Local Survey Results on Role Titles
Following the District Teams’ previous investigation into Role Titles, The Scout Association National Volunteer Experience Group has posted an updated consultation on The Testing Hub. Given our previous findings that we fed back to The Scout Association, we are surprised to see this new consultation.
The updated consultation has narrowed down to two options to replace the term Commissioner:
Team Leader
Lead Volunteer
As with the previous consultation, we are concerned about the number of statements made without any analytical data to back them up.
We know that many people already say different words for their role title on things such as LinkedIn or when talking to people not involved in scouting.
This statement leads us to the questions:
As a proportion of those people that list their scouting role on LinkedIn, how many use the official role title compared to “different words”
How does this compare to other organisations, including paid jobs
What proportion would be sufficient to demonstrate that this change is needed
While we knew what our opinion was and that of the District Executive Committee members, we decided to survey our local volunteers to be able to represent their views faithfully.
We also encouraged our local volunteers to fill in the testing hub feedback form.
Survey Results
Group Scout Leader
District Commissioner
Further to the simple question, we asked our volunteers if they would be more or less likely to volunteer for the role based on the role title. We found that changing the role title would make our current volunteers less likely to volunteer for the role - which is a concern for succession planning.
Deputy District Commissioner Programme
Comments
“Change is always a good thing, especially when it is for the positive. But these Role Titles already have a deep rooting within scouting and mean something to our scouts, their families and the leaders themselves. It will be an unnecessary and irrelevant change.”
“Leave them as they are, our parents will better recognise the importance of our roles and the purpose of our organisation with the word Scout in the title!”
Conclusion
With our previous survey that showed that none of the alternatives would better help non-Scouts understand our roles and this feedback from our local volunteers, we will continue to lobby the National Team to reconsider this change.
Next, we will publish the results of our Perception of Scouting in the Workplace survey, which also includes questions that will better help us understand how Scouting roles are perceived by those outside Scouting.
