Far too much distrust by all, to all. The relationship fundamentally isn’t there for this to work in either direction.
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Ah, I get your drift - but as per other subsequent comments, I don’t see it being viable.
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Something that many organisations can learn from.
Good luck with getting a confidential reporting process off the ground! I work in assurance and this sort of reporting is central to a safe, professional and learning organisation that wants to improve the way it does pretty much everything.
A few years ago, I suggested such a system to RC C&E (the short one) but there was no appetite from the higher echelons and even a comment that ‘we don’t do chat room anonymity’.
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is it odd that I had made the assumption that would be the case anyway? 
it doesn’t matter what rank or role, Sqn, Wing or Rgn - the report goes to paid staff not CFAV and then filtered asking for the CFAV CoC to comment
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Given that barely anyone actually does the mandatory H&S incident reporting, getting anything non-mandatory and informal and constructive off the ground us unlikely.
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Not always professional pilots in CHIRP - I’ve submitted two and the more recent one was published, suitably anonymised, as there were useful lessons on the use of iPad navigation apps.
I agree that anonymising things might be less successful, but we do need some better way of developing a Just Culture.
If the RAF doesn’t have one then the RAFAC has no chance of one.
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The RAF does have one. All of the elements are in place; reporting, investigation, occurrence reviews, publicity etc. I was on an RAF ORG for a ground incident only this week and it works.
The problem has always been that whilst the flying side of our organisation is for the most part following the same processes as the parent Service, nobody else does. Most of the high priced help at HQRAFAC are from the bad old days, where the norm was to simply find someone to blame. Unfortunately, our senior volunteers just follow that same mindset because unless they are aviators, in general they know no different and follow the direction from on high.
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I agree that it was this in the past but thank fully most of them have moved on.
Unfortunately the senior volunteers have been around far longer than those paid staff so the blame & dominate culture is still prevalent amongst the senior volunteers & like a virus is passed on amongst volunteers long after the original staff have left.
Unfortunately the only real way to change culture is through culture shocks & if not handled properly causes wider issues.
This shouldn’t be the case so the question is how do we resolve?
I think the olive branch needs to come from the paid staff as they set the culture. It needs to go to the coalface so Sqn level volunteers.
Once the organisation has Sqn level volunteers broadly on side, the more senior volunteers will come into line.
Trust starts with good communication. At all levels. Communication from high up to low down in this organisation seems fatally flawed.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say that trust is easily lost when communication is bad.
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This phrase is used so many times (& you’re right) but what do we actually mean by it? What does good communication look like & I suspect we all have a slightly different idea.
Needs to know vs want to know. Absolute candid vs being circumspect.
The one thing I think definitely hampers it is the concept of “chain of command” being the same as “chain of information”.
The makes too many people gate keepers to information & clogs up the distribution system.
Perhaps it would be start to retire the phrase of Chain of command from our Phraseology
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Open, honest, concise and timely.
Reaches all levels in an efficient manner.
Reasonable balance between the what and the why behind a change.
Provides opportunity to feedback up and down the chain.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
There are numerous commercial tools that enable messages of this ilk, that could be sent to every email account at the same time, and with tailored messages to different audiences, they’re simple to use.
The content… That’s where it gets tricky.
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I think you are spot on here. I think one of the biggest distrusts is finding out information via word of mouth (ie on here, or Facebook, or someone letting you know via WhatsApp) rather than everyone seeing it at the same time. It shouldn’t be me telling my OC he’s got to do X or we need to cancel Y because I’ve seen something here, and I know he won’t get an email for another 4 hours while it trickles down.
Another issue I always have personally is the lack of explanation for some things. This is all part of communication. I think too many people at all levels like to gatekeep information as much as they can, for no real reason. It means we get emails being told we have to X or Y, but with no real reasoning behind it. We’re just expected to follow the order as we have a CoC and that’s how it works. But that doesn’t help build trust. Sometimes it is required. ‘You need to do this, don’t worry about why, just get it done’. But 99% of the time more information could have been shared.
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Can we split into an internal / corporate comms thread maybe?
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I think it’s less of an internal comm debate & more of post incident volunteer management & how to rebuild trust.
Yes Comms is a large part of it but it’s also changing the culture & promoting that “just culture” within the org
Perhaps a topic title change instead would work better?? It links in more thematically with the first point of post 1.
@Threaders as OP, slight title change or split into new topic?
Apologies if I’m going too off topic - but, after reading the OP and the various comments on the thread; I’m assuming an exped went pear shaped - for whatever reason.
The CFAVS called EndEx.
At least one parent has kicked off; resulting in Compo Sad Face or whatever.
Region are supporting the parent.
But presumably for reasons of privacy, details are sketchy.
Hence everyone on here and beyond are forming their own opinion on the circumstances.
Would there be any sense in a situation where incident “post mortems” were actually made available.
With names / identities as protected as possible. “CFAV X” “Wing Y” etc.
With the purpose of trying to negate the gossip / spreading of false information, and fostering a greater sense of transparency?
Possibly disseminated for SME info - this is what happened - this is how it could have been prevented - these are the correct steps that were taken - this is what went wrong.
Or possibly even, give an explanation as to WHY the Reg get it appropriate to pay out etc
So that we can avoid or prevent a repeat…?
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Be careful what you wish for. With this organisation we’ll end up with round 2 of needing a defib and a helicopter landing site to run an activity.
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I wish I knew how to put a meme on here of me rolling around laughing!
Well maybe Region staff should have taken forward on behalf of the unit 
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