Re: In light of the COMPLAINING around here, what would you
Well I certainly agree with you that people should be given a realistic assessment of the time it takes to get things done.
Other thoughts:
- People who join the RNR are interested in things nautical. There really is no excuse for not getting people away onboard ships and to sea frequently. With the technology available today the RN should be able to run a “Dating Service†whereby ships or courses with vacancies could meet people wanting to go to sea/on course. Incidentally, we seem to have so few ships now and so many perfectly good ships being mothballed/disposed of, it seems to me that it should it be possible for the RN to run a ship on a skeleton crew for the RNR in the same way that we had Dartmouth Training/Navigation Ship.
- Trust people to do the right thing. There is far too much petty bureaucracy in the Armed Forces as a whole and the RN in particular. People should be allowed much more autonomy to sort the Mickey mouse stuff like travel, kit, small purchases and so on out themselves.
- The RN must think very carefully about the suitability and quality of people it drafts to RTCs as PSI’s.
- Let’s not get too fussed about putting people into very rigid branches. We should be encouraging people to make themselves as useful as possible and to be flexible rather than only allowing them to follow really rigid “career paths†dictated centrally.
- Training should be holistic and realistic and non-proscriptive. Training should be there to enable people to do stuff rather than just pass a test at the end of it. There should also be a presumption that all training is useful and that people shouldn’t be restricted as to what they can and can’t do by branch or rate. In a branch that doesn’t normally carry weapons but want to learn to fire a rifle? Fill your boots, it’s not going to make you a worse serviceman and you'll learn lots of other useful stuff as well as how to fire the rifle.
- More leaders less managers and machine-minders. The RN leadership courses are not necessarily suitable for RNR people – and suck up two weeks which cannot then be spent on ORT.
- In some years people can do lots of training and in others very little. Instead of a very rigid allocation of training days how about a flexi-days scheme which allows you to bank training days in the much longer term to carry over to another year?
- Reservists are different; that’s why they are such an enormous asset to the RN. The RN Diversity and Equal Opportunities policy has much to say about valuing people from ethnic minorities and different religions for what they bring to the service. How about valuing reservists for what they bring to the equation too?
- Adopt and attitude of “Let’s spend five minutes seeing how we can do this†rather than “Let’s spend an hour thinking of reasons why we shouldn’t do thisâ€
So in the future maybe things will go like this: Our reservist, Robin, suddenly finds a weekend free. Robin knows that next year is going to be really difficult training wise because of work so Robin decides to look at the “Dating Service" to see what is available†Robin finds a ship which needs some people over the weekend to help out with an AMP over the weekend because they need to be back at sea on Monday. Most of it is cleaning and painting but as a sweetener the ship has offered any RNR people willing to help out a full ship’s tour, T shirt and baseball cap.
Robin drops an e-mail to the ship offering to help and gets e-joining instructions. Robin copies these to the PSI, books a ticket on-line using an RNR credit card and pops down to Pompey for the weekend. Robin has a brilliant time, although there was a stack of cleaning and painting to be done and secure wasn’t until 18.00 on Saturday, Robin met some great people, (the run ashore was a classic) and Robin learns a lot about ship’s routines, finding the way around a ship, maintenance, the importance of securing a scrubber with a painter when working aloft, a good way to run a paint store, how to live down a mess-deck and picks up some really useful leadership tips from the PO part of ship and some equally valid tips on how not to be a leader from a rather petty minded Leading Hand.
Back at home Robin claims back the pay, travel and subsistence against the allowances clearly set out on the Internet and sends it off for payment and fills in a learning log setting out what value there was in the weekend. Next time Robin is in unit the PSI (who asked to be drafted to an RTC because working with the RNR is seen as a good career move, likes reservists and makes a lot of allowances) checks to make sure the learning log has been filled out, and credits Robin with two days flexi.
In six months time, Robin gets called up for GSSR and sent to an operational zone. Robin finds the way around the chartered merchant ship very easily, fits in very easily down the mess, helps out with sorting out the old inflam store which the GSSR team got to use for their kit, starts to show real leadership potential, and saves a GPMG from going over the side of the bridge wing whilst it was being unshipped in rough weather by fitting a retaining strap.
In nine month’s time Robin is down the pub wearing a ship’s T shirt andspinning a few dits and a friend says – “How do you join the RNR then?â€
