Our commitment to the Armed Forces community recognised

Our commitment to supporting ex-services personnel and their families saw Vice Admiral Andy Kyte CB FCILT, Chief of Defence Logistics and Support, present CEO Neil Martin with a Silver Award from the Armed Forces Covenant Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) recently.

The ERS recognises employers who offer exceptional support to the armed forces community and go ‘above and beyond’ to deliver the pledges of the Armed Forces Covenant. The award is acknowledgment of our work to embed supportive HR policies, promote defence sector values, and advocate for service personnel in our workforce.

The award was presented at the Honourable Artillery Company in London, an event which also marked the anniversary of the launch of our Veterans and Armed Forces Community Strategy.

Colleagues, including numerous former service personnel from across the business, were joined by representatives of our new corporate partner, the Forces Employment Charity, who we will be working with to increase advocacy as we target Gold ERS status.

We’ve long provided support to ex-military personnel, actively encouraging veterans into the business. It’s an approach that was given new impetus with Neil Martin’s appointment as CEO and our increasing involvement in the Defence sector. It means support for the Armed Forces community is led from the top of the business, with Neil acting as sponsor of our Armed Forces Community Network.

Our reinvigorated approach has seen us hold hiring manager events to grow advocacy as we’ve worked to ensure the recruitment team are fully invested in our approach. We’ve also continued our work with Build Force, highlighting the construction industry and SRM as offering excellent career opportunities for ex-service personnel.

Looking to the future, we will be extending our advocacy deeper into our supply chain and will be working with the Forces Employment Charity on its family orientated programmes, helping the partners, sons and daughters of service personnel meet some of the challenges that come with being in a military family. 

People and Shared Services Director, Rachael Smith, served in the Army for a decade before joining our HR team some 13 years ago. 

She said: “The opportunity to tap into the talent, leadership and management experience, commitment and absolute team focus of those looking for a second career after service represents a serious opportunity for the business. They can bring enormous value both to us and the wider industry.

“In a sector like ours, where sequencing and dependencies are key to success, veterans have a huge amount to offer because they understand these things better than anyone. The potentially fatal ramifications of not getting your part of the job done on time drives a set of behaviours where you don’t stop until you’ve 100% met your obligations. 

“In terms of leadership and management, in the military, people are selected because they have natural skills in these areas, which the defence industry invests millions into nurturing and refining.  

“The ability to get people to do things they might not otherwise do, or want to do, is of huge value, alongside the ability to drive high performance through leadership capabilities.  Translate that into our projects and getting the supply chain to go the extra mile because of the way we lead and manage them and you can see why recruiting service personnel makes such sound commercial sense.”