Flexible working in the RAF

[ricardian]

This is an announcement in 2017 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flexible-working-for-armed-forces)

And here's a handy guide to how flexible working will work (https://nff.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2920_17RD-Flexi-Working-Bklt-003.pdf)

Thank goodness I left in 1973!

[Bob Viking]

I’m afraid I’m going to say it before someone else does.

Thank God you left in 1973.

I mean no offence but if you can’t see how this could be a good thing (not for everyone clearly) then you probably don’t belong in the RAF of 2018.

Shock, horror I know, but times have changed and this will potentially keep people who might otherwise have left.

Mine may not be the ‘trendy’ viewpoint on this forum but it is maybe a touch more enlightened.

BV

[glad rag]

I’m afraid I’m going to say it before someone else does.

Thank God you left in 1973.

I mean no offence but if you can’t see how this could be a good thing (not for everyone clearly) then you probably don’t belong in the RAF of 2018.

Shock, horror I know, but times have changed and this will potentially keep people who might otherwise have left.

Mine may not be the ‘trendy’ viewpoint on this forum but it is maybe a touch more enlightened.

BV

How's that going to work them Bob?

Or more to the point, who's left to take up the slack??

[Bob Viking]

It’s easy to see problems. I think it’s much more clever to find solutions. This might be one of them.

As I said, it won’t work for everyone and in every situation but there are probably many places where this could mean one less straw on the camel’s back.

BV

[VinRouge]

How's that going to work them Bob?

Or more to the point, who's left to take up the slack??
Auxilliary/reserve staff to meet the 20/25/30 % contract shortfall. Service gets two opinions and two individuals available during wartime if needed due to the needs of the country. Experienced salts get to take 1 month off in 4 or one week off in 4 and actually enjoy family life as opposed to having their spare time filled with the bollocks the service currently manages to.

It's a really positive move. The service gets individuals who are refreshed from enjoying their time away from overstretch or perhaps enjoy 2 concurrent careers where both organisations can benefit from the experience.

All well and good bleating, but I bet you didn't have your pension smashed to pay for the previous generation promising themselves too much and now refusing to pay for it.

[Alber Ratman]

It’s easy to see problems. I think it’s much more clever to find solutions. This might be one of them.

As I said, it won’t work for everyone and in every situation but there are probably many places where this could mean one less straw on the camel’s back.

BV

Wise words Bob, of course there will be constrints for operational reasons and the document states that. However I argee with yor first statement Bob. I bet he never had to work for two whole months, 12 hours a day (or make that nights), get a break for a week then have to do the same 24/7 shift again for another two months. I was never so more pyhiscally or mentally exhausted after that. That was my time at the COB for my last OOA. The real stress of the modern RAF to all the old duffers whom think they worked harder.

[Melchett01]

It’s easy to see problems. I think it’s much more clever to find solutions. This might be one of them.

As I said, it won’t work for everyone and in every situation but there are probably many places where this could mean one less straw on the camel’s back.

BV

I think to some extent this just formalises what some of the more human bosses already practice. My current unit, and a couple of others I've served on, are frankly a bit of a thrashing due to the constant Ops tempo. The bosses realise this and that whilst you can do a 6 month OOA at a sprint, trying to maintain that in the main HQs for 3-5 years just isn't going to work. Add on weekly commuting and frankly it's a recipe for retention disaster. My current boss knows I am on a weekly commute and therefore don't usually get a full weekend if I'm returning Sunday night; he also knows there is another unit reasonably close to home which we do have relatively frequent interaction with. So rather than VTCs he encourages me to go there for meetings. It means I get an extra night at home mid week or a full weekend if the meeting falls on a Monday. It's a small gesture but it's appreciated.

What I think would be revolutionary and a real retention positive move would be something concerning the Enhanced Leave and Career Intermissions. Rather than saying you can have 50 days leave in a block, but it comes off your leave account, why not reserve that for long serving personnel who hit a milestone of x years service and give them the 50 days as a thank you. Done in between tours it would be easier to manage than creating a gap mid-tour. Likewise, Career Intermissions would be massively beneficial, both in terms of recharging batteries or getting out to do something different, learn new skills, gain new experiences etc all of which would benefit the organisation when you return. But show me who these days can realistically afford to take a year off unpaid? Unless of course you disappear off to the Far East and pay peanuts for beer and peanuts on a tropical island somewhere! Unfortunately I don't see either of those undeniably retention positive measures ever being implemented in that way. Some soulless Dementor from J8 will have consulted his spreadsheet before declaring it un-affordable.

