Reconstitution

[daftandbarmy]

I think that’s more of a reserves issue. There are far more soldiers from the GTA in the Patricia’s now than from rural Sask. Actually in Latvia my entire section were from urban areas, no a single “rural farm boy” to be found, good think they didn’t get sent exiled to Shilo eh?

There, FTFY

 

[GR66]

Remote work should be embraced for a lot of things.

I know I may have stated this before (sorry if it gets annoying) but this is also a boon for spouses or service couples. It isn’t hard to figure out and costs way less.

You live in Halifax? Cool, we’ll let you work remotely to do a staff job in Ottawa with certain caveats. Your CAF support for clothing, admin, medical etc etc can remain in Halifax.

Quality of life won’t suffer, job still gets done, CAF saves a ton of money on moves etc.

Do all positions that are capable of remote work need to be uniformed positions? Or maybe not the position itself but some of the tasks currently performed by a particular position?

 

[brihard]

That's sounds fine and dandy. So you're relying on geographic centers to raise their own units ? How's that working out for the reserves? You think it will fly for the reg force ? We can't even get people in Toronto/Halifax ect to pretend to be soldiers 1 evening and weekend a month.

Anecdote not data, but I spent a year and a half on class B with my major city reserve unit, and one of the hats I wore was recruiting. I never had trouble filling my spots, I was turning solid candidates away because of our recruiting cap. And in our city, the half dozen units are geographically heavily concentrated in a pretty narrow area of the city. If CAF wanted to physically redistribute PRes units to have a presence nearer to major suburbs - and more easily accessed by public transit - they could hire a lot more. Cities are still full of kids who want good work that’s occasionally interesting and exciting.

Reserve attendance and retention seems to more be about having meaningful training, opportunities for courses and deployments, and reliable summer employment for the ones who are students. That gets back to the old and distinct conversation about quality and relevance of training that we’ve had plenty of times before.

 

[dimsum]

Do all positions that are capable of remote work need to be uniformed positions? Or maybe not the position itself but some of the tasks currently performed by a particular position?

Just from personal experience as part of project staff:

The Proj Mgt Office? Probably better to have it as DND civilians - both for continuity and for their experience (PMP, etc).

The SME folks associated with the project? Should be uniformed and preferably fresh from the community, so they have the best finger on the pulse of the fleet. But, having some SMEs that know "NCR" is good too - as long as they're kept abreast of the current state of their capabilities.

For both, I would say that it could be mostly/fully remote.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Anecdote not data, but I spent a year and a half on class B with my major city reserve unit, and one of the hats I wore was recruiting. I never had trouble filling my spots, I was turning solid candidates away because of our recruiting cap. And in our city, the half dozen units are geographically heavily concentrated in a pretty narrow area of the city. If CAF wanted to physically redistribute PRes units to have a presence nearer to major suburbs - and more easily accessed by public transit - they could hire a lot more. Cities are still full of kids who want good work that’s occasionally interesting and exciting.

Reserve attendance and retention seems to more be about having meaningful training, opportunities for courses and deployments, and reliable summer employment for the ones who are students. That gets back to the old and distinct conversation about quality and relevance of training that we’ve had plenty of times before.

Or you can spend $60 million on the first new building constructed in Western Canada specifically for the Reserves in decades in an area where - for demographic and other reasons - it seems perennially impossible to recruit more than a handful of troops to fill it.

Which is a great example of really crappy planning IMHO...

New 39 Canadian Brigade Group headquarters officially opens - Canada.ca

Today, Minister of Defence Harjit S. Sajjan attended the official opening of the Seaforth Armouries, welcoming the storied Seaforth Highlanders of Vancouver to their new home and headquarters of 39 Canadian Brigade Group.

www.canada.ca

 

[Eaglelord17]

The huge problem is that its no longer 1986, we're no longer chasing the Soviets out of the Fulda Gap, and even if we hadn't divested the vast majority of our conventional capabilities in the past 35 years; they'd all be obsolete in the face of modern advancements.

So until we get folks on AOC redoing the Red Team book to make it relevant to real world experiences i the past 8 years, we're going to have a rough go of it modernizing our way of thinking.

Obsolescent not obsolete. One of the issues we have is we believe we need to have the latest and greatest of everything and if it isn’t then it is worthless.

No one, other than possibly America, only has the latest kit. Having older kit which you know how to use effectively is not always a bad thing, especially if the option is no kit or older kit. That obsolescent kit can also do a surprising amount of damage, certainly more than having no capabilities does. Using Russia or China or any one else we could reasonably expect to fight, most their kit is going to mostly be older equipment or at least older designs.

 

[FJAG]

That's sounds fine and dandy. So you're relying on geographic centers to raise their own units ? How's that working out for the reserves? You think it will fly for the reg force ? We can't even get people in Toronto/Halifax ect to pretend to be soldiers 1 evening and weekend a month.

I think that one of the biggest mistakes that the CAF makes when dealing with the reserves is to judge the reserves by its present condition. The current system couldn't be any worse if it was deliberately set up to fail. It needs to be dramatically changed. What's worse is that our present RegF system is starting to show signs of failing. It also needs recovery action if the CAF wants to reverse the trend.

I'm just spit balling here but when it comes to a work force employers do studies to see where it is that their target workers are and/or want to be and then look to build facilities there. When we started the Militia system, Canada was a rural community and we started there, but even back in the 17 and 1800s there was a clear division between urban and rural units. While the Army wanted recruits who could ride and fire a rifle, it very quickly became obvious that the rural population could not support the numbers required.

Stats Canada defines rural areas as ones with populations below 1,000 which really have no significance for our purposes but the percentage of Canadians living there dropped steadily from 87% in 1851 to 19% in 2011) What matters to the CAF is population centres. What's clear is that Canadians, especially young Canadians, favour urbanization for all the benefits it provides.

