Serving Personnel


‘I love the RAF but we need to recognise keeping up with external companies wrt pay and benefits. People are uncertain of what future offer will look like with the length of time new policies take to come into effect (FAM/childcare etc). Housing is still a huge issue for people, CAAS has just seen us pay more but receive a worse service (and why do All SFAs have to be the worst colour carpets and curtains!!). There are some great initiatives ahead and we have a SLT who are now showing they care by trying to implement these policies and recognise our people more, but people on the shop floor just don’t see or trust this.’


What do you enjoy LEAST about life in the RAF? 15%


13% 14% 12% 9% 7% 5% 3%


Assignments are not long enough


Poor career


prospects in my


Branch/ Trade


Inflexible working


Lack of arrangements


recognition of the


effort you put in to the job


Not


enough time with the


family


Unsurprisingly, public sector pay restraint continues to cause resentment and frustration amongst many of our personnel. Often, they perceive themselves to be the ‘forgotten and voiceless’ without anyone to fight their corner.


Once again, we have been struck by the numbers telling us that they are thinking about leaving the Service because the cumulative impact of fiscal factors and the perceived degradation of the current offer. Our personnel point to the fact that many competitive employers now offer ‘packages’ similar to the MoD (healthcare, housing supplements, training & education, pension etc) and yet again it is concerning to read the number of comments (particularly STEM personnel) from those who, whilst perhaps not about to leave immediately, nevertheless state that they have no intention of serving beyond their present engagement.


Of note, 51% of our respondents said they were unable to take their leave entitlement - 51% of personnel stating they could not due to operational reasons. Most disappointingly, in some cases this included both Post and Pre-Deployment leave. However, we acknowledge that AFCAS 2016 put the number at rather less – 20%.


Career management also figured highly amongst the comments received. Many personnel wanted a far more ‘personal and individual’ approach to their own career management and the rules and procedures are seen by many as archaic and unable to support a modern lifestyle and today’s family dynamics. As mentioned above, this probably reflects the lack of knowledge about many of the initiatives within the MoD People Programme.


8 www.raf-ff.org.uk The


quality of your accom- modation


The


quality of the infra- structure on base


The pay and


pension 4% 10% 8%


Lack of trust


in your managers


Lack of trust in


your senior leadership


Other


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20