burnout, People-Driven Leadership, How the Best 911 Centers Inspire Positive Change. And third, the Daily Dispatcher by Chris Enman. First two are Adam Timps. Third one, Chris Inman. All right. Adam, thank you so much for joining us on the Will MacWire. It was an absolute pleasure. Adam Timm: My pleasure. Thank you both. Thank you. Stephen McDonnell: Thanks, Adam. Appreciate it. Emily McNulty: Thanks, Adam.