Veterans work | Recognising the potential of ex-service personnel
Foreword
By Chris Recchia, Partner and lead for Deloitte’s Military Transition and Talent Programme As a veteran myself, I feel very passionate about maximising the potential of the UK’s veteran population. I joined the Army as a soldier at 16 and had an enjoyable and fulfilling career in the armed forces, leaving as a Captain after 12 years. Looking back, though, I found the prospect of transitioning into civilian life very daunting and, like many veterans, as difficult as any of the challenges I faced while serving. I’ve been lucky enough to forge a second career in business. But, as you will find in the pages of this report, many veterans consistently struggle to find jobs of the same quality as others of the same age in the workforce. Today, there are around 700,000 veterans in employment in the UK and over half of them have jobs in low paid or routine occupations that don’t make full use of their skills. In short, most businesses fail to recognise their potential. My experiences have made me committed to doing as much as I can to raise awareness of the benefits of employing veterans. This personal objective is aligned with Deloitte’s responsible business strategy, “One Million Futures”, which aims to help one million people overcome barriers to education and employment, developing skills and accessing opportunities in the classroom, workplace and boardroom. We firmly believe that it’s not where you’re from that’s important; what counts is where you’re going. This is the first in a series of One Million Futures reports from Deloitte, which will address the challenges faced by many people in the UK in accessing education, training and employment, and how we can overcome these barriers to the benefit of our society and economy. Although I and many of my former colleagues in other organisations intuitively understand the benefits of employing veterans, the business case is still largely anecdotal. Over the last couple of years, it has become increasingly obvious that more data is needed to prove beyond doubt how veterans add value. So that’s what we set out to do through this new research. And we were delighted when the Officers’ Association and the Forces in Mind Trust agreed to collaborate with us, bringing their passion for supporting veterans and also different experiences and insights.
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We had several guiding principles for the research. We knew, for instance, that it had to be employer-led. There have been many excellent studies from the Ministry of Defence and service charities, which have focused on the needs of veterans, but we felt that there was a gap in the narrative specifically addressing employers. The input of the 300 organisations that contributed to this research, we feel, makes it powerful and unique. And we hope that the results make a compelling case. We’ve found that employers who go out of their way to hire veterans will rarely hesitate to recommend them to others. More than half say veterans are promoted faster and two-fifths say they are more loyal than the rest of the workforce. The experiences of organisations that hire veterans should send out a strong message to all other employers; every career in the armed forces forges transferable skills that are more critical for businesses than ever before. Not only should organisations be employing veterans, but we should also be figuring out how to retain the ones we already have because they are so good and ambitious. However, we’ve also found that the majority of organisations don’t recognise these skills nor the positive attitudes of veterans. In the long term, this isn’t good for veterans and it’s not sustainable for business, either. Although many appreciate that supporting veterans is the right thing to do, this is the view purely through the lens of corporate social responsibility – it is a moral case for employment rather than a business case.