Where this policy will fall down is if it doesn't appear to be equitable, so skewed towards those with families leaving the singlies and those without children to pick up the slack whilst the parents disappear off.

[minigundiplomat]

...actually enjoy family life as opposed to having their spare time filled with the bollocks the service currently manages to

Nail - Head.

[Evalu8ter]

The UK military has to adapt and move with the times - if only to reflect the society it serves and the expectations of both those already serving and those high-calibre individuals we wish to recruit and retain. Whereas it will always be (comparatively) simple to recruit aircrew, we need to accept that other roles, including, increasingly Cyber/IT/J6, we will face stiff competition for talent. My son is about to read Computer Science at Uni and wants a career in SW development or Cyber; he could not be less interested in joining up as the "offer" is nothing like as strong as the Ts and Cs promised by Google, Amazon or any other number of "Millennial Friendly" tech companies. I still spend plenty of time with friends and colleagues - they often seem fatigued and increasingly fatalistic about the direction of travel. I've offered to help out with a couple of niche areas where I'm SQEP, but there's no simple mechanism for employing me on an ad hoc basis. Perhaps the VeRR scheme (Volunteer ex-Regular Reserve), if expanded RAF wide, may enable those with some time to spare the opportunity to exploit our experience without the complications or commitment that other forms of reserve service bring?

[OldnDaft]

Perhaps the VeRR scheme (Volunteer ex-Regular Reserve), if expanded RAF wide, may enable those with some time to spare the opportunity to exploit our experience without the complications or commitment that other forms of reserve service bring?

The Base Support Group Trial is being rolled out across the whole RAF so there will be a number of opportunities for short term work at Units. Another positive move I feel.

[NutLoose]

So in away its what we used to do in the past at section level if someone needed time off to do something and when the RAF had sufficent manning to allow it.

[MPN11]

Look back at my married Service life, with a serving wife, I would have applauded some of the flexibility this initiative would have offered. We had some 15 years of embuggerance, involving at various times long weekend commutes and difficulty in even getting leave at the same time. However, as noted upthread, some managers do recognise personal issues, whereas others don't. Some examples:

Weekend commute, Uxbridge to Locking, working at CAA/NATS. My boss allowed me to aggregate my weekly working hours, and thus drive away from Central London at lunchtime on Friday instead of getting mangled by weekend traffic. I would reach Locking in time for Happy Hour ;)
Weekend commute, Uxbridge to Brampton, working at HQ 11 Gp. My boss wouldn't countenance me leaving at 1600 on Friday to beat the A1 mayhem (Hatfield flyover under construction etc.). "If I allowed that, everyone would want to leave early". Instead I would regularly arrange Staff visits to 11 Gp stations (Binbrook or Coningsby, usually) on Fridays as a workaround, obviously finishing around lunchtime!
"Career Intermission". ISTR the RAAF had this arrangement decades ago - accumulated annual leave used to take a LONG break at mid-career point to really refresh the individual before resume the fast run to pension time.
My wife will never forget her posting while I was 'down south' at Stanley (4 months on 7-day weeks and 12+ hour days). She finished work at Cranwell on Friday afternoon, and started work at West Drayton on Monday morning ... and during the interval she had to move OMQ effectively on her own [family mucked in as best they could]. A bit of flexibility by 'management'/RAF PMC could have alleviated that quite easily.

I can see the concept producing 'challenges', but there should IMO be a parallel effort in creating 'solutions'. Overall it seems to me a very good idea.

[glad rag]

Wise words Bob, of course there will be constrints for operational reasons and the document states that. However I argee with yor first statement Bob. I bet he never had to work for two whole months, 12 hours a day (or make that nights), get a break for a week then have to do the same 24/7 shift again for another two months.


If ^that^ was directed at myself then I have to disappoint you.

You Bet Wrong. Very Wrong.

These blue skies ideals look very good on paper, what with reservists pilling in to do their 12/7 for months on end; however looking at the last snapshot of service life I had, back in march, the idea that there is any slack [and I'll emphasise ~I'm talking about the aircraft technical trades here] to allow this to actually work are fantasy.

If it can be made to work, without others having to take the strain, even a tiny little bit, then good, but it'd better be applied equally across the board.

