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

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.