The dynamic between permanent staff and volunteer staff in the RAFAC often seems to cause concerns for both groups. Whether it’s comments about volunteers during training courses or frustrations expressed on here about some RAFAC processes and behaviours.
Without going into specific cases, does anyone know if permanent staff do any training on volunteer management (as part of their mandatory role training)? Has anyone done this type of training and have any good examples of how to manage volunteers from the training or from other volunteer organisations?
I’m not RAFAC permanent staff but I’ve managed fellow volunteers in this and in other organisations.
To be honest I don’t think there’s really a great deal of difference to properly managing paid employees.
Treat your people like people. Be credible in your own role. Listen to the people working at the lower levels - they’ve got a handle on what is actually happening versus what you think is or should be happening.
About the only difference is that with volunteers they might not be able to “turn up for work” one day or other.
A large part of leadership and management theory certainly still applies, but there are subtle differences to the relationship dynamic, motivational factors, interpersonal comms, and a few other bits and bobs.
I usually use the whole “when I say jump you say…” and instead of either “how high?” or just starting jumping, the response from a volunteer is more likely to be “why?”.
Can’t quantify but it, I’d say a large part of the forum discussions revolve around “why this or that”, which somewhat bears this out.
In this organisation (at least) that’s a response that perm staff and even some more senior volunteers can’t understand and are never prepared for - I rarely get a sufficient answer to anything I challenge. With the big push in the RAFAC to mirror certain aspects of the parent force, and with the RAF’s prominent disruptive thinking initiatives, I’m yet to see any similar effort to encourage such in the RAFAC.
Without going off topic too early! I don’t think it would make much if a difference if they did have training on how to deal with civilian volunteers I.e. not military personnel. The problem is the interpretation of Wings across the ACO and the grand plans some individuals have within certain Wings who want to build their own teams in individual silos.
In some Wings, units are becoming redundant because more and more is being taken away from Squadrons and DFs and is pushed into Wing training weekends.
We have great staff across the ACO but if the Wings who insist on providing the PTS on these weekends continue, those great staff will get bored and walk away and this will ultimately damage the unit and cause more closures which in turn will eventually mean a merger of Wings!!!
Give Squadrons and DFs the ability to do more with Wings supporting staff to deliver the training if they are unsure.
That’s a really good example. The expectation of I say jump etc is even stronger because of the military culture that many permanent staff have come from.
There must be frustrations from expecting volunteers to respond as if they were being ordered and then getting a load of questions instead.
That sounds like management of volunteers by volunteers and definitely needs similar skills to permanent staff managing volunteers.
I’d agree that much of the standardisation and over-centralisation of training can reduce the enjoyment for volunteers and therefore their willingness to stay involved. Rather than just running a simple activity on the Sqn, you have to jump through hoops to deliver something generic and often mediocre.
Pretty much why I choose it. There’s a pseudo-militaristic approach inherent across many parts of the organisation - from those with military backgrounds and also from those who think that’s how it should be “militarily”.
Management styles, “instructional” styles, communications, discipline, attitudes - there’s a lot that comes across from those with a history that is incorrect, inappropriate, or just outdated, and then there’s a lot that just plain isn’t “how it’s done” anywhere but Bad Lads’ Army.
I think it’s really important to stress at an early stage of this discussion that the reality of our organisation is that the perms rarely engage with regular military personnel anyhow.
And even more important none at wing or region level have line management responsibilities for regulars.
Only at HQAC and only if they are a specialist secondee would there be this scenario.
Though I cant think of any cases off the top of my head.
Reality is, sadly, there is very little training towards management, recognition or support of the volunteer cadre as a whole.
The organisation should provide training and manage these expectations of perms when they are recruited to join this branch of the CS.
As volunteers we are not here to be ordered around like a private militia…
My engagement with HQAC has been minimal but I will be honest the small amount of time spent with the HQAC team has been ok, nothing to generally complain about. There is often issues within any large organisation where the top of the tree has no idea what is happening on the ground but when you step back you can often see there is reasons behind the madness!!
I still think (personal view) that a number of Wings (not all) have the ability to make life easier for the units under their command. Many individuals in Wing posts official or not are not spending any time at units, therefore their time should be used to make processes that much easier for the unit staff.
If I had the spare time, I’d spend some time volunteering with the Scouts to see how they do it. Same badge, different units, facilities and skills. From discussions, they do seem to manage their volunteers much better. I’m sure there’s a lot that the ATC could learn.
Let’s not forget the influence of bureaucracy in all this. Our CS and also more senior volunteers are far more bureaucratic than those down the bottom.
That’s not to say that policy, process, and regulation aren’t important to how we operate, but when “the book” is all you have as a leadership tool (pure or majority bureaucratic leadership style) then you’re in for a bad time regardless of dealing with employees or volunteers - and even more so with the latter.
WExOs as a more local example are especially bad for this - their whole job revolves around adherence to policy, which isn’t their fault as it’s the nature of the beast. But because of that they can’t comprehend anything other than what is written and therefore can often struggle to empathise with volunteers.
The activity question is a tricky balance.
Perhaps we ought to split that to a “Wing versus Squadron activities” thread?
From my Sqn perspective there were activities that we happily ran locally and weren’t fussed about joining the wing versions.
But there were also those where I was only too happy for Wing to run them. It meant that I didn’t have to find someone with the skills to run it ourselves or pick up yet another plate to keep spinning myself. It was even a relief to have a few responsibilities lifted from me and taken up at Wing.
Before I took up my current post I was firmly of the opinion that the Wing calendar had become too full. So full that it was hard to fit in our own local events.
Now from a Wing perspective, knowing that Squadron’s do need me to provide opportunities that they can’t manage locally I’m conscious that I need to give several options. One course a year isn’t really helping…
The Wing calendar still looks too full as I try to find a spare weekend amongst the other stuff so that we’re not overlapping too much with other events - thus giving the possibility for cadets to attend a range of activities.
I guess the key is good communication between Sqns and Wing. How much is too much? How much is not enough?
One doesn’t want to abandon the Sqn volunteers to do all the work, but taking on too much can have a negative effect as well. Finding the sweet spot that keeps everyone happy requires constant monitoring.