[Easy Street]

The trouble with contractorisation, PFI, Base Support Groups, part-time workers, career intermissions, home commitment reserves and all the other retention and gap-filling initiatives is that plain old-fashioned regulars face an ever-intensifying treadmill of extended front-line tours, deployments and forced moves on promotion. Many of the second- and third-line roles that used to provide respite / career development / in-place promotion opportunities are now unavailable to them. The consequences include narrowness of experience and retention difficulties among regulars, and hence a greater need for hired expertise and retention and gap-filling initiatives. A self-perpetuating problem from which a leader with Trenchardian vision will be needed to extricate us...

... oh dear!

[ivor toolbox]

The trouble with contractorisation, PFI, Base Support Groups, part-time workers, career intermissions, home commitment reserves and all the other retention and gap-filling initiatives is that plain old-fashioned regulars face an ever-intensifying treadmill of extended front-line tours, deployments and forced moves on promotion. Many of the second- and third-line roles that used to provide respite / career development / in-place promotion opportunities are now unavailable to them. The consequences include narrowness of experience and retention difficulties among regulars, and hence a greater need for hired expertise and retention and gap-filling initiatives. A self-perpetuating problem from which a leader with Trenchardian vision will be needed to extricate us...

... oh dear!

Ah. the downside of the front line first policy. well said.

Ttfn

[ShyTorque]

My Boss (1980s) announced: "Good news, chaps - there will now be two shifts".

What he didn't tell us was that we all ended up working both of them.

[Jabba_TG12]

I’m afraid I’m going to say it before someone else does.

Thank God you left in 1973.

I mean no offence but if you can’t see how this could be a good thing (not for everyone clearly) then you probably don’t belong in the RAF of 2018.

Shock, horror I know, but times have changed and this will potentially keep people who might otherwise have left.

Mine may not be the ‘trendy’ viewpoint on this forum but it is maybe a touch more enlightened.

BV

Enlightened it may well be in civvy street Bob, and there are numerous opportunities for civilian employers to embrace and develop flexible working that would pay many dividends in many ways.

The military, as you may choose to omit here, is not the same as a civilian employer in this respect. For every one person in uniform that undertakes flexi working, then it means that either their post could easily be civilianised and replaced by a civil servant who can then work flexi, or someone else in uniform has to pick up the slack for their indulgence.

Taken to its logical extreme, it means some are going to get sh@t on for the benefits of the enlightened few. Like a lot of things in todays air force, I cant see that flying.

[Jabba_TG12]

Auxilliary/reserve staff to meet the 20/25/30 % contract shortfall. Service gets two opinions and two individuals available during wartime if needed due to the needs of the country. Experienced salts get to take 1 month off in 4 or one week off in 4 and actually enjoy family life as opposed to having their spare time filled with the bollocks the service currently manages to.

It's a really positive move. The service gets individuals who are refreshed from enjoying their time away from overstretch or perhaps enjoy 2 concurrent careers where both organisations can benefit from the experience.

All well and good bleating, but I bet you didn't have your pension smashed to pay for the previous generation promising themselves too much and now refusing to pay for it.

The services always managed to fill your spare time with bollocks. It was and probably still is an occupational hazard. What was the old saying "if you cant take a joke, you shouldnt have joined"?

Aux and Reserves are all well and good at a local/station level during normal peacetime. Soon as the stretch starts to come though, there'll only be the one source to pick up that demand and it wont be from the Aux or Reserves. Plus, as we all know from our times in the service, what starts out as a stop gap often becomes the established norm because it papers over fundamental cracks and kicks the can further down the road until some other sap with scrambled egg on his hat becomes responsible for it, especially out of his budget, as opposed to the incumbent who dreamed it up while on his way to £300 a day in the HoL, membership of Common Purpose and "retiring" on full pay. If you can afford to source, hire, keep and pay reserves, you can afford to hire, train and develop regulars as well.

There is only one way in this life of enjoying a career devoid of somebody elses "bollocks", however you define that - and that is to work for yourself as opposed to working for HMG or for someone elses company. Dont appreciate your spare time being filled up with bollocks - dont join up.

And as for pensions... final salary schemes were all well and good when we didnt live so damned long and when the population wasn't as big as it is now. Private schemes were nuked by Brown and Robinson in 1997 and have never recovered since; no one has the guts to confront the pachyderms in the room of migration, stifled wage inflation due to labour market over supply, a lower tax take as a result and the unwillingness to modernise the tax code to adapt to the vagaries of globalised businesses. Its just yet another can to be kicked down the road.
Those who contributed to those final salary schemes back in the day did so honestly, after having been told that if they paid for a lifetime into it that they would get what was promised at the end of it, when it was their time to retire. They just did as they were told, and did not reasonably expect to get continuously dicked for the bill for it once they'd retired. Especially when those who can contribute more, but do not because they're not the easy targets, particularly global corporate entities, get away with murder by comparison, compared to the self employed and those hoovered up by IR35 or underpriced by cheap labour from overseas.

