Awards are a little bit twee and meaningless, unless you are the only recipient that year and had to do something special. This sounds like Investors in People which the company I work for has a plaque, but no one can actually put a finger on what they do, that you wouldn’t expect from any employer to invest in its staff. If this award brings real and tangible benefits to the individual employees who volunteer, other than providing a grip and grin for the company newssheet/website, it would be interesting to know. I don’t see why the company should get any plaudits for something they don’t really care about/show any interest in.
But I imagine it won’t raise any real awareness of, or, result in people falling over themselves to assist the cadet organisations or join the real reserves to bolster the regular forces.
As mentioned by farriersaxe we need an organisation that is worth joining as adults (not just trying to hang onto cadets) to make the organisation more diverse and less introspective and we cannot do anything about that. We are in an organisation that is primarily for youngsters, fair enough, but the staff side just seems to become more and more onerous and demanding. The ATC (probably like the other CF) is a bit like ruling dynasties in history where in-breeding was rife and effected their downfall. We seem to have survived thus far as we have had an history of stand-out activities and are currently hanging onto past ‘glories’, but as these have and are diminishing the welcome mat has to be there for people from outside the ATC and RAF to bring in new blood, ideas and ways of working. Most years at the Wing COs meeting we talk about recruitment and retention and the final analysis is we can do little or nothing as the things that largely result in people leaving are due to, in my in interpretation, a combination of policies and pillocks at all levels and persuading people to give up their free time (anywhere) is an uphill task so anything which makes doing things in their spare time more arduous or less appealing works against you.
Why is this award only for the public sector? If you want to promote being in the reserve forces I would wager that the vast majority don’t work in the public sector, the govt needs to have consensual support not support by policy/law from the private sector.
Apart from a few in schools, firemen, coppers, in hospitals and people working for councils, the overwhelming number of CFAV I know work in private companies/organisations and as these have to make a profit and wrt large companies shareholders call the shots and making concessions for a few employees (extra leave etc) might not be possible. But wherever they work, anyone in the CF getting time off (to appease the respective organisation’s demands) in addition to annual leave is hit and miss. The company I work for gives anyone part of a proper youth organisation an extra week holiday although you need a letter stating why, what and when from the organisation. But I’m the only one on the sqn, everyone else has to take part of 3-4 weeks holiday or do things around gaps in shift rotas.
As an aside, we must have seen something recently about CWC members being able to help officially, providing they do the kiddy-fiddler course and get a DBS. Is this an acceptance / admission by HQAC that getting people to volunteer as staff is getting harder and harder and are looking to fill gaps? I’ve had 2 of our CWC express an interest, which I welcome as they are older and a bit more grounded and having had their own children are more than able to deal with them.