I strongly believe that OCs should be the ones to decide what gets published.
There are many reasons why a sqn may choose to to actively not promote a Wing event.
In my experience, it’s generally not the fault of Sqn commanders, but a little bit of the SMS functionality, and a little bit of poor coms by the organiser.
By default, the SMS events page doesn’t show you that you’ve been invited to an event, so without searching for it , how do I know it’s there? Our WSOs tend not to email you to tell you they’ve added you to an event, which means that a lot of short notice stuff gets missed.
Blaming it on sqn OCs blocking stuff is inaccurate and hides the true nature of the issues.
My Wing introduced “Training Thursdays” VPNs. At less than a weeks notice, and at the same time as my Sqn VPNs. The subject matter had been covered by us about 2 months prior, and we were in the middle of a multi-vpn activity. Should I have just dropped my plans, for something that would have been little or no value to my cadets?
If I’d Lost 25% of my cadets because they had joined the Wing event instead, it would have stopped me from running our event.
This is an occasion when not sharing is appropriate obviously.
But by wsc following up they would clearly see that and that it wasnt just a Sqn cdr being a douche.
If you think you can run DofE with the Wing DofE Officer doing everything and no local contact I’ll have some of what you have been smoking.
Having someone local who knows about specialised activities is key to getting Cadets involved. Just reading that there is an activity on Cadet Portal is not the same as having someone local who you can talk to and who can explain what things are. Maybe I’ve just been lucky in the Staff and Staff Cadets that I’ve recruited or I’ve been good at putting the right person into the right role but my Squadron SME’s have always been willing to work towards getting skills I the areas they are responsible for. (Although I have had the problem with Staff not being interested in anything outside of their specialisation, especially Band types).
I was fiercely opposed to this, but I’m coming round to the other way of thinking.
Would be nice in ideal world if OC’s got a notification email with share/don’t share options and if they don’t respond in 48 hours then it automatically shares.
I like this idea, as long as I can control the number of emails. A weekly summary would probably be enough then with some automation on SMS to share the activities to CP.
I have a lot of sympathy with your view, which is why it should be an easy, no recriminations option to decline an event (if a clash as I said above or other legit reasons). In fact it would be useful to be able to see the feedback (event to early / too late in evening, all eligible Cdts have already done it, clashes with Sqn VPN, so we can potentially make changes). I am mostly talking about VPN or online at the moment.
But and this is the big but, at Wg level I do email out info about upcoming events to all OCs. I can’t speak for other Wgs. So it’s not they they don’t know about it.
Being able to offer the events directly to Cdts and giving Sqn commanders an option to remove them would cut out that all.wg email.
It’s about supporting the the Sqn commanders and reducing their workload and also letting the SMEs fill gaps where Sqns don’t have the qualified staff.
But then you get the “why can’t I go to the Wing whatever, why do I have to attend the sqn fundraiser instead” arguments.
I might organise a bag pack to raise funds for the sqn flight sim or whatever - I don’t need to then spend a parade night justifying why I took them off whatever Wing event they bid for to attend the bag pack. Or why I couldn’t staff an AEF sortie, or provide transport to powerboating, or whatever.
Advertising events you are unable or unwilling to send cadets on isn’t fair to our cadets, and potential will cause a lot of unnecessary drama for the sqn staff.
I said that the organisation doesn’t need 900 or so Squadron DOfE officers in order to run the DofE scheme.
It doesn’t need 900 or so Squadron flying and gliding offices to get cadets in the air.
It doesn’t need 900 or so Squadron Shooing Officers to get cadets on a range.
It doesn’t need 900 or so Squadron BTEC officers to get the cadets a BTEC level 2.
It needs qualified, motivated staff who will use technology to create and promulgate opportunities for our young People, and a who are willing to let go of outdated methods of working.
The extent of Sqns not sharing events on Portal from what I’m seeing goes way beyond the entirely reasonable reasons you’re suggesting.
There are some who seem never to share on the Portal.
And I’m basing this on a period when we’re not doing bag packing, AEFs etc due to Covid.
And if lots of Sqns declined frequently that would still be useful feedback. Maybe we’re constantly picking a bad time or location or maybe my events are just dreadful. I’d still rather know.
I don’t doubt you, but is weaponising the CP the right thing to do?
If a Sqn commander isn’t playing nicely, then that is a performance management issue, surely?
Forcing events to be advertised is the easy, short term function, but not necessarily the right thing to do. Yes you get cadets out on events, but then you still have a trouble causing OC in position.
Deal with the problem, don’t just paper over the cracks.
Also maybe not that helpful. On our squadron our OC rarely knows what the program is or what is going on, it would be far better going to training or adj…
I’m not sure Sqns are actively not sharing or whether it just gets overlooked (so potentially a design issue in SMS) or there is no clear agreement on Sqns for who uploads events. We might be unfairly tagging the OC if it’s been delegated to the Adj or Trg Off.
I still advocate
Default: cdts get to see event
Action: OC or other says we don’t want this one, inserts reason
This might also need some more granular controls at the SME/WSO level so we can invite only qualified Cadets, but that comes back to the point @james_elliott made right at the start of Portal about data quality.
I mean, I’m just spitballing here, but has anyone bothered to ask?
It’s nothing personal to you, but as an OC, I find it really depressing that the default by some Senior “leaders” is that the OC is for some reason actively trying to thwart Wing activities, but don’t actually bother to do the leg work to find out if that is the case.
For what it’s worth, I’ve yet to meet any squadron commander who actively refuses to promote Wing events on cadet portal. That’s not to say that they promote everything, mind.
Forcing a WSO override to promote events is the lazy way to deal with a problem that will only go and manifest itself elsewhere, whilst simultaneously signalling to the 99% of OCs who do share stuff that their leadership team don’t trust them. Cheers.