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Ordered "to get a phone" / Contact Information [Merged]

Are CAF members required to have a cell phone if they have a landline?  If the answer is NO, and I'm pretty sure it is, then this MCpl is out of luck as far as having her texts answered...never mind in her 5 minutes fantasy world.
 
CampCricket said:
I have a young CPL working for a MCPL who insists that her subordinates use their own personal cell phones so she can be in constant communication with them (and to pass on orders). When she passes on orders, she insists that they respond within 5 minutes to her text messages that she sends to their personal phones She also seems to be oblivious to cell coverage, signal strength, building shielding, service outages, battery strength and the multiple other technical issues associated with cell phone use.

Just for clarity;  is this during normal duty hours and are they geo-dispersed or something?  Trying to get an idea of why the MCpl feels this is necessary and what 'problem' is being solved with this, or if this is just her way of 'leading' her folks.  Not that it matters much, really, to me just looking for some context.  Is this a high ready unit?  Or is this just normal day to day ops, people are in the same building?  Is this after duty hours?

The only time anyone would be getting a 'within 5 minutes' reply from me would be if I was on Standby during or after normal duty hours and even then, I'd be expecting a phone call not a text.  My gut feel is along the line of the people who thinks the MCpl is swimming outside her lane.  I also have some concerns about relying on unsecure comm's to pass on 'section orders' and the like. 


 
Here's my issue with the MCpl passing on orders and such via personal cell phone - could this not become a security issue if said MCpl begins to rely on this exclusively? If there is ever an ATI request, would these members be expected to relinquish their personal cell phones now?

I know it's all highly unlikely, but just highlighting why relying exclusively on personal cell phones is not the best of ideas.  Was there not some mandatory training we all had to do about the control of documents and information that should be coming into play here?
 
I was thinking similarly;  this is the MCpls' *ops normal* at home, and she defaults to that on an Op - using a FB messenger group to pass on O Groups, etc.  I think that is a valid and real world concern in this day and age.
 
Strike said:
Here's my issue with the MCpl passing on orders and such via personal cell phone - could this not become a security issue if said MCpl begins to rely on this exclusively? If there is ever an ATI request, would these members be expected to relinquish their personal cell phones now?

I know it's all highly unlikely, but just highlighting why relying exclusively on personal cell phones is not the best of ideas.  Was there not some mandatory training we all had to do about the control of documents and information that should be coming into play here?

It could just be:  "Ogroup at 0900 at building H, all ack."  or "New timimg for PT, now @ 14:30.  Bring hockey sticks."

But yes. 
 
Back in the day when there were only landlines and some soldiers had answering machines we were called out to deploy with 48 hours notice.  Every member of my unit were contacted and at the hanger with all kit ready to go.  In this day and age there should be no excuse for a member (reg. force/ PRes Class B/C not to be reachable.
 
One comment to that;  if it's a truly a surprise fan-out, people who didn't know can't be held to account if it happens after duty hours and they aren't immediately contactable.  We are not 'on duty' 24/7 from a legal standpoint, despite what some may argue.  This is why unit COs are supposed to publish 'normal duty hours' in Unit Orders/ROs, etc.  CAF members posted to units in Canada aren't required to have a Leave Pass for weekends and are authorized to travel anywhere in Canada during normal weekends.  If I leave the Sqn at quitting time on a Friday and I am not on Standby/Ready crew, my next 'timing' is 0800 Monday (IAW our Sqn Os).

Similarly, during the week, if I leave at quitting time and 2 hours later they do a recall ex and X amount of people aren't reachable by phone, or aren't home with someone from the unit shows up...c'est la vie.
 
I've never given out my cellphone number. I have a landline (VoIP based, but services the same function). Most of the time calls go to voicemail because I'm out doing things or I just choose to not answer my phone.

There's no expectation that every member of the CAF be reachable instantly. There never was. Back before I had a cellphone if someone from work needed to get a hold of me they'd call my house (well mom's house at that time) and likely left a message since I was rarely home. I'd get the message and get back to them eventually.

