FEATURES
Service Life and the Future
The Chief of Staff for Personnel (COS Pers) looks after the interests of our servicemen and women and their families. It is such abusy time and Air Vice-Marshal Chris Elliot’s teams are working tirelessly to improve Service life and keep people connected. Envoy magazine talks to the AVM exclusively about her thoughts regarding our families concerns for Service life and the future.
Families have raised concerns over the lack of flexibility for their airmen and women to support family life. What is the RAF doing about it?
The RAF recognises the need for aquality of life and Iamexcited to say that the RAF has been able to introduce arange of policies over the past 18 months to assist our personnel to achieve an improved work-life balance. Iunderstand that flexibility in the workplace is not aone size
fits all model, therefore, Iencourage local management discretion over short-term, ad-hoc arrangements without the need for adopting formal administrative processes. For those who wish longer-term and more frequent flexible working patterns, they can request to adopt working practices which include compressed hours, variable start and finish times or working from home. I‘m also cognisant that for some of our personnel, flexible working –doing the same amount of work but in adifferent way –isnot always the solution. To address this, we have introduced aFlexible Duties (FD) trial, which runs until 31 Mar 19 and is open to all RAF Regular personnel but does not include RAF personnel working in Defence Equipment and Support. In essence, the Trial is looking to explore new forms of flexible working by providing participating personnel with some protection from deployment in addition to allowing less than full time working. These additional
AVMChris Elliot.
flexible working measures, which are due to come into effect in 2019, will be introduced into Parliament via the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill.
Forsome families, shared parental leave is seen as complex and inaccessible, and partners in the Service are unlikely to have it approved anyway due to Service need. What is the RAF’s view on this?
Shared Parental Leave was introduced by the Government in 2014 and allows the mother or primary adopter to share their maternity or adoption leave with their partner.Wehave been working hard over the last six months to simplify our advice and processes so they are better understood. The MOD have implemented policies which allow us to pay our personnel above the statutory rate. And, if aservice person has their Shared Parental Leave deferred due to operational commitments, it can be taken outside of the 12-month limit and is also paid at full
pay.Please speak to your Unit HR staff for further advice.
Childcare is abig concern for Service Families, both its availability and costs in certain areas of the
country.Does the RAF recognise this and what measures is it putting in place to offer support?
Being aworking mother,this is atopic close to my heart. The availability of accessible and affordable childcare is an issue that affects all parents and can be
“Childcare is an issue that affects all parents and can be acause of particular concern to Service Families 8
Envoy Autumn 2017 ”
raf-ff.org.uk
Crown Copyright 2017.
Crown Copyright 2017.
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