Erm… come again?.
Possibly inept WHQ personnel fed up with being taken to task for losing sensitive information and getting away with it. Having no recourse of action against these incompetents, staff do occasionally vent their spleens.
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Report them up the chain… keep a log and keep reporting higher and higher. Nothing will be done unless it’s reported and now that the boss has said the e-mail everyone up the chain will need to handle it.
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Usually when such a message is sent out there are some specific cases of rudeness/bullying and the Head of the organisation has to put out a scattergun message along the lines of what has been sent so when the discipline starts, the person in the firing line can’t say they didn’t know the standards required.
The unintended consequence of this is that everyone wonders who this is really directed at? Or is it directed at themselves?
It also depresses the majority who have done nothing wrong as there is an implication that bullying, rudeness and ill discipline is rife. It is not.
This is where managing by email/social media falls down!
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That is a problem as reporting up the chain can lead to inertia, reports going missing or signed off and more importantly the next up the chain not wanting to be seen as, well add any description here you want. This is seen in cases of parents on here looking for advice on how to raise issues about cadets and safety.
When I worked for the NHS, at times I started at the top with the chief exec and chief nurse and let the effluent roll downhill. Caused a lot of aggro but sometimes worked wonders. By reminding them of theirs and my statutory obligations concentrated their minds.
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Wow… simply wow!
It’s a shame that’s your experience - usually in those instances, you take it a step higher.
Use the cadets for example - if Cpl Bert has an issue with a Sgt Ernie, they take it to FS Norman. If FS Norman is not fulfilling the standard we expect of them and doesn’t address the issue, then Cpl Bert goes up the chain to CWO Corbett.
We don’t condone lack of mutual-respect from the cadets, so if a Cpl is straight up rude to their Sgt because they in turn weren’t behaving to the standard we expect them to, we put a stop to that. Why then is so bad to expect that from adult staff in the RAFAC?
I agree though, @LeatherWorker - managing this by email/social media is absolutely more destructive than constructive.
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I am minded to offer two things a) JSP763 and b) Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. The first is an MOD policy and one would have thought that if this had been adopted by the RAFAC, there might be no need for the CAC to come out with such communications. The second relates to whistleblowers.
As we operate within the Charity Sector, by virtue of your Sqn Committee, we also need to reflect that the Charity Commission has actually stated that bullying is unacceptable.
The problem is that there is no impartial medium through which these issues can be raised by volunteers . A Charity which is there to help victims of bullying, and the whistleblower legislation actually only relate to paid employees of Charities, so as an unpaid volunteer, you have no rights and no protection. Whilst it would be nice to know that maybe JSP763 has been adopted, the problems which appears to be above grass roots level, so the humble volunteer has nowhere to turn.
Unfortunately the CAC has failed in the past when she has been required to exercise impartial judgement, and such individuals who have been guilty of the actions she describes, are still within the Corps and unable to detach themselves from their nasty habits of personnel management, because they feel they are unlikely to be disciplined.
And it all works because the members of her ACMB will engineer what they want her to know.
We had a Regional Commandant so heavily influenced by WExO and OC Wing and with a couple of other bad apples, there was never any chance if successful redress.
And that position is not different today - the self preservation society is still operating, meanwhile staff numbers continue to reduce. There is a mutual lack of respect, and I for one have no respect for anyone who is transformed by a uniform, especially if they have to point to their rank slides.
Auty Dawn has been so busy trying to be the Cadets friend that she has missed the reality of where we are, and as someone pointed out, we no longer stand out from any other youth organisation, which is a sad reflection on all volunteers who try and make it happen for the Cadets . It is insulting to everyone who has been a victim.
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I have read this message from our Great Leader several times now and the more I read it, the more irritated I get.
Now, for sure, there are some RAFAC volunteers who are rude, ignorant and intolerant, and who have little idea of how to interact with their seniors, peers or subordinates, but excepting of course those at OC Wg level, their behaviours generally only affect those in their near vicinity. As this message was addressed to all of us in the RAFAC, we have to assume that it is all levels, right down to the most junior staff at the coal face, which are attracting the ire of those on high. Unfortunately, the effects of similar attitudes in our permanent cadre are more far reaching. I have witnessed a staggering lack of communication, hostile attitudes and downright incompetence from permanent staff, with blame consistently heaped at the volunteers’ door. So why the relatively sudden appearance of these traits in those employed to run the organisation?
In the ‘old days’, our senior permanent staff were almost entitrely ex-regular officers who, for the most part, knew how to deal with others; how to manage and more importantly, how to lead. In general, they had proved their abilities by reaching at least Sqn Ldr rank in the parent Service and their knowledge and experience was brought across to the (then) ACO. Unfortunately, barring a few exceptions where we still have ‘retired officers’’, what we now have are rank-and-status-hunting civil servants with little, if any, military experience, who have been catapulted to unearned senior RAFAC rank and who are expected to operate in a quasi-military environment with no training or understanding in how to do so. Consequently, we see rank being wielded clumsily; we see veiled or actual threats rather than leadership by example and we see petulance when things do not go according to their plans.
As for ordering people to respect others, which is effectively what the Commandant has done that’s laughable. Respect is earned through words and/or deeds. I don’t know the Commandant personally as I’ve not met her, but her earlier work at the start of her tenure of command was respect-earning; unfortunately, more recent events are less so and this message has also done little to enhance her standing. Others in the command echelons of this once great organisation have also done little to gain any respect - bullying and incompetence has that effect. It’s a fact that people often act towards others in a similar manner to how those others acted to them in the first place. What I suspect we’ve now got is volunteers finally getting off with being talked down to, mismanaged, taken for granted and generally ignored, such that they have adopted a negative manner in return. A email from on high will never solve that and may well even make things worse as it’s adding fuel to the fire. Things will only change with proper leadership from our permanent staff. Leadership where people do things for WHQs, RHQs and above because they want to and understand the need to, not because they’ve been told to and been threatened. Leadership where those above are genuinely respected for their deeds. Leadership where people can speak up or speak out and know that their opinions and contributions will be heard and appreciated even if they are not adopted or acted upon.
We’ve got a long way to go and this message may at best do nothing and at worst have a negative effect, rather than actually solving anything.
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A couple of people round the wing emailed me and others via personal email and the view is she needs to just sort this out at source and bang a few heads together, rather than this Primary School teacher approach. She is distancing herself from the problem hoping that it will go away, which isn’t particularly good management. You can’t just tell people to play nice.
What could achieve a better relationship? Perhaps permanent staff (especially FTRS) of all levels being on squadrons as general subject CIs (no actual role TO or Adj) and where ever possible not in their “home” wing or region. This would expose them to the reality of squadron life, as I’ve never felt they really understand it. There is a huge difference between a big ticket event in the summer with lots of staff and smiling cadets for selfies and whatsinstatwit and a cold, wet January evening, in a large shed, some of which are not in great condition and some staff and cadets decide better to stay at home. Nothing like walking in someone else’s moccasins, eh?
Although this doesn’t resolve the impotence of our paid senior leadership when it comes to addressing and solving the real problems in the RAFAC/ATC and is the source of much frustration.
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It was the bleating from the shop floor.
Plus they all want to be Wg Cdrs so that they are on a parity with OC Wings - whatever next.
Problem as I see it is that most of them think and act as if they were the OC Wg with little communication and direction - I’m sure we all have examples.
Most act far outside of their admin remit.
Most in my experience are quite useless at actually providing on time admin or god forbid, admin support.
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Why does it matter, the ATC and CS ranks are irrelevant.
If they acted professionally and just did their job in the first place, it wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe they think they should be running the wing.
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