How We Talk About Our Roles
The Brent District Team has been actively engaging in The Scout Association’s Testing Hub to input into the future of scouting.
The most recent proposal includes changes to role titles across the association; this proposal concerns the District Team as we do not see the benefit of this change compared to the costs; or why it is needed.
Here is the video detailing the proposals:
“Many of us who are currently Scouts Volunteers [sic] know what our Commissioners do, but speak to someone that doesn’t currently volunteer with [the] Scouts and you’ll probably be met by a blank look. Either that or they think you are something to do with the police or military.”
As this has never happened to members of the District Team, we believe this is an example of Confirmation Bias by those involved in leading this proposal. To be convinced by the need for this emotive change to the organisation and structure of scouting, it needs to be backed up with clear evidence for the need and a cost-benefit analysis.
The proposal includes several possible new role titles:
District Leader
District Team Leader
District Lead Volunteer
Head of District
District Manager
District Team Manager
We were puzzled on what basis this table had been produced and what research had been conducted to make these statements. Questions we wanted to answer were:
Why are other role titles understandable to non-Scouts
Why do the other roles appeal to non-Scouts to volunteer as
Why is it important for the role title to clarify it is “about running a team”
Parent Survey
As we were already conducting our Parent Survey, we were able to add questions about this. This question followed those that we had asked about our parents’ understanding of who is a volunteer or paid staff.
We reviewed the statement that the alternative role titles would be more understandable to non-Scouts.
Do you think changing the role title of District Commissioner (the volunteer who leads and manages Scouting in a District) to the following would help you better understand the responsibilities of the role?
We found that in all cases, most parents thought that the alternative role title would not help them better understand the role.
This is contrary to the table produced by The Scout Association, which states that the other role titles would be more understandable to people who are not currently scouting volunteers.
The role title with the highest positive result was District Scout Leader. However, this may have been influenced by previous survey questions, which identified Group Scout Leader as the volunteer leading a Scout Group.
Conclusion
We found from our survey that the alternative titles would not be more understandable than District Commissioner; this is contrary to the assertion made by The National Volunteer Experience Group.
We have sent the results of this survey to Project Leeds for inclusion in future decision making, and we are planning an additional survey to assess the accuracy of the other statements made in this proposal.