Then again, no one bothered voting for anything else but more of the same. And the one thing they all promised you is that they'd spend more money indulging your every whim from cradle to grave so you dont have to. Which, you all naturally thought, would either come for free or that some other nameless sap would get jacked to pay for it, while it employs legions of CBA's who do the bare minimum of delivering a service not to get fired while extracting every single personal, professional and financial benefit that they can for themselves. We often get what we voted for and then moan about it afterwards. Its the British way.

[NutLoose]

Even shifts in my time caused resentment with the rest of the station, we did 12 hour shifts 3 days 3 nights 6 off, no weekends, no bank holidays, if you wanted to take leave you had to put in days on your days off too so if you took say a 6 day shift off you had to add 6 days leave on your off time too and put in 12 days off. The station hated it and all they saw was us having 6 days off, oblivious to the fact the first day you slept and struggled to get your clock back on track, coupled with the fact if you added up bank holidays, weekends and extra day hours worked those station personal got more time off than we did.

[Bob Viking]

I think you missed the part where I said it is not for everyone.

I don’t expect it to work for all branches and trades. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how it could work for some though.

BV

[Blacksheep]

"Good news, chaps - there will now be two shifts".We had two shifts at Northolt in the late 70s.
Both shifts covered alternate days for 24 hours on a seven days a week rotation. Saturdays and Sundays were "slack time" - you only had to go in for the departures and arrivals. .
That's why I left.

Flexi-time would have been very much appreciated and I might have stayed in.

[Jabba_TG12]

I think you missed the part where I said it is not for everyone.

I don’t expect it to work for all branches and trades. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how it could work for some though.

BV
Mainly the ones that have been civilianised already or are about to be, I dont doubt...

[glad rag]

The services always managed to fill your spare time with bollocks. It was and probably still is an occupational hazard. What was the old saying "if you cant take a joke, you shouldnt have joined"?

Aux and Reserves are all well and good at a local/station level during normal peacetime. Soon as the stretch starts to come though, there'll only be the one source to pick up that demand and it wont be from the Aux or Reserves. Plus, as we all know from our times in the service, what starts out as a stop gap often becomes the established norm because it papers over fundamental cracks and kicks the can further down the road until some other sap with scrambled egg on his hat becomes responsible for it, especially out of his budget, as opposed to the incumbent who dreamed it up while on his way to £300 a day in the HoL, membership of Common Purpose and "retiring" on full pay. If you can afford to source, hire, keep and pay reserves, you can afford to hire, train and develop regulars as well.

There is only one way in this life of enjoying a career devoid of somebody elses "bollocks", however you define that - and that is to work for yourself as opposed to working for HMG or for someone elses company. Dont appreciate your spare time being filled up with bollocks - dont join up.

And as for pensions... final salary schemes were all well and good when we didnt live so damned long and when the population wasn't as big as it is now. Private schemes were nuked by Brown and Robinson in 1997 and have never recovered since; no one has the guts to confront the pachyderms in the room of migration, stifled wage inflation due to labour market over supply, a lower tax take as a result and the unwillingness to modernise the tax code to adapt to the vagaries of globalised businesses. Its just yet another can to be kicked down the road.
Those who contributed to those final salary schemes back in the day did so honestly, after having been told that if they paid for a lifetime into it that they would get what was promised at the end of it, when it was their time to retire. They just did as they were told, and did not reasonably expect to get continuously dicked for the bill for it once they'd retired. Especially when those who can contribute more, but do not because they're not the easy targets, particularly global corporate entities, get away with murder by comparison, compared to the self employed and those hoovered up by IR35 or underpriced by cheap labour from overseas.

Then again, no one bothered voting for anything else but more of the same. And the one thing they all promised you is that they'd spend more money indulging your every whim from cradle to grave so you dont have to. Which, you all naturally thought, would either come for free or that some other nameless sap would get jacked to pay for it, while it employs legions of CBA's who do the bare minimum of delivering a service not to get fired while extracting every single personal, professional and financial benefit that they can for themselves. We often get what we voted for and then moan about it afterwards. Its the British way.
:D :D :D :D

[Alber Ratman]

Glad rag, my comments were not aimed at your point whatsoever. I know there isn't the slack, that was killed years ago with contracting out depth maintenance.