Transforming the volunteer journey

Click here to see how the way you volunteer is changing...

As scouts we know that amazing things happen when we work as a team, that's why Greater London South East and Greater London South are working together to design and implement our local change plans for both our counties. You can find out more about our change team below.

It’s important that scouts is a great place to volunteer, where every volunteer matters, and every volunteer has fun. We want to live this in how we treat each other and take part in our roles. This will encourage new people to join us and for those already involved to stick around. We know that in most areas, scouts is a great place to volunteer, and Headquarters want to use the great things already happening to make sure that’s the case everywhere across the UK.  

Transforming the volunteer journey and the way we volunteer

As part of delivering the national skills for life strategy, we’re transforming the volunteering experience across the nation. We want to make sure our volunteers feel valued for everything that they do and most of all, we want them to enjoy themselves.

To do this, lots of different national teams have been fundamentally reviewing our whole volunteer journey. These teams are working closely with volunteers on the ground (and those not yet involved), to design processes that provide a great experience and makes the best use of digital technology.

We have four areas of change

We’re moving from appointment panel meetings to welcome conversations that will take place in your group.

We’re moving from training to learning and development. There’s some learning for everyone but completing your wood badge will be optional.

We are moving to teams-based volunteering. Each team has a clear purpose and shared tasks.

We will have new digital tools for recruitment, welcoming, learning and adult membership management. These will all be accessed from scouts.org.uk.

Click here to access all our transformation guides

Things to do... A handy list of things you can do to help your group move to our new ways of working

The aim is to:

Have a compelling and flexible volunteer offer that demonstrates the value and benefit of volunteering for the scouts
Ensure our volunteer roles are modern, manageable, and fit for purpose
Have an improved and seamless joining and learning journey
Have more volunteers from a diverse range of backgrounds that reflect the demographics of society

This is how volunteering will look…

The timeline for implementation

The national transformation team and UKHQ have reviewed the timeline for introducing our new digital tools to support a better volunteer experience. They have decided to move the launch date back a few months to build in extra time to test the new digital system and how all its features perform together on scouts.org.uk. When doing this they have also taken into consideration other things going on, like the national membership census, and seasonal holidays. This means that we will move to the new systems by the end of April 2024.

The great news is that the build of all these new digital tools is complete and have received excellent feedback from volunteers involved in testing. The team are keeping a close eye on any issues which come up in testing that could affect the timeline.

Our rollout timeline is:

In December 2022 we will:

Share our plans with districts, groups and units
Update our training advisers and wider training community

From January to December 2023, we will:

continue to communicate about the changes
continuously monitor the rollout our of local change plans
support the cleaning of the data currently held in Compass

In January we will:

talk to groups about how they can easily help with updating and cleaning the records held on compass for the adult in their group
share more about our new volunteering structure and the positive impact of changing to team roles
support District’s in launching Volunteer Development Team (with an appointments focused)
meet with our Training Advisers and Local Training Managers

In February we will:

rolling out welcome conversations (and winding down appointments sub-committees)
complete the launch of District Volunteer Development Teams

In May we will:

share details about the changes to local Trustee Boards (so you can prepare for your AGM)
provide tools to help groups and districts think about how current roles fits into new teams and how you can plan for the future
take a step back, review how things are going, and provide an opportunity for groups to get even more support

In June we will:

Look at what District Support Teams will look like (currently Scout Active Support)

In September we will:

support District’s to launch…
- District Leadership teams
- District 14 to 24 teams
- District Programme teams

In October we will:

move from Scout Active Support to District Support Teams
look at the road from training to learning
identify the I.T. support needed and recruit local I.T. champions
complete Compass data cleaning and check email addresses

In November we will:

sharing ‘Our National Volunteering Culture’ locally
support groups in moving to the new team roles structure
support local readiness so we can hit the ground running in 2024

In December we will:

celebrate successes and look forward

From January to March 2024, we will:

provide support for new digital systems
provide going support
move to the new learning framework
provide feedback to UKHQ to support future development of digital systems

This is subject to tweaks and changes based on information that becomes available from UKHQ during 2023.

Our Transformation Leads and Change Team

Our counties, Greater London South East and Greater London South, are working together to design and implement our local change plans across Wandsworth, Bexley, Lambeth, Bromley, Southwark, Lewisham & Royal Greenwich.

Our change plans and change team is being coordinated by Matt Butterfield and Supported by Bill Gunn.

If you have any questions Matt is more than happy to help you and you can contact him at:
Email - matt.butterfield@southlondonscouts.org.uk
Phone - 0843 289 1548

Amazing things happen when we work together as a team. That’s why South London and South East London Scout Counties are working together to deliver the volunteer transformation changes throughout 2023 and beyond.

Our change team are…

Bill Gunn – DCC and Change Lead South East London
Matt Butterfield – County Development Officer and Change Lead for South London
Lee Curtis – DC Bexley
Jennifer McCullough – DC Lewisham
Paul Cosgrove – ADC Group Support Bromley
Wendy Hutcheson – DC Lambeth
Peter Hapgood – DC Wandsworth
Sheila Howard – DC Bromley
Celia Weban-Smith – DC Southwark
Alys Helm – DDC Bromley
John Sweeney – DC Royal Greenwich
Darren Lodge – CC South London
Gwyn Mucklett – CC South East London
Jason Hagan – DCC for People South London
Di Sprowles – DDC Bexley
Alf Philpott – Chair Royal Greenwich
Charlie Hardman – Wandsworth
Atif Zamir – Wandsworth
Alfie Francis – CYC South London
Kay Francis – Southwark
Hafsah Hassan – Wandsworth
Rosemary Merricks – Lambeth
David Whitcombe – Southwark

Latest update to these pages...

2024
February

2023
December

November

October

the recordings of all our zoom briefings have been added

April

Frequently ask question page added

Rolling out national change

During this year we are implement our areas of change, ensuring county, district and group wide consistency.

To help steer these changes our counties have appointed a county change team which is supported by our development service to ensure that a focus is maintained on the steps we need to take to support our groups, units and districts in preparing for and making the changes in a way that will not overwhelm local scouting. You can take a look at who is on the team in the dropdown link above.