I suppose it’s also an interesting angle looking at the cost of the mandatory training. From an RAFAC/ACF point of view, there is no monetary cost making us do these online courses at home on our own time. As with the regulars they’ve got to pay people to do the courses. If we were being paid for all of our mandatory training time, HQAC might spend a bit more time focusing on what we actually need rather than just what’s convenient to throw at us!
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And, realistically, looking only at the mandatory stuff ours is 6-10 hours up front, plus a day in person or online, then a few hours per year.
It’s a pain, and we whinge (and question the value/justification of some of it), but most that felt the pain through annual renewals and return from COVID are now through that.
Our bigger issue is the mandatory admin, not the mandatory training.
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AVIP is a day, first aid is realistically a weekend. They take up the most time mandatory training wise. But I think they’ll be the same in the ACF too. AFAIK they do a full weekend equivalent to our AVIP.
Minimum is EFA, so a few hours.
I get what you mean because AFA/FAW enables a lot more, but it’s not mandatory.
I’d love to have a read of that when it’s done. Have you thought about submitting your solution as an Astra initiative?
So our mandatory training for a new CFAV consists of the following:
Safeguarding: 45 mins
Security brief: 25 mins
PREVENT awareness: 45 mins
Responsible for information: 45 mins
HS&EP: 60 mins
Fire training: 10 mins
The SMS/ACTO 10 training: 20 mins
Climatic Injuries: 35 mins
Essential first aid: 180 mins.
So that’s just under 8 hours mandatory training when you first join. Plus AVIP.
All of those have to be refreshed every 3 years, except PREVENT, AVIP and the SMS training. It’s not actually that bad at all. But as @Giminion says, it’s the amount of random admin we have to do, not the mandatory training!
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I have cheekily wondered whether I could arrange an event on Westminster for staff training. All we do is the mandatory training. Would we be able to swing it to claim VA. (Not that it would affect me as I’ve decided it’s not worth it for the way it screws up my tax any time I claim some.)
You could maybe make it work via SMS? Run a mandatory training day? Provide a space for people to do their mandatory training together, and also run a EFA course. Easily make that an 8 hour day to claim VA? In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t seen that already.
How does claiming VA screw up your taxes? It should just count as a second job (i.e. you pay income tax on every penny, but generally only pay NICs when you claim a lot of days in the same month, like annual camps).
I have no issue with the time taken for the courses.
I take issue with the huge amount of time taken to deal with some of the courses not registering correctly. Such as Responsible For Information (I did it 5 times. And I’ve had to submit evidence manually for all of my Sqn team bar one!)
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It’s not that interesting. Only did it because of how much mandatory courses annoy me.
Anywhere up to 50hrs a year as a supervisor in annual auths. And on squadron it tallies up to approx £55k a year in man hours on those courses for all pers.
In the process of whittling it down to what is over and above what’s “acceptable”.
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Only appropriate way to do this training.
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A cohort of reservists I know have decided to make sure they don’t do anything unless they’re being paid for it, in response to creeping requirements.
And while some may scoff, I think they’re right to. Can’t insist your people are on a zero hours contract and then expect them to do forms, check emails, or do JPA in their own time.
I have a feeling that if they had to pay for your time, they wouldn’t be so generous with it.
What activity is covered by the “VA” these days, if not mandatory activity you don’t have a say in?
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Yeah if it’s online it’s clearly not important.
I prefer the method of “mark as complete once the ppt is downloaded”.
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Anyway, before we get further dragged into debating LMS and training that’s not relevant to new CIs and how they applicants view the org…
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It becomes a third employer, on top of self employed and every year HMRC decide I’m going to earn over £20k from VA and remove my personal allowance from my tax code. Usually takes me about 4 months of phonecalls and emails to fix it. So I’ve just given up claiming it. For the few days I did each year it’s not worth the hassle
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Dunno, that would be a pretty tasty rebate…
This.
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