Commissioner survey 2025: sharing the findings
Back in January and February, we had 139 commissioners complete our commissioner survey, representing every county across Girlguiding Scotland. The survey was designed to help us understand what it is like being a commissioner within Girlguiding Scotland at the moment. We’re really grateful that people took the time to share their thoughts. We want to be transparent and share the findings back with our members, especially our commissioners, to make sure you also hear the feedback we got and how we are actioning it. In this blog post, I’ll share the key findings from the survey and talk about the actions Girlguiding Scotland are taking as part of the Transformational Leadership Project to build a future in which our commissioners feel happy, supported and equipped with the skills they need to thrive.
What we did
All current commissioners (including assistants and deputies) were invited to complete a 15-minute survey, which ran between 16 January to 11 February 2025. The survey asked commissioners to share how they feel about the role at the moment, the tasks they often have to handle and the areas or responsibilities they would like more support with.
What we found
Nearly 4 in 5 enjoy being a commissioner, and most would recommend it to others. However, it does not come without its challenges.
- 79% of respondents agree that they enjoy being a commissioner, compared to 6% who disagree. Furthermore, two thirds (67%) would recommend being a commissioner to someone else.
- However, 81% said ‘challenging’ describes being a commissioner. When asked to select 3 words that best describe what being a commissioner is like, 83% selected ‘responsible’ and 46% selected ‘frustrated.
- Despite these challenges, the third most popular word selected was ‘proud’ with 40% of respondents selecting this in their top 3.
“District Commissioner is the best role in Girlguiding as you are dealing with the local girls and leaders.”
Commissioners enjoy supporting others, but admin and GO difficulties make the role challenging
- When asked to share their highlights over the past 12 months, commissioners most commonly mentioned times when:
- They supported others in their area, whether providing advice or helping volunteers tackle issues
- Organised and/or attended events both locally and across counties
- They connected with other leaders and/or commissioners, becoming part of a big network from which they can draw support from
- However, when asked about the challenges they’d experienced in the past 12 months, commissioners most commonly referred to:
- The amount of admin they need to keep on top of, especially when juggling this with work and home commitments
- Navigating GO
- The need to chase leaders in their areas, often to prompt them to complete training or submit accounts
Support from others is a key factor that shapes experiences. But some find sharing tasks difficult, leaving them feeling highly responsible.
- 71% of respondents said they feel well supported by the other volunteers they work with. Throughout the survey, commissioners’ experiences in their role were often more positive where they had a team around them.
- However, over a third (35%) said they do not find it easy to delegate tasks to others at the moment.
- With 40% agreeing that they are responsible for more tasks than they would like, this suggests more could be done to support commissioners to share tasks.
“If I am unsure how to proceed with anything, then there is usually someone who can help me, or I can ask for advice.”
“I have brilliant support from fellow [district commissioners] and County.”
Commissioners feel largely confident in their abilities to handle different commissioner responsibilities.
- Commissioners were asked to rate their confidence in their ability to handle different tasks on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being extremely confident. Commissioners most commonly gave ‘very confident’ scores (9 or 10) in their abilities to:
- Organise activities and events (57% very confident)
- Communicate information to volunteers in a clear way (52% very confident)
- Lead a team of volunteers (44% very confident)
- Create an environment where all volunteers feel welcomed, accepted and valued (43% very confident)
- Tasks where fewer commissioners rated themselves as very confident were:
- Making a difficult decision (20% very confident)
- Having a sensitive or challenging conversation with a volunteer (19% very confident)
- Responding appropriately to an instance of harassment or discrimination (14% very confident)
- It’s important to note that the lower ‘very confident’ scores are not because more commissioners are lacking confidence. Instead, it’s because more commissioners reported more moderate levels of confidence in these areas (scores of 6, 7 or 8).
“Dealing with difficult conversations with leaders is hard as you always have to think that they could just leave and then you have a brownie unit without any leaders.”
Commissioners are most likely to want support in recruiting volunteers, both to unit level roles and district/division/county, as well as supporting others complete training
- We asked commissioners to review of list of areas and select those they would like further support with. The top 5 most requested areas of additional support commissioners were:
- Recruiting volunteers to unit level roles (selected by 59%)
- Supporting volunteers to complete compulsory training (selected by 41%)
- Increasing external visibility of Girlguiding in local areas (selected by 40%)
- Recruiting volunteers to district, division or county level roles (selected by 40%)
- Managing safeguarding cases (selected by 32%)
What we’re doing
It’s important that our plans are shaped by the things we’ve learnt from the commissioner survey. Below are the steps we’re taking to ensure the work we do within the Transformational Leadership Project is informed by these findings and these learning are distributed across Girlguiding Scotland more broadly.
Conducting further research with commissioners
The survey has given us a great starting point, but we want to keep collaborating with commissioners to fully understand their needs and experiences. We’re conducting research interviews to dive into the results in more depth and understand the ‘why’ behind these findings.
Designing Lead 2025 around your feedback.
The findings are directly informing the programme for Lead 2025, focusing on the areas where you requested additional support. We’ll be releasing more information about the event in the next month!
Developing training throughout the year
Training and resources in development are being designed around examples you shared. This will ground our training in real-life scenarios you face to provide practical tools to support you. It’s also given us inspiration for further resources we can develop for the Ignite Hub – our online platform of resources to support our volunteers in their role.
Spreading the word!
We want everyone across Girlguiding Scotland to understand the experiences of our commissioners. So we’re sharing these findings in different formats to reach as many people as possible. That way, more of our decisions will be informed by what our members have told us.
Get involved
Feel free to send any questions, comments or reflections on the findings or your experience as a commissioner to Tori by emailing her at hello@girlguiding-scot.org.uk
If you’re a commissioner and want to get involved in the Transformational Leadership Project, come along to our next commissioner drop-in session on Tuesday 20 May at 7pm. We use these sessions to tell commissioners about the latest developments and upcoming work!
