By Louise Speaight, Group Marketing Director, PentenAmio
I recently had the pleasure - albeit with a healthy dose of irrational fear - of chairing a Women in Defence UK and Women in Defence Charter virtual event on this very subject.
Defence readiness is often discussed in terms of equipment, platforms and investment. Increasingly, however, readiness also depends upon having the right people, with the right skills, available at the right time to meet increasingly complex challenges.
As technology evolves, workforce expectations change and competition for talent intensifies. Building a sustainable pipeline of future capability has become a strategic priority across the defence sector.
To deliver the Defence Investment Plan, the UK Government estimates that nearly 60,000 additional direct and indirect industry jobs will need to be created by the end of the decade, on top of existing defence-supported employment. This is a critical people gap. So, the big question is: how can we ensure the sector is an attractive and accessible destination for future talent, enabling us to close this gap?
Does Defence Have a PR Problem?
For most people, their only touchpoint with defence is recruitment adverts. They automatically think that working within defence means putting on a uniform, going into the Armed Forces and being posted somewhere dangerous (well certainly I did). Surely, we can do a better job of demonstrating that defence is about much more than serving on the front line in a warzