It seems to me that the disconnect between us and them is ever wider. We are communicated at poorly and have no voice into a organisation that we support with our own time and resources. I wonder what would happen if we all took some time out. All of us together just to make sure they remember who their customers are. Valuing the volunteer is just a folder on bader it’s not an ethos. Maybe they would then have the time to look at how they treat us and what they expect of us whilst not upholding the same standards themselves.
errrr. ok.
You mean like a Corps wide strike of volunteers…
Yeah.
Nope.
The customer is the Cadet, not the volunteer.
The org is going to go through a lot of changes, that won’t suit some, don’t feel bad if you are one of them and need a break for a bit.
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I’m here for the cadets. Not the perm staff, or even the ones at Wing and Region.
It’s very simple; they’ve never supported us, so we don’t support them. If they want our expertise and experience for delivering courses, then either we get something in return, or we don’t do it.
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I’m not sure I agree with this.
At squadron level, yes.
At wing level and above, the customer is should be the volunteer staff.
This is a key thing. The most valuable asset the organisation has is not the cadet, but the volunteer. Volunteers need to be looked after.
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I half agree.
For me, us volunteers and cadets are on equal footing. I know the Corps ethos is the most important person in this organisation is the cadet but by that logic you should ensure the volunteers who provide the majority of their experience are well looked after.
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Good luck with that!
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^ I fully agree with this, hence carefully choosing “valuable”. I’m not suggesting that volunteers are more “important” than cadets, but more that any individual’s focus (or “customer”) is different depending on where they are in the CoC.
The focus of the Corps is should be the cadet experience. It’s by recognising the value of and empowering the volunteer that we can deliver the best possible cadet experience.
To draw software development examples, many “modern” software firms have “dev platform” (or equivalent) teams who exist only to make other engineers more efficient. They’d (quite rightly) consider their customer to be the engineers they help, rather than the end-user. This doesn’t make engineers more important than the end-user, but it does recognise the value of the product engineers, and (when done well) makes them feel valued.
If we map the same concept to the Corps, wings should be considering squadrons as their customers, with regions serving wings, and HQAC serving regions.
Right now, we’re following the financial services approach to software development: “QA”, “Security”, and “Change Management” put roadblocks wherever possible. No one feels valued, and the customer loses out </specialist joke>.
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To bring this back to the OP:
I’ve heard rumours of a local squadron doing something close to this a few years ago.
All formations shrugged, a new staff team for the squadron was found, and the squadron/wing/region/corps moved on.
While the organisation needs to do a better job of looking after volunteers, no one is irreplaceable.
And that’s a good thing. If you need to take some time out, do it - there will be someone else to take over for a while. But do it properly, by going NEP.
As soon as enough staff at a single unit walk - even temporarily, HQ would rather close the squadron as “unviable” and if those CFAV don’t want to move it’ll be adios.
No one in authority at Wing or above, in my own recent memory and direct experience, has shown me that they care about actioning complaints or preventing the degradation of morale. Too often it’s “like it or lump it”.
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This.
Or.
Its ‘blahs’ trainset… they can do what they like with it.
Such annoying cliched BS.
I have found that recently and as a direct result have left the corps,