I can appreciate the difference if you are on a high readiness task. Then sure, call my cellphone, or give me a blackberry. In most jobs, there's nothing that really truly requires the need to interject into people's home lives. When 4pm hits and the troops go home, you better have a damned good reason to push work into their home space. I've pushed back quite a few times to the CoC who wanted to pass on details of something trivial (ie Ops decided at 1615 that we want to do a Tac Vest inspection). Too bad, if you really wanted them to bring them in, you should have told the Tp WOs before dismissal.
 
soooo - who is Siri??  :rofl:


Call me on my personal cell phone and you will not get an answer. Have answering service for a reason.  My phone number was once posted on a board outside the OR and I started to get phone calls at all hours from Ptes about everything under the sun.  When I realized how they got my number I changed it and didn't give it to anyone. The unit had my DND cell number to call me on and leave a message (no, I didn't answer it outside work hours).

At one time we even had people that didn't have any phone.  if the unit was put on a possible recall status it was passed on prior to dismissal and then it was the members responsibility to contact the duty staff every X hours to find out if recalled.  Mbrs that had phones understood that they had to stay near them when warned of a possible recall.

As for needing the cell phone number because sometimes in a disaster landlines go down.  Well sometimes in disasters cell towers go down and power lines go down so the cell phone battery dies.  Radio and TV broadcasts don't always reach people for the same reasons.  Guess that is why we used to have a "in case of disaster either contact unit or report in policy".  Amazing how we functioned before computers and cell phones.
 
CountDC said:
soooo - who is Siri??  :rofl:


Call me on my personal cell phone and you will not get an answer. Have answering service for a reason.  My phone number was once posted on a board outside the OR and I started to get phone calls at all hours from Ptes about everything under the sun.  When I realized how they got my number I changed it and didn't give it to anyone. The unit had my DND cell number to call me on and leave a message (no, I didn't answer it outside work hours).

At one time we even had people that didn't have any phone.  if the unit was put on a possible recall status it was passed on prior to dismissal and then it was the members responsibility to contact the duty staff every X hours to find out if recalled.  Mbrs that had phones understood that they had to stay near them when warned of a possible recall.

As for needing the cell phone number because sometimes in a disaster landlines go down.  Well sometimes in disasters cell towers go down and power lines go down so the cell phone battery dies.  Radio and TV broadcasts don't always reach people for the same reasons.  Guess that is why we used to have a "in case of disaster either contact unit or report in policy".  Amazing how we functioned before computers and cell phones.

There's a big difference between the chain of command posting personal contact info as a "de facto" duty line, and members providing the CoC with reasonably efficient methods of contacting them in an emergency. 

There are times when any CAF member might be needed on short notice, and that requirement is built into the compensation structure. It might be a whole unit activated in response to a DOMOP, or perhaps an individual is required to issue out an essential piece of kit to get a soldier out the door on an important last minute task or course.  Maybe a unit appears on your base unexpectedly (due to some admin SNAFU) expecting to draw ammunition and rations and special arrangements need to be made.  Maybe the MSE Op scheduled for that 7pm pickup gets food poisoning, and a replacement needs to be found.  The possibilities are endless. 

When we activated the our Territorial Defense Battalion for the 2013 Alberta floods, telephone service was down in my neighborhood, but internet was working.  So, I was able to get the word out via e-mail and Facebook instant messages.  Additionally, our RV was not our normal place of duty (the Armory) as access to the downtown core was restricted at that point, so there was a requirement to communicate the new location.  The primary reason this all worked was because most members made reasonable efforts to make themselves "reachable" to their CoC using a variety of channels.  If all comms methods had been down, we might have reverted to visiting each member's house, but why would we when there was a viable alternative?

I am not sure how this works in the other services, but in the Army virtually every unit is implicated in the DOMOPS framework at some level, which means that there is a requirement for units to conduct several fanouts per year.  Why would you force your supervisor to make special arrangements to reach you (ie visiting your house) when a short telephone call, e-mail, or text message would have sufficed?  Theoretically, we are required to achieve 100% accountability on these fanouts. However, in the reserve world we tend to cut them off around the 90-95% mark because we recognize that a portion of our soldiers will be truly unreachable, and I consider that perfectly acceptable for part-timers who for the most part, aren't actually on duty at the time of the fanout. I fully acknowledge that there will be circumstances when RegF members will be unreachable as well, such as leave in a remote location.  Even in that circumstance however, members are required to provide some form of contact information on their leave pass in the event their leave is cancelled. 

The idea of whether the CoC should contact you outside of working hours is a totally different question, but ultimately that is up to the CoC, not the individual.  There are lots of strategies to reduce the requirement to bother members outside of regular duty hours such as sound forward planning by unit leadership, and the establishment of rotating duty structures (duty officer, duty NCO, duty clerk, duty tech, etc.) with DND mobile phones to support the most common off-hours requirements, and a well-led unit will take full advantage of these.  However, at the end of the day, any CAF member could be called to duty at any time.
 
No one is saying they can't be called out any time.  Does a member have to have a cell phone if he has a landline....yes or no?
 
NavalMoose said:
No one is saying they can't be called out any time.  Does a member have to have a cell phone if he has a landline....yes or no?

I would say no, but it is 2018.  To my kids, a phone is a black piece of glass, not a handset connected to a coil of wire on the wall in the kitchen 8).  A member should make reasonable efforts to be reachable.  An order of "you need to buy a cell phone" is likely inappropriate, and perhaps unlawful, but I will defer to the JAGs on that. If that order was code for "you're the only guy I can never get a hold of, and that is starting to annoy me", that is something the member should take seriously.  Context matters.

I was responding to the broader comments from several posters above who thought it was appropriate to make themselves hard to reach in off duty hours, not providing their cell phone number, not answering the phone, etc..  I simply pointed out several reasons why I thought that was not in line with general conditions of service. 
 
RCPalmer said:
I would say no, but it is 2018.  To my kids, a phone is a black piece of glass, not a handset connected to a coil of wire on the wall in the kitchen 8).  A member should make reasonable efforts to be reachable.  An order of "you need to buy a cell phone" is likely inappropriate, and perhaps unlawful, but I will defer to the JAGs on that. If that order was code for "you're the only guy I can never get a hold of, and that is starting to annoy me", that is something the member should take seriously.  Context matters.

I was responding to the broader comments from several posters above who thought it was appropriate to make themselves hard to reach in off duty hours, not providing their cell phone number, not answering the phone, etc..  I simply pointed out several reasons why I thought that was not in line with general conditions of service.

What context is that? That an expectation has been set because 9/10 mbrs are glued to their phones and the remaining 1 is now at fault of some unwritten indiscretion? As others have said, the military has done fine decades prior to cell-phones existing, they will continue on being able to get the job done.
 
cld617 said:
What context is that? That an expectation has been set because 9/10 mbrs are glued to their phones and the remaining 1 is now at fault of some unwritten indiscretion? As others have said, the military has done fine decades prior to cell-phones existing, they will continue on being able to get the job done.

The context is whether that remaining one member was making a reasonable effort to be reachable.  Don't want to buy a cell phone? Fine. Are you answering your landline?  Do you have voicemail?
If so, are you checking it a reasonable number of times per day (recognizing that what is reasonable will vary depending on your position, the likelihood of being recalled, the operational readiness of your unit, etc.).  The role of leadership is not just to enforce regulations, but also norms and values such as "mission first", and teamwork which implies a somewhat equitable distribution of tasks, including the unplanned ones.  Not every indiscretion is going to have a line item in QR&Os.  At a certain point, the CoC is completely in their rights to make some demands. 

