Transforming the volunteer journey

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

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 Transformation Leads and Change Team

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

Our change team are…

Matt Butterfield – County Development Officer and Change Lead for South London
Stuart Sutherland – District Lead for Bexley
Jennifer McCullough – District Lead for Lewisham
Paul Cosgrove – County Support Team Leader
Jason Hagan - ~County Places Team Leader
Wendy Hutcheson – District Lead for Lambeth
Andrew Mole – District Lead for Wandsworth
Sheila Howard – District Lead for Bromley
Celia Weban-Smith – District Lead for Southwark
Alys Helm – Bromley District
Terry Wiggins – District Lead for Royal Greenwich
John Sweeney - District Volunteer Development Team Leader in Royal Greenwich
Di Sprowles – Bexley District
Charlie Hardman – Wandsworth District
Atif Zamir – Wandsworth District
Joseph Shippam - County Youth Lead
Kay Francis – Southwark District
Hafsah Hassan – Wandsworth District
Rosemary Merricks – Lambeth District

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.