FEMA to Soon Roll out "Every Employee is an Emergency Manager" Memo

What you need to know

Hello Readers,

The Alt-FEMA Newsletter editors have obtiained an internal memo from reliable sources for a new memorandom for all agency employees. We would like to share it with with you, as it wont be made available until an estimated date of April, 21st. The Memo below outlines the new titling mandate strategy and deployment requierments. It's a big read, and be advised that this draft may not reflect the updates in wording that will be in the published final version.

Hello Readers,

The Alt-FEMA Newsletter editors have obtained an internal memo from reliable sources for a new memorandum for all agency employees. We would like to share it with with you, as it wont be made available until an estimated date of April, 21st. The Memo below outlines the new titling mandate strategy and deployment requierments. It's a big read, and be advised that this draft may not reflect the updates in wording that will be in the published final version.

Tentative Dates of Important Significance

• April 15, 2025: F1 sends out video giving heads up about the program

• April 21, 2025: Official Memo gets sent to FEMA Leadership

• April 21, 2025: Workforce email to all employees

• April 22, 2025: FEMA Weekly story that includes a link to the new SharePoint page

The Memo

FEMA's incident workforce is our most important asset in achieving our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters. To invest in the success of our workforce, I directed the Office of Response and Recovery to "enable a culture of deployment readiness for Incident Support (IS) or Incident Management (IM) titles during steady state" in the 2025 Annual Planning Guidance. Fostering a culture of deployment readiness requires each of us to recommit to FEMA's credo of “Every Employee is an Emergency Manager (EEEM).”

This memorandum outlines the steps FEMA will take this spring to bolster the capacity of our Incident Workforce to better reach, support. and uplift disaster survivors. It describes requirements for the incident Workforce – both primary and auxiliary – around titling, availability, deployment, training, and accountability. It codifies my vision for the incident workforce – especially for FEMA Headquarters (HQ) and Regional full-time equivalent (FTE) employees – and sets actions that employees, FEMA HQ components, and Regions need to take to achieve that vision.

Emergency Management Categories

In accordance with the pledge that “Every Employee is an Emergency Manager," this memo redefines the emergency management categories and requires each FEMA employee will be assigned to an Incident Management or Incident Support category, with a limited set of employees assigned to Required Services.

• Incident Management (IM): Positions that lead, manage, and deliver response and recovery operations and generally deploy to traditional field or related sites.

• Incident Support (IS): Positions that support incident operations and generally deploy outside of traditional field locations.

• Required Services (RS): Limited set of non-deployable positions that must be filled to: (a) maintain minimum viable agency operations; (b) fill functions required by statute or regulation and that must be performed in a prescribed time frame to avoid serious consequences; or (c) that fall under the Office of National Continuity Programs or Regional equivalent

Position Titling

Every employee will be assigned at least one primary or auxiliary title in at least one of the three emergency management categories.

Employees can hold IM and IS positions as either primary or auxiliary titles, with differing availability and deployment expectations based on primary/auxiliary status and employee type. Defining expectations for primary and auxiliary titling within the IM and IS categories allows FEMA cadres and programs to develop staffing plans that account for actual availability and to determine expectations and prioritization for training and equipping. This also allows employees to understand their deployment and availability requirements, while enabling supervisors and managers to hold them accountable.

• Primary Title: Primary- titled employees are expected to deploy immediately upon receiving a deployment request when in an available status in FEMA'S Deployment Tracking System (DTS), based on the minimum availability requirements and deployment requirements for their employee type.

• Auxiliary Title: Auxiliary-titled employees are expected to deploy when opportune or required by FEMA, particularly when the primary IM/IS workforce is otherwise depleted.

Availability and Deployment Requirements

Primary and auxiliary-titled FTE employees (e.g. Permanent Full time [PFT] employees and Cadre of on Call Response and Recovery Employees [COREs] will be required to meet minimum availability and deployment requirements according to their position. Understanding when these employees are expected to be available to augment the primary incident workforce is central to implementing the EEEM framework.

• Primary IM FTE Employees: expected to be available for at least half the calendar year (180 days) and to accept deployments for at least 90 days of a year, inclusive of training (as required by cadre/program need).

• Primary IS FTE Employees: expected to be available for at least half the calendar year (180 days), and to accept deployments far at least 3 activations or at least 60 days a year, inclusive of training (as required by cadre/program need).

• Auxiliary IM/IS FTE Employees: expected to be available for at least 9O days a calendar year and to accept deployments at least 45 days a calendar year, inclusive of training (as required by cadre/program need). Availability and deployment days may be increased based on agency need, generally when availability in the IM/IS title falls below 20%.

Cadres, programs, and Regions can set additional standards for availability and deployment requirements, as long as they do not fall below the baseline requirements of this memo.

Accountability

To ensure employees understand their responsibilities and are held accountable for meeting them, the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer (OCHCO) will provide standardized performance measure goals to be incorporated into performance plans for FEMA FTE employees, supervisors, and Senior Executive Service (SES) employees. These performance measures will include goals to ensure employees are ready to deploy, including beating properly titled, managing there availability in DRS, deploying and receiving and maintaining training for their position.

Employees with RS titles will be exempt from the performance measure for FTE employees, but may, depending on their supervisory status, have the performance measures for supervisors.

Next Steps

The Field Operations Directorate (FOD) will reassign all employees currently listed as Ancillary Support of Mission Essential into one of the three emergency management categories. Depending on current designation, staff will be reassigned based on one of the below processes.

Mission Essential to Required Services

• Only employees with duties that maintain minimum viable functions, as specified above, will be assigned a Required Service (RD) title.

• FEMA HQ Component Heads and Regionals Administrators must submit their proposed list to the RESG for approval. FOD will assign approved titles in DTS.

• Employees with a current Mission Essential title that are not being converted to RS will be assigned to a primary or auxiliary Incident Management (IM) or Incident Support (IS) title.

Ancillary Support to Incident Management or Incident Support

• As applicable, employees with Ancillary Support titles will be reassigned corresponding to Incident Management (IM) or Incident Support (IS) titles.

  • Employees with a primary Ancillary Support titles and an auxiliary IM or IS position will become auxiliary titled IM/IS employees.

  • Some Ancillary Support titles will be recategorized to IM or IS (e.g. Surge Capacity Force Manager or Individuals and Households Program (IHP Inspector) based on the duties of that position. Employees will be designated as primary or auxiliary IM?IS based on the requirements of the position and their availability to deploy.

  • Employees with Ancillary Support titles who do not hold an auxiliary IM?IS title will be given the option to choose an auxiliary IM/IS title in areas of high demand via a survey released by FOD.

  • Any employee who does no complete the survey by the designated deadline will be automatically assigned to a position based on agency need.

  • Employees may also request primary or auxiliary IM or IS title, provided the program or cadre has sufficient need for additional staff to be titled in that position and both the cadre/program and the employee’s supervisor approves the employees request.

Component Responsibilities

To achieve these requirements for the Incident Workforce established in this memorandum, I am instructing FEMA heads in the following components to begin implementation immediately through the action stated below. Upon completion of the Component responsibilities, this memo will be sundet, and guidance will be solidified into appropriae policy and docterine.

Component Heads:

• Ensure that all staff follow the titling, availability, deployment, training, and accountability requirements of this memo.

The Field Operations Directorate (FOD)

• Coordinate with cadres and components, to ensure that newly titled personally in survivor-engagement and other high priority titles have completed necessary training to ensure readiness ahead of the 2025 peak hurricane season.

• Reassign all employees with a current Ancillary Support titles or Mission Essential title to their new primary and/or auxiliary titles as appropriate no later than May 21, 2025

• Finalize a training approach to ensure initial operating capabilities and develop long-term approach and resourcing requirements for employee qualification through FEMA Qualification System (FQS) no later than June 1,2025

• Codify the direction in this memo, especially Emergency Management categories, titling, and accountability, into appropriate incident workforce and policy doctrine, and coordinate with offices throughout the agency to ensure policies and doctrine are updated or create policy waivers for policy and doctrine conflicts until such time that policies and doctrine can be updated.

The Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer (OCHO):

• Provide performance measures and coordinate the update of all FTE employees, supervisor, and SES performance plans no later than May 21, 2025.

• Ensure every employee has signed updated “Every Employer is an Emergency Manager” Conditions of Employment.

• Examine current Position Descriptors (PDs) to determine which positions are appropriate for RS titles and update those PDs no later than 2027.

I appreciate your support to improve the Agency and continue the survivor-centric work going on every day across our Nation. I am confident this rededication to our credo will strengthen the Agency’s ability to respond to the needs of the Nation this hurricane season and beyond.

How will this affect your position in the agency? Want to share? Find us on Signal.

In solidarity,

Alt-FEMA Editorial Staff