Looking at how St John Ambulance advertise their specific roles with a time commitment (I.e. unit lead = X hrs per month), it got me wondering what the hive mind thought typical roles in this organisation required in terms of commitment.
And I specifically mean the time it takes to do the job well. Not excel, not unsafe pass, but well. As we’d want it done without being elitest.
Such roles as:
Squadron or section command
Contingent or wing command
Wing SME
VGS flying staff
AGS instructor
Squadron CI without portfolio
Squadron SNCO
All these various ways we might appoint someone.
If we advertised by role consistently, what would a realistic time commitment be (on the basis that 12hrs is probably not a figure with a current specific role in mind).
Very curious to hear what people would think as a genuine best guess for an average month.
My personal stance is we should move away from hours. Ultimatley I couldn’t give a flying monkeys about the 12hrs a month thing, id rather someone does what they can well instead of under delivering to meet 12 hours.
However for primary roles where one chooses to do it..
We should move to a deliverable model…
I.e. Wing Shooting Officer should deliver/facilitate the delivery 1 wing shoot per Quarter, 1 IWT per Quarter and x% of cadets should have blue, bronze….just an example. Then you have a measure of if a person is delivering, or just dead weight holding key roles impacting the cadet delivery
This is a much nicer approach. People love KPIs, but this is an area where they really would work.
You’ve got some WSOs who obviously put in dozens of hours a month but don’t really seem to achieve anything. Just annoy a lot of people. And you’ve got other who are doing multiple primary roles happily, and getting loads done in all of them!
Hours don’t matter, output does. Especially for volunteers.
Trouble is, lack of resources in one Region / Wg might makes KPis too variable - for example shooting in south west has been hit by armoury issues, which throws in travel distance problems as well as MT access difficulties.
Some of these factors (travel distance to collect / return wpns, etc) are quite variable across the country.
Yes it has… but with the support of other stations we’ve been able to continue with planned LFMT.
I’m also pivoting focus away from L98 in the short term and moving to Air Rifle so that we continue to deliver activity to cadets across the Wing and not just those at units with Ranges.
I’m also using the Bader Data Exports to link allocations to units who are suffering with a lack of shooting experiance. I’ve currently got 5 Units (of 22) with over 20% of cadets holding Blue Shot (Air Rifle) and 14% across the whole wing and looking to increase this to 20% across the Wing.
To achieve this I need to deliver 54 Blue Shot (Air Rifle) Badges + backfill any cadet leavers.
I would be wary of either, I can just see these metrics as being used as a stick to beat the volunteer (probably by other, more ‘senior’ volunteers!)
I’d stick to higher level objectives, such as promoting interest in an activity and recruiting CFAV who are new to it to deliver.
There are just too many variables otherwise that are out of the SME’s control.
As for Sqn roles it might work but if we put out there how many hours OCs work, no one would apply (I think there was an HQ survey done and it’s been covered here before too, and it sure ain’t 12 hours a month!)
Good for AR & participation, but not ideal for progression with L98 - I find that there tend to be more skills fade with the L98 than AR = a lot more refreshing needed.
We would probably need to do a proper time study where a sub-section of the various roles logged how many hours they actually do and then use an averaged value if we were to stick to an hours only model.
Ref VGS ….we had an ‘unoficial’ commitment of 50% attendance …..eg A full weekend on , then one off ….or just one day a weekend etc.
We were lucky with Staff numbers and also operated a monthly rota saying who was doing what …..not so important for the junior guys but was important to make sure we had enough top cover for each day.
And also had to commit to doing at least one of the 3 week courses we held every year.
Most people tended to do far more than the 50% though.
this is certainly true in our wing, particularly 10-15 years ago there were some “dead weight” examples who were Wing SMEs and no doubt completed their 12 hours but were barely seen one year to the next at Wing events - we had a shooting officer who not only didn’t organise but barely attended the official Wing shooting events
our local one had “turn up to three weekends in four” - ie three Saturdays a month, three Sundays a month, or it could be a full weekend and one other day
TBH i think and output scale is more beneficial for all than “do X hours” and this could be “relitively” straightforward to achieve, one event per quarter does not sound unachievable where the Subject has a weekend course setting (Radio, shooting, cyber, first aid etc)
In My AOR we aim to deliver 4-5 weekend courses a year, plus support 2 1 day events.
Any more is a struggle as there just aren’t the weekends free. Viability also depends on the pipeline of trained cadets coming out of th squadrons with the prerequisites.