The military used to get along "just fine" without a lot of things.  Metallic cartridge cases, respirators, PMQs, and body armor come to mind...As to expectations evolving with technology, of course they will.  If a CAF member went on leave in Banff in 1950, they might reasonably not have been reachable until their return to their unit.  Today, that same expectation might exist if a member was on leave backpacking in Nepal.  Again, it is a question of what is reasonable, meaning both reasonable efforts on the part of the follower and reasonable expectations on the part of the leaders.  Those efforts, and expectations will of course, be contextual. 

 
RCPalmer said:
The context is whether that remaining one member was making a reasonable effort to be reachable.  Don't want to buy a cell phone? Fine. Are you answering your landline?  Do you have voicemail?
If so, are you checking it a reasonable number of times per day (recognizing that what is reasonable will vary depending on your position, the likelihood of being recalled, the operational readiness of your unit, etc.).  The role of leadership is not just to enforce regulations, but also norms and values such as "mission first", and teamwork which implies a somewhat equitable distribution of tasks, including the unplanned ones.  Not every indiscretion is going to have a line item in QR&Os.  At a certain point, the CoC is completely in their rights to make some demands. 

The military used to get along "just fine" without a lot of things.  Metallic cartridge cases, respirators, PMQs, and body armor come to mind...As to expectations evolving with technology, of course they will.  If a CAF member went on leave in Banff in 1950, they might reasonably not have been reachable until their return to their unit.  Today, that same expectation might exist if a member was on leave backpacking in Nepal.  Again, it is a question of what is reasonable, meaning both reasonable efforts on the part of the follower and reasonable expectations on the part of the leaders.  Those efforts, and expectations will of course, be contextual.

This is why we have unit SOP's, to determine how we handle situations like this and lay out the ground rules for the expectations, this is as close to determining what is reasonable as we have.

I routinely turn my cell off to avoid calls from work, I don't hide it and I'm not afraid to tell my supervisor of this. There's a landline and if I'm needed, call and get lucky or leave a message, I'll check it when I get to it. I've gone from a priority 1 unit where launching aircraft several times a day to actually save lives was the norm, to take many steps back to being in a support unit who has never been involved with an operation of any sort beyond individuals being tasked out. Want to guess which one has the highest expectations as to demanding time of me outside normal working hours? The status quo for some is calling up the Cpl/MCpl they know can get the job done quickly, so they call them routinely, that's not a normality I'm going to help perpetuate. I'm not conceding that because technology improves that the expectation for me to work more hours also needs to increase.
 
cld617 said:
This is why we have unit SOP's, to determine how we handle situations like this and lay out the ground rules for the expectations, this is as close to determining what is reasonable as we have.

I routinely turn my cell off to avoid calls from work, I don't hide it and I'm not afraid to tell my supervisor of this. There's a landline and if I'm needed, call and get lucky or leave a message, I'll check it when I get to it. I've gone from a priority 1 unit where launching aircraft several times a day to actually save lives was the norm, to take many steps back to being in a support unit who has never been involved with an operation of any sort beyond individuals being tasked out. Want to guess which one has the highest expectations as to demanding time of me outside normal working hours? The status quo for some is calling up the Cpl/MCpl they know can get the job done quickly, so they call them routinely, that's not a normality I'm going to help perpetuate. I'm not conceding that because technology improves that the expectation for me to work more hours also needs to increase.

I think we are in violent agreement on most points here.  No where did I say that the expectation would be the same for everyone.  It is going to vary based on a variety of factors to include the operational task of the unit, the level of readiness it is currently in, and the position the member holds.  All I would offer is that the better way to handle the situation you describe above is to work with your unit to help set those SOPs and expectations.  Actively ignoring communications from those individuals with the authority to issue you lawful commands isn't exactly conducive to good order and discipline even if you've "warned" them in advance. 
 
Another thing that isn't exactly conducive to good order is demanding that your subordinates respond to a text within 5 minutes. I will even concede that the MCpl's Troop all have cell phones as the only means of communication, whether that's the case or not.
 
RCPalmer said:
I think we are in violent agreement on most points here.  No where did I say that the expectation would be the same for everyone.  It is going to vary based on a variety of factors to include the operational task of the unit, the level of readiness it is currently in, and the position the member holds.  All I would offer is that the better way to handle the situation you describe above is to work with your unit to help set those SOPs and expectations.  Actively ignoring communications from those individuals with the authority to issue you lawful commands isn't exactly conducive to good order and discipline even if you've "warned" them in advance.

For the record, as  you are talking a lot from the PRes side of the house, if your soldiers are at home and Cl A and not 'in uniform, etc' that makes them subj to the CSD, they can ignore your several fan outs a year (especially the ones no one is told about) and there's nada you can do about it.

Your examples above about MSE ops getting sick, or someone needing a last minute kit issue, etc.  In the Reg Force, if not all then MOST units on base will have a duty person.  Duty Medical, Duty Supply, Duty Chaplain, standby crews for the flyers, etc etc etc.

Trust me;  I've spent a great amount of time either (1) deployed / away from home or (2) on Ready crew on the weekends when I have not been away.  On the rare weekend I wasn't either away or on Ready crew, the CofCs likelihood of getting ahold of me between 1600 Friday and 0800 Monday would have been SLIM.  Why?  Because I know there's already a crew on standby, and the solution to the Sqn's manning issues, if there are any, are not the complete destruction of my life outside of work.

For all the unforecasted ammo and kit issues, etc, that is what Duty people are for.  :2c:
 
Eye In The Sky said:
On the rare weekend I wasn't either away or on Ready crew, the CofCs likelihood of getting ahold of me between 1600 Friday and 0800 Monday would have been SLIM.  Why?  Because I know there's already a crew on standby, and the solution to the Sqn's manning issues, if there are any, are not the complete destruction of my life outside of work.

Good thing there wasn't a war that required full mobilization to start on one those weekends to inconvenience you...
 
Eye In The Sky said:
For the record, as  you are talking a lot from the PRes side of the house, if your soldiers are at home and Cl A and not 'in uniform, etc' that makes them subj to the CSD, they can ignore your several fan outs a year (especially the ones no one is told about) and there's nada you can do about it.

Well, not quite nada, but we definitely lack the "stick" of the CSD in those circumstances.  We have a hard time getting soldiers out for certain types of tasks, but for the most part we can get them on the phone. This is completely compatible with a part time terms of service model...guys with good civvie jobs don't go on advance party for weekend ex's.  The general concept is that you encourage the people who want to play to stay, and those who don't to move along.  We have other levers such as peer pressure, finding mutually beneficial employment in line with the member's availability, and when appropriate, ED&T or transfer to the Supp Res. 

Eye In The Sky said:
Your examples above about MSE ops getting sick, or someone needing a last minute kit issue, etc.  In the Reg Force, if not all then MOST units on base will have a duty person.  Duty Medical, Duty Supply, Duty Chaplain, standby crews for the flyers, etc etc etc.

Trust me;  I've spent a great amount of time either (1) deployed / away from home or (2) on Ready crew on the weekends when I have not been away.  On the rare weekend I wasn't either away or on Ready crew, the CofCs likelihood of getting ahold of me between 1600 Friday and 0800 Monday would have been SLIM.  Why?  Because I know there's already a crew on standby, and the solution to the Sqn's manning issues, if there are any, are not the complete destruction of my life outside of work.

For all the unforecasted ammo and kit issues, etc, that is what Duty people are for.  :2c:

I completely agree that properly managed duty rotations can mitigate a lot of the unplanned tasks that come up, and your desire to protect some degree of work life balance.  We spend a lot of time managing that in the PRes because if you create a schedule that is too packed, most soldiers will start to pick and choose what they show up for, and the most committed ones will simply give up all of their weekends and burn out. 

I guess all I would say is that if the system was working properly, your CoC would know to leave you alone, and that you would answer any call from them because you have some confidence that if they are calling on the weekend, it must be important. 
 
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