Reconstitution

[daftandbarmy]

Interestingly, I was just telling my wife that this may be my last course because the new program is so much harder to get funding with.

Huh...

 

[FJAG]

The CAF leadership do not understand CAF HR. They do not understand that MWOs and Majs don't magically appear.

Sure they do. You just promote the next highest merited WO or Captain. Shazam! Position filled!

Perhaps the problem has as much to do with the overly lengthy development processes one needs to go through to be that promotable WO or Captain. I expect that someone will say I'm advocating lowering standards. What I'm suggesting, however, is that we need to be more selective in determining how far beyond "must knows" for each DP we go into the "should knows" and "could knows".

Nor do they understand that if the GoC tells you you have 71,500 all in for Reg F PYs that you must fit all your Reg F needs within that PY limit. They do not understand federal legislation. They can't tell the difference between legislation, regulation and policy, nor who holds what authorities. They don't understand compensation and benefits, either as strategic leaders or as tactical transactional managers.

That statement I agree with as a generalization. The problem is compounded by the fact that there are so many regulations and policies that with the best intentions no one is capable of informing themselves or staying current.

A CAF GOFO in CMP needs to understand the AMOR to SIP to attract to select to recruit to train to develop to PME to retain to release process, end to end.

No argument

A CAF GOFO in the Army needs to understand the pers management they are accountable for, and needs to get fired when (for example) a release file sits for a year because a CBG is too fucking lazy to do their job.

The CAF needs professionals for management, and needs some public executions for those who fail to perform.

Corporate CEOs don't. They have an HR department for that. The Army has the G1 and Adjutant position for that. Perhaps we should reintroduce the Personnel Administration Officer as a separate classification as it used to be and assign them to all unit adjutant and formation G1 positions.

 

[markppcli]

Regarding Collective Training (CT), we do use APS as the "New Year's Day." The Managed Readiness Plan (MRP) cycles from 1 Jul to 30 Jun, with bleed-over as required. It is known that there will be turnover each APS.

Units should conduct Foundation Training (FT) regardless of their phase of the MRP. For the Reg F, This means that units should train to Level 4 (sub-unit) each year. Units in the Build Year conduct Level 5 (Combat Team/Combined Arms Team) and above with Validation occurring. This training is covered by the Enhanced Warfighting Proficiency directive that units in the Build Year will follow.

The FT order states that "there is no need for a wholesale restart in the training progression cycle", but a commander may deem that their unit needs to go back and cover a given Level/Battle Task Standard (BTS) given their assessment of the situation. If a unit comes out of the Build Year more or less intact, then it should be able to continue to conduct build on what was learned rather than restart. If there was lots of churn then there will likely need to be restart in some areas.

Asking the serving/recently serving members, what Collective Training would you adjust while remaining relatively resource neutral?

Maybe I’m being too simplistic here, but if that’s the case why is the validation / Bde live exercise ( Maple Resolve and it’s precursor) conducted in March?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Maybe I’m being too simplistic here, but if that’s the case why is the validation / Bde live exercise ( Maple Resolve and it’s precursor) conducted in March?

Because it's the end of the FY and they need to spend any left over cash before 31 March?

 

[FJAG]

Because it's the end of the FY and they need to spend any left over cash before 31 March?

I hope that isn't the real reason.

Our culminating exercises were always late May to June. Hell, the divisional exercise RV 81 was in June and got everyone home in time for APS and leave. We always straddled fiscal years.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Maybe I’m being too simplistic here, but if that’s the case why is the validation / Bde live exercise ( Maple Resolve and it’s precursor) conducted in March?

MAPLE RESOLVE, the Level 6 (Battle Group) validation exercise for the Build Year occurs in May. It fits well as the capstone for the training year.

A typical Build Year might look like this:

Jul to Aug: APS movement including folks moving internally due to promotions etc. Units might run courses (dvr, gnr, etc) and IBTS
Sep to Nov: Units conduct IBTS and Level 2 to 5 dry and potentially live. There will also be a UR Phase 2 in there
Jan to Feb: Bde HQ and Level 6s conduct UR Phase 2; units conduct Cold Weather Training/conducts Level 6 Validation at JRTC
Mar: Good time for gun camps in the bases with restrictive fire indexes//equipment will be moving to MR
Apr: Some folks are moving to Wx for MR//Opportunity to conduct Level 5 Live
May: Ex MAPLE RESOLVE (Level 6 Validation for the Mech guys)
Jun: Putting everything away from Ex MR
Jul: CMBG enters Contingency Phase of the MRP. Requirement for retraining would be driven by the amount of turnover. Otherwise the units could focus on retaining proficiency and further developing within means.

It is a progressive plan based around the posting cycle, not the Fiscal Year.

 

[KevinB]

I hope that isn't the real reason.

Our culminating exercises were always late May to June. Hell, the divisional exercise RV 81 was in June and got everyone home in time for APS and leave. We always straddled fiscal years.

RV 92 was June/July (or May/June - it’s been a while) albeit the guns left after the live fire in Suffield and those of us in the Div Arty CP had to stick around for the rest of the ex (or the real ex if you listened to everyone else).

Some units probably shouldn’t have any significant movement at APS if you want to keep them in High Readiness.

 

[ballz]

The FT order states that "there is no need for a wholesale restart in the training progression cycle", but a commander may deem that their unit needs to go back and cover a given Level/Battle Task Standard (BTS) given their assessment of the situation. If a unit comes out of the Build Year more or less intact, then it should be able to continue to conduct build on what was learned rather than restart. If there was lots of churn then there will likely need to be restart in some areas.

This is great but like most things out of CADTC completely ignores reality. A unit never comes out of the Build Year more or less intact, in particular the leadership positions. So in practice you've got to start everything right back at square one.

The new MRP also did not make it a requirement to go to Level 4 live in the HOLD year, just Level 3, but the Division didn't read it and just copied and pasted the previous orders they had written from the old MRP.

Asking the serving/recently serving members, what Collective Training would you adjust while remaining relatively resource neutral?

The easiest thing that pops to mind (that I had argued as a first-year Captain) would be to stop making everyone hit every IBTS every year. You can train everything really poorly 3 times in three years, or train 1/3rd of things fairly well once every three years. The example I'll give are OPs... IBTS for OPs has been reduced to tasking someone to go send up a shitty little OP in the trees across the street to have all the units sections cycle through a 45 minute brief, just to get the tick in the box. Most IBTS has been reduced this because there's too many. If they did manage to catch anything in the brief, they've forgotten about it by next week, particularly since they did not actually do anything hands on.

I managed to fit actual OP training into a 4-day Level 2 exercise when we were doing our dry/live fire for Sections. The first section occupied the OP for 24 hours, the second section RIP'd them and continued building it up, and then third did the same. We were able to give them tasks and provide pattern of life, and had a few of our skilled SNCOs (Recce, Sniper, Patrol Pathfinder guys) try and spot the OPs, and able to have the CSM go around and inspect their work, and actually provide feedback, points to sustain, points to improve, etc. They learned a lot more about OPs from this than they did in 10 years of doing shitty 45 minute lectures, and would not need to do this annually, once every three years would be fine and far more effective than the current modus operandi.

It was mostly luck I was able to do that with OPs, and there was certainly no way I could it with all of the IBTS in one year. Give me a third of the IBTS and I could do something similar for all of them (more emphasis and time put towards the important ones, of course...). Honestly we could have done a lot better training with less resources if not for all the box-checking dictated by CADTC. Sustainment (money, food, ammo, etc.) was never the limiting factor - time was.

It is a progressive plan based around the posting cycle, not the Fiscal Year.

Unfortunately the finance world could never figure that out and never aligned actually split the funding so that you received 4 months of R2HR money (1 April to 30 Jun) and then 8 months of HR money (1 Jul to 31 Mar). This also did not get addressed when the new MRP came around... actually some of the planning factors/tasks changed but the funding model didn't change at all so the problem got exacerbated. It always gets fixed in the end, just causes chaos all year for no reason other than poor planning and SALY'ing it.

 

[markppcli]

MAPLE RESOLVE, the Level 6 (Battle Group) validation exercise for the Build Year occurs in May. It fits well as the capstone for the training year.

A typical Build Year might look like this:

Jul to Aug: APS movement including folks moving internally due to promotions etc. Units might run courses (dvr, gnr, etc) and IBTS
Sep to Nov: Units conduct IBTS and Level 2 to 5 dry and potentially live. There will also be a UR Phase 2 in there
Jan to Feb: Bde HQ and Level 6s conduct UR Phase 2; units conduct Cold Weather Training/conducts Level 6 Validation at JRTC
Mar: Good time for gun camps in the bases with restrictive fire indexes//equipment will be moving to MR
Apr: Some folks are moving to Wx for MR//Opportunity to conduct Level 5 Live
May: Ex MAPLE RESOLVE (Level 6 Validation for the Mech guys)
Jun: Putting everything away from Ex MR
Jul: CMBG enters Contingency Phase of the MRP. Requirement for retraining would be driven by the amount of turnover. Otherwise the units could focus on retaining proficiency and further developing within means.

It is a progressive plan based around the posting cycle, not the Fiscal Year.

The problem of course being that you do MR, APS hits, and now your off to do TMST with a completely different Bn leadership set before you deploy. The. Again I’ve yet to deploy under this new plan, so maybe it solves some issues. I have my doubts given that every sub unit I’ve seen is cobbled together for the tour so any previous training is kind of moot. Also further development simply won’t happen as APS hits, and the following September it’s back to square 1 again. Which I partially understand, it’s the nature of the beast when we have a mass posting season. Part of me wonders if we could mitigate by having postings spread across the year as opposed to one season but that leads to its own problems I imagine.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The problem of course being that you do MR, APS hits, and now your off to do TMST with a completely different Bn leadership set before you deploy. The. Again I’ve yet to deploy under this new plan, so maybe it solves some issues. I have my doubts given that every sub unit I’ve seen is cobbled together for the tour so any previous training is kind of moot. Also further development simply won’t happen as APS hits, and the following September it’s back to square 1 again. Which I partially understand, it’s the nature of the beast when we have a mass posting season. Part of me wonders if we could mitigate by having postings spread across the year as opposed to one season but that leads to its own problems I imagine.

The level of APS churn following the Build year is indeed the major factor in the requirement to retrain BTS items/items. Some units might get through relatively unscathed in terms of key positions, while others might have major changes. School years are one of the drivers of APS.

 

[daftandbarmy]

MAPLE RESOLVE, the Level 6 (Battle Group) validation exercise for the Build Year occurs in May. It fits well as the capstone for the training year.

A typical Build Year might look like this:

Jul to Aug: APS movement including folks moving internally due to promotions etc. Units might run courses (dvr, gnr, etc) and IBTS
Sep to Nov: Units conduct IBTS and Level 2 to 5 dry and potentially live. There will also be a UR Phase 2 in there
Jan to Feb: Bde HQ and Level 6s conduct UR Phase 2; units conduct Cold Weather Training/conducts Level 6 Validation at JRTC
Mar: Good time for gun camps in the bases with restrictive fire indexes//equipment will be moving to MR
Apr: Some folks are moving to Wx for MR//Opportunity to conduct Level 5 Live
May: Ex MAPLE RESOLVE (Level 6 Validation for the Mech guys)
Jun: Putting everything away from Ex MR
Jul: CMBG enters Contingency Phase of the MRP. Requirement for retraining would be driven by the amount of turnover. Otherwise the units could focus on retaining proficiency and further developing within means.

It is a progressive plan based around the posting cycle, not the Fiscal Year.

Which is kind of exactly the opposite to the Reserve Army. Except possibly for Gun Camps in March.

 

[Quirky]

Here is a thought, I know it's a radical concept but hear me out.

Stop. Posting. People.

Will that work or the thought of people doing their entire careers in two or three max places too hard?

 

[FJAG]

Which is kind of exactly the opposite to the Reserve Army. Except possibly for Gun Camps in March.

Exactly right which is why you can never integrate PRes and RegF personnel within the sub unit level. They simply conduct their training at different times. All that you can and should do is create a RegF leadership/administrative cadre at the sub unit level.

March was never the best time for a gun camp in Shilo on account of the snow, but I always planned an exercise for it to fire of MilArea Prairie's surplus ammo stocks before FY end. There is minimal training for the gun line when you have to deploy in plowed out gun positions but it certainly practiced the FOOs. Doubled our annual ammunition allotment through that.

It's probably the same for the armoured corps for static position range practices.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Here is a thought, I know it's a radical concept but hear me out.