Population centres are defined as having a density of 400 or more people per square kilometre and are small (1,000-29,999), medium (30,000-99,999) and large (over 100,000).

As of 2018, Canada's population was 34.4 million of which:

• 6.4 million lived in rural areas;
• 4.3 million lived in small population centres;
• 3.1 million lived in medium population centres; and
• 20.6 million lived in large population centres.

Canadians are clearly voting with their feet with a desire to live in large population centres notwithstanding the cost of living there. If we ever want to break the back of the recruiting problem and to increase long term career satisfaction (if in fact long term careers is our goal) then we have to have a better appreciation where our target recruits want their life to be and redesign the system to cater to that trend. Modern communication systems and advances in training simulation systems are making it easier and easier to cut the tie to rural training areas except for the most extreme end of our live fire training activities. We need to exploit that. To do that, we need to build a much better reserve system within a much better Army.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Do all positions that are capable of remote work need to be uniformed positions? Or maybe not the position itself but some of the tasks currently performed by a particular position?

Setting up remote working for civvi positions is a challenge; with uniformed members it's a lot easier, with the hard part just confirming things like IT support and health services. A lot of that is set up under SLAs now between areas so it's all in place.

For civvies TBS decided that you would have to add some caveats that they are required to pay for any travel from their remote location to the home office. It made it effectively impossible to hire civilians unless the job requires no travel and all training can be done remotely. So instead of setting up satelitte offices for LCMMs on the coasts we instead are looking at hiring contractors at a higher rate (with restrictions on things they can't do, and things like challenges in getting DRMIS accounts).

 

[markppcli]

Double post sorry

 

[markppcli]

There, FTFY

You know some of us got posting messages this year

I can take two busloads of honoraries from Edmonton to Wainwright, tour CMTC, dine twice, and return in a day, in less time than it takes my girlfriend to shop the West Edmonton Mall (first time).

you may be dating my wife…

 

[Ostrozac]

Do all positions that are capable of remote work need to be uniformed positions?

I’m a big fan of remote work. There are certain people of my acquaintance that we should absolutely keep as far away as possible from classified material and from the troops.

 

[OldSolduer]

I’m a big fan of remote work. There are certain people of my acquaintance that we should absolutely keep as far away as possible from classified material and from the troops.

And they are probably the ones that need max supervision....

 

[SupersonicMax]

I’m a big fan of remote work. There are certain people of my acquaintance that we should absolutely keep as far away as possible from classified material and from the troops.

Have you done anything about it beyond bringing this up on an anonymous forum?

 

[Ostrozac]

Have you done anything about it beyond bringing this up on an anonymous forum?

Plenty. I’m a former USS, and I’ve witnessed more investigations, infractions and data spills than I can count. Some of it is accidental, but some of it, a lot of it, is that certain of my peers and superiors lack enthusiasm about security — and they see there are no/minimal consequences.

 

[dimsum]

Canadians are clearly voting with their feet with a desire to live in large population centres notwithstanding the cost of living there. If we ever want to break the back of the recruiting problem and to increase long term career satisfaction (if in fact long term careers is our goal) then we have to have a better appreciation where our target recruits want their life to be and redesign the system to cater to that trend. Modern communication systems and advances in training simulation systems are making it easier and easier to cut the tie to rural training areas except for the most extreme end of our live fire training activities. We need to exploit that. To do that, we need to build a much better reserve system within a much better Army.

Or, follow what the Australian Army has done since the beginning - garrisons in cities (sometimes right downtown), skeleton crews in training areas, and move to those trg areas when needed for exercise.

The RAAF does something similar - they do have an equivalent of the CLAWR but only 1 of their 5 fighter sqns are posted there. The other 4 are near cities (Brisbane and Newcastle). When they need to use the live fire range, they fly their planes there - and it's a fairly decent distance. Interestingly, their trg squadrons are also near Brisbane and Newcastle, not near the range either.

Of course, that would mean a ton of new/refurbished infrastructure in cities. And imagine the amount of people who can't afford places like Halifax, being posted to places like GTA or GVA.

From other forums, ADF mbrs are paid well but have issues affording places near the cities - their PLD equivalent is calculated every few years but still lags since the Australian housing market is as crazy, if not worse, than the Canadian one.

 

[SupersonicMax]

Plenty. I’m a former USS, and I’ve witnessed more investigations, infractions and data spills than I can count. Some of it is accidental, but some of it, a lot of it, is that certain of my peers and superiors lack enthusiasm about security — and they see there are no/minimal consequences.

So you reported it, an investigation was conducted and the conclusion was « no consequence ». Seems like the process took place and someone is a position of authority made a decision. Time to move on.

 

[kev994]

with uniformed members it's a lot easier, with the hard part just confirming things like IT support and health services. A lot of that is set up under SLAs now between areas so it's all in place.

On the other hand, some bases are bursting at the seams, with the number of people on base increasing in the past decade but no associated increases in the personnel working at Health Services, IT, etc, so they’re reluctant to agree to host someone who will work for a different base. They need to provide a workspace (apparently) and swallow the extra resource drain.

 

[Grimey]

Do all positions that are capable of remote work need to be uniformed positions? Or maybe not the position itself but some of the tasks currently performed by a particular position?

For the RCN, a lot of the inland positions are there to provide some semblance of a sea/shore ratio, If only to give relief from constant pier head jumping. Of the shore positions I had outside of the Fleet School, all could have been filled far more effectively and efficiently with a civilian.

 

[daftandbarmy]

You know some of us got posting messages this year

 

[dimsum]

They need to provide a workspace (apparently) and swallow the extra resource drain.

Can they just designate them WFH?