Is it right that the Corps insists on people to have qualifications/attend courses and then offer so few opportunities because the onus is in many instances on CFAV to do the traning? Who will have the same problems as those attending. If Corps are going insist that things are compulsory it shouldn’t be done by CFAV it should be provided by external trainers. If this then makes it cost prohibitive in either HQAC providing it FOC or passed onto CFAV maybe the policy needs a rethink.
When looking at First Aid as a for instance and Corps training in general, I know people who work weekends and get time off during the week or have work patterns that mean in effect 1 weekend off in 3 or 4 and this doesn’t include the self-employed or people with jobs relying largely on commission like my cousin who is an IFA. If these occur as staff (and I know they do) in the Corps where’s the sense in a policy that puts people under pressure to take holiday, lose money or ‘throw a sickie’ as one of my staff did recently to do an FA course as there had been a moan from Wing.
As FA is compulsory and if the Corps isn’t able to provide sufficient courses that fit around people’s real lives as those delivering are CFAV, should people be able to find a suitable courses to fit around their work pattern and Corps pick up the tab? Personally I’d sooner take a couple of days holiday and do a course locally, rather than trapse all over the place at the weekend, when I have more important things to do. But as I’m FAW and get paid by work it’s not a problem and fortunately it ticks a box for the Ivory Towers. I told my manager about the ATC’s First Aid policy and he laughed as to have all staff at work first aid trained would be pointless and more important a waste of money, when taking into account the training and travel budgets and the real training needs of the dept. The professional work courses I’ve been on are £200 - £250 per day ex travel and hotels. He wondered if he couldn’t charge 75% of the cost of my FA courses to HQAC as they see more benefit of it at zero cost.
I think that now there are so many things where we need to have a qualification (many at personal expense and only for the Corps) and or attended a course that may be more than one weekend, compared to when I started that the adult training requirements / needs IMO to be reappraised. A CO local to me commented that recently two potential new staff said no thanks when he told them about the compulsory training / course requirements. Being a conceited idiot he thought this was a good thing. I’ve not had any new blood as staff for 4 years, I don’t count former cadets as new blood. This is beginning to worry me greatly.
You spend a lot of your message talking about a requirement for a first aid qualification but the minimum standard that the ACO is looking for is Heartstart: that takes around 2 hours or so to deliver and there are apparently plenty of instructors available to deliver it.
That said, you are essentially right but I would focus on the HSE risk assessors course that last a day, needs to be delivered by a small pool of HSE advisers and is needed even if the person holds a superior, professional qualification. This a must if you want to be promoted (I know this applies to SNCO just now, I expect it will also be applied to officers soon)
Perhaps these should be the focus of the OIC/SSIC courses at ATF: As everybody needs to do these anyway, shouldn’t they be providing the mandatory skills? RA can be trimmed to a handful of hours; HS could be an evening session for those who don’t have it (or something better)
While yes the FA minimum is Heartstart afaia it’s not sufficient for staff supervising activities or to endorse qualifications, that needs a 16 hours minimum assessed course. HT may only be 2 hours that won’t typically be on a parade night. To deliver 2 hours of training you need 3-4 hours for tea breaks, prep and pack-up. To deliver a parade night classification lesson lasting 40 minutes, its not just 40 minutes.
The bigger problem in the Corps is that we have invariably been self-sufficient in terms of peer to peer training which is fine when it’s a ‘nice to have’ and not essential to do things, but increasingly people have to have done a course that is invariably pass/fail in order to deliver training or even retain your membership. This puts more onus on all concerned.
I was speaking to the Wing TO before Christmas and they were having to try and get the new FMS course sorted out and was struggling (and must still be) to get weekends when the people doing the training can all commit and give other people enough lead time.