Stop. Posting. People.

Will that work or the thought of people doing their entire careers in two or three max places too hard?

How dare you suggest we stop aimlessly wasting money sending people around the Country every 1-2 years to gain "institutional experience" filling mostly bureaucratic and useless make work positions.

Shame on you!

 

[dapaterson]

Professionalization of CAF HR enters the discussion again. Taking a skilled AVN and telling them "You're now a career manager" and delivering all necessary training only after they are in the job for their first year is not how professionals work.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Professionalization of CAF HR enters the discussion again. Taking a skilled AVN and telling them "You're now a career manager" and delivering all necessary training only after they are in the job for their first year is not how professionals work.

And stay ahead of the HR capacity building curve before we skid off of the edge (and over the cliff)

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The Cognizant Center for Future of Work and Future Workplace jointly embarked on a nine-month initiative to determine exactly what the future of HR will look like. They brought together a network of nearly 100 CHROs, CLOs, and VP’s of talent and workforce transformation to envision how HR’s role...

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[TCM621]

Here is a thought, I know it's a radical concept but hear me out.

Stop. Posting. People.

Will that work or the thought of people doing their entire careers in two or three max places too hard?

That's awesome if you are posted somewhere you like. A bad 3 posting is easier to swallow than a bad 10 year posting. If you can't afford to live in Victoria, keeping you there will only mean the release is your only option.

A better solution would be to ensure people can actually afford to live and actually take members wants into consideration. Nothing is more fun that seeing one person who wants a posting staying put and the one that asked for another year getting posted. I think if the needs of the service really required a certain number individual to go, most people would accept it, even if they don't like it. However, the CM shops seem like they are evaluated by how many people they piss off.

 

[QV]

Professionalization of CAF HR enters the discussion again. Taking a skilled AVN and telling them "You're now a career manager" and delivering all necessary training only after they are in the job for their first year is not how professionals work.

Sounds like a good position to be transitioned to the PS where an employee would likely make a career out of it ... and there are many like it.

 

[Kirkhill]

That's awesome if you are posted somewhere you like. A bad 3 posting is easier to swallow than a bad 10 year posting. If you can't afford to live in Victoria, keeping you there will only mean the release is your only option.

A better solution would be to ensure people can actually afford to live and actually take members wants into consideration. Nothing is more fun that seeing one person who wants a posting staying put and the one that asked for another year getting posted. I think if the needs of the service really required a certain number individual to go, most people would accept it, even if they don't like it. However, the CM shops seem like they are evaluated by how many people they piss off.

How many "hardship" postings are there really?

I get sea duty for the Navy. For the Air Force? I keep hearing about Cold Lake and Bagotville.

Army?

 

[Furniture]

That's awesome if you are posted somewhere you like. A bad 3 posting is easier to swallow than a bad 10 year posting. If you can't afford to live in Victoria, keeping you there will only mean the release is your only option.

A better solution would be to ensure people can actually afford to live and actually take members wants into consideration. Nothing is more fun that seeing one person who wants a posting staying put and the one that asked for another year getting posted. I think if the needs of the service really required a certain number individual to go, most people would accept it, even if they don't like it. However, the CM shops seem like they are evaluated by how many people they piss off.

I don't blame CMs for the mess they have to deal with, they spend their time in a rush trying to plug holes and catch-up admin/data entry due to ridiculous processes.

One of the biggest flaws in the current CAF HR system is the lack of transparency in decision making, and the perception that member input is meaningless unless you're one of the "chosen" ones. Members should know how the CM chooses between people looking for a desirable posting, why one person was picked over another for a yearlong French course, etc... The current system of silence from the CM only makes the perception of favouritism seem even worse than it really is.

How many "hardship" postings are there really?

I get sea duty for the Navy. For the Air Force? I keep hearing about Cold Lake and Bagotville.

Army?

It's not so much about "hardship" postings, it's more about "I want to live in Halifax, why am I posted to Esquimalt? Especially since S1 Bloggins who wants Esquimalt is posted to Halifax..."

There is obviously a hardship element to some postings, particularly more rural ones when viewed from the perspective of a city dweller. When my Ex came to Oromocto with me she was furious about living in a small town, having grown up in Edmonton.