I have had the devil’s own job to get anyone other than the Adj and TO to use “bader” since its inception. I’ve given all staff passwords and sat down and taken them through it as I saw it as a way of letting everyone share the pain.
I pointed out at a COs conference when Bader was first released and several people were becoming overly moist at the idea of it, unless every single member of staff is given access and an email, then it won’t be universally accepted and only work like they intend, a stick to beat people over the head with if they don’t comply. As soon as I saw the MIS side of bader, I knew how it would be used, having seen it at work with our MIS in the previous (at the time) 16/17 years…
All these years on and still not every member of staff has got a personal account. Could you imagine being at work and not getting a personal email and access to the things you need to do what you have to do, within a couple of days of starting? Because that’s what it must feel like for many staff across the Corps.
I have to admit if on resigning I become a CI, one of the high points would be never having to trawl through the quagmire of SMS, unless I really, really, really had to.
[split as this is clearly a better place to put this discussion than somebody’s experiences as a CI - BF]
I had the same, I know a lot of Sqn’s who find the same issue. Even the staff cadets who hqac say should access it are not interested.
The best I had though was a CI who would trawl through the completed activities to see what other local Sqn’s were doing and then complain we were not doing those activities then when asked to help on Bader like add names to a activity they said they couldn’t as they didn’t know how to access it!
See I don’t stand for that BS, you want to run an activity I’ll help, but I’m not doing your Bader Application for you, whether your a CI or a Staff Cadet!
The thing is if people aren’t interested they aren’t interested and given that they have to use a concocted account, I can see where they are coming from.
I have little interest in “Bader”, as it doesn’t save anyone at the squadron time and has turned out as expected and turned those CFAV who really have no choice into admin lackeys for all points above Sqn. I didn’t join the ATC to be an data input clerk for people in paid roles and get chewed because I haven’t done something which is of no consequence to me.
It doesn’t save time? Do you remember what it was like when we had to fax Adventure Training Applications over to Wing for approval?!
Bader SMS is not complicated and by getting people to do their own applications you stop individuals from being”admin lackeys”. At the end of the day if people want to volunteer and want to do stuff they need to do the admin that comes with it, it’s not fair for them to expect someone else to do it for them.
Oh yes that one, which IIRC was a major selling point at the OCs Conference.
I could do a 6 month stat in 20 minutes, it came from Wing and went back the same day. Very little really changed, we used a spreadsheet that calculated the ages of cadets and kept the other bits up to date as we went. I never saw the drama that others moaned about.
I’d sooner spend time doing that every 6 months, than piddling around with SMS’ clunky set up once a week. Think of the time spent on doing registers on paper (required for evacuation purposes) and then putting it on SMS. The registers are irrelevant to us, I’ve never looked at them once they’re updated.
Plenty of Squadrons just do the register directly onto a tablet on Bader and use that in an evacuation. Or as we do in our case then Cadet NCO’s just put it onto Bader during canteen break. Hardly taxing or time consuming.
SMS is a perfectly good system, especially the activity management elements. Create relevant activity, click submit goes straight to the relevant SME for approval. Activity complete and it goes straight into the staff and Cadet records. The alternative of having reams of paper being faxed backwards and forwards with manually completed spreadsheets doesn’t bear thinking about.
Not time consuming in isolation but cumulatively it is. 5-10 minutes a night by say 8 parades a month by 6 months is 5-6 hours and that’s just doing a register that is only for Wing and HQAC.
I’ve never been a fan of cadet NCOs doing this, I know people do, but I’ve never felt this cadets should be messing around with doing this.
We clock in at work, but still have an in/out board for evacuations, because it’s simple.
Doing it on a tablet might be all fine and dandy, but when your evacuation point is too far from the building wifi and the need to get a register taken quickly is of the essence, you can’t be faffing around trying to get signal and then there are those not on your bader register. I don’t see the need for wifi that you pay for that goes outside your building.
When I was showing the number of cadets attending, verses the lack of staff. It gave me some weight to the argument of getting extra staff on unit… and therefore some support.
Also… a quick look and I can work out the cadet attendance for awards… as well as when a certain cadet last attended, so I can send a quick email asking how they are, and if they are coming back.
It does have it’s uses. Limited, but they are there.
Ever thankful for not having the 6 monthly returns… and so much quicker to sort applications.
Bader isn’t perfect… but it’s something.
I recently closed the unit to cadets, and had a staff training night. Showed them how to use bader SharePoint, SMS, and the email. Next month it will be Ulitlearn.
Been great. Staff when they aren’t busy, have grabbed a few 3822s and updated sms profiles with qualifications, flying logs etc. Printed off Joining Instructions for Cdt Bloggs for her MOI course, etc. It can be empowering… especially when they used to see me struggling. Now they understand the workload and are helping more.
Daws1159 seems to be on point with this, maybe someone from up on high would like to get in touch and get ideas for a bader trg program within each wing?, never heard of the tablet thing, but its absolute genius if im honest and should be pushed
assuming one has reasonable service coverage)