The problem is when traning in volunteer setting is made mandatory and it’s volunteers that are expected to deliver the training, you get patchy and insufficient delivery as those doing the training are volunteers and subject to the same constraints as everyone else. We get 4-6 AFA courses in the Wing each year, run by CFAV which sounds fine, but they can be 45-60 minutes driving and not when staff have the availability. Have these run by an external body and you could demand at least one every 6 weeks per sector.
I think that HQAC have become very good at deliverng edicts about training / qualifications as they know they don’t have to take any responsibility for the implimentaion, or delivery in terms of time or cost as they pass the all the delivery expectations to supposedly ‘qualified’ by having passed a course CFAV, which then puts a burden on them over and above their IMO more important squadron committments. I am supposedly qualified to instruct first aid as I’ve held an FAW for years and even for those who have just passed an AFA are supposedly qualified to instruct first aid. You are joi
If HQAC are going to make continue with the folly of making training / holding qualifications mandatory then they have to pay for external providers who are able to run courses more regularly. However this will expose them to the real cost of training and that’s not a path they want to tread. In the ATC the only costs likely to be visible are a few staff will claim ‘pay’ and or travelling expenses other than that nothing. Start getting charged per person or a contact cost to deliver x amount of training and it would be prohibitive and need a rethink. Unfortunately the people at HQAC have no concept of what the real workplace is like, managing budgets. In the real world financial constraints has meant training has become increasingly on a substantiated need only basis and not on a fancying time out of the office.
At work other than the new starters induction and (if you can call it training) fire practices we have no manadory training or things we have to sign. The occurences of these in the ATC are increasing, purely and simply because there is no real cost to HQAC. I sign pointless bits of paper and look at the same old things every year in the ATC as box ticking exercise. I don’t do this at work. Doesn’t make the workplace any less safe or what happens relevant because we don’t.
Putting things that are time constrained onto ATF courses is pointless.
the idea in our Wing is to deliver the training over a week. ie 2 lessons a night, over two nights, job jobbed.
unless you wish to conduct a “first class training weekend” and do it as part of that…
Should we have Wing training teams who are supernumery on squadrons and all they do is training for things like weapons / shooting and first aid for staff and cadets and remove the onus from squadron staff. These would be ‘experts’ and it would allow sqn staff to just get on with the day to day things.
Some of this could be done mid-week and get away from the weekend only mindset.
[quote=“Teflon, post:5, topic:2123, full:true”]
Should we have Wing training teams who are supernumery on squadrons and all they do is training for things like weapons / shooting and first aid for staff and cadets and remove the onus from squadron staff. [/quote]
And If we had enough staff to fully man squadrons then I would agree. But staffing is a real issue locally as well many here will testify to.
I agree we should have training teams but made up of staff from many sqns but lead by supernumery or you could end up with a real shortage of staff willing to run sqns. My wing has 45 officers for 23 sqns that is less than 2 per sqn. If you take away these staff from sqn to lead and staff teams we would be very very short of officers. Currently it is the willing few being flogged to death trying to balance sqn and wing commitments.
The notion of Wing Training teams would be closer to how I understand the ACF works.
Given the lack of squadron staff which is a nationwide problem, an alternative is Wing Staff Officers become the trainers and support for training. They put themselves up as SME so let’s see that knowledge put to use to benefit staff and cadets.
The problem is there are lot of people who go onto Wing Staff IMO as a place to hide as they couldn’t cope with squadron life on top of everything else and effectively disappear. We are told you must attend this and that, get landed with jobs and yet WSO (who IMO should be doing the jobs) are noticeable by their absence. I remember at COs meeting (which we are told to attend, under pain of death) someone asking if a WSO (ironically their sector WSO) had died as it was the second year we hadn’t seen them at the meeting. This was met with howls of laughter.
It’s funny that they visit and feel quite righteous get bent out of shape about staff not doing their bit, yet they are in a proverbial greenhouse and chucking stones. I mentioned this to one and they started getting a bit funny with me, but as far I was concerned I had the high ground.
We are going the other way with almost all of the Wing posts being filled by Squadron staff as a Secondary duty. Only the Wing CO, Dep Wing Co, Wing Training Officer, WWO and the Sector Commanders are full time Wing posts (6 People Total), everyone else does it on top of parading at a Squadron.
That has to be hard for those doing it and have a massive impact on squadrons. Not being funny if I’d spent all weekend doing something at Wing level, I’d have a parade off and not do so many weekends with the squadron.
Is it because there aren’t enough staff to have a decent Wing staff level?
Not particularly but that is part of the reason, at the end of the day if you don’t open on Momday & Thursday you don’t have an organisation.
What other Wing Roles need to be full time? DofE is all electronic, and run locally. AT is mostly run by Squadron Staff at the normal weekend level and the WATTO should be more about high end activities which is school holiday time really plus staff development. Media Comms? Hardly a full time job, ditto Rafio. Shooting possibly as they have a lot to do, tend to be on the Region SATT and they have Squadron visits to do.
The Wing Staff roles IMO are to oversee what is happening and increasingly ensuring people are compliant with whatever is required in the current fashion and for these to having someone who deputises for them. Having squadron staff doing this as well as their squadron role is in the longer term a recipe for disaster and at some point something has to give, especially if the Wing role leaks into the rest of the week and puts strain on personal lives. I imagine it’s personal choice, but I know from being in the organisation a long time, it’s a thin line between personal choice and people regarded as not being “part of the team” and being disregarded.
At work we have two people who work full time ensure our paperwork for the various accreditations are correct, they do a lot of the background work that was done by everyone. Initially it was done by as a secondary duty, but it became too much. I look after some other things but they are easily done during the day and don’t impact my general work…
But again with the exception of AT and Shooting what jobs are big enough to need a person to sign off as a full time role? since both of these require submissions well in advance (around 4 weeks) there is no need for them to be full time Wing Roles either.
We have significant teams involved in both the big departments shooting and AT (especially AT where we have subject leads in each of the 7 areas we deliver). However these people all do this as they have a passion for them.
The Majority of the Wing Staff are Squadron commanders apart from the 2 bigger jobs above who are Squadron Officers (taking into account the fact that they are busier wing roles and that it’s not practical to do both.)
Ive been in fhe organisation for a couple of decades myself and I think the worst thing we could have is the ACF system (certainly near me) where the unit staff just run the parade evenings and leave the bigger stuff to county. I for one wouldn’t be satisfied being on a unit with no big projects or with being on Wing with no day to day working with cadets.
I don’t see many Wing Staff roles that aren’t big enough as frankly being sqn cdr is enough job on its own, so doing that as well as a Wing Staff role would not make for a happy pairing. I can imagine your Wing Cdr had decided we haven’t got enough staff to have dedicated Wing Staff roles and played the ‘personal development’ card to sell it to COs and others. If Sqn Cdrs have the time to do that AND have a large Wing role, good on them, but it would be interesting to know how long they do both. What I envisage is a revolving door system of people doing it for a short time to ‘develop’ and someone else doing it. Having people do Wing roles for a little while just means confusion and lack of direction, which is what I’ve seen when people have gone between one job and another.
I can recall having a mate years ago who was sqn cdr (when it was all pen and paper) and Wing PEdO as the previous PEdO moved away and took it on as a temporary role. Eventually he threatened make him Wing Staff or he’d walk as it was too much, they made him a WSO.
I’ve grown to find the ACF model more agreeable, as the amount of courses for the required activities that supposedly make us qualified instructors are too few and too far between because HQAC have allowed by design for the onus to be put on squadron staff. It is far easier to have a few staff who are ‘in to’ the subject/area, to deliver things, rather than a number who do things to tick boxes but have no real enthusiasm for the subject/area. There are number of people around the Wing (mostly SNCO and CIs looking to go into uniform) who have done courses for the matrix and appliccaton forms. I can’t imagine this doesn’t happen all over the country. If we go down the matrix route for Officers this situation will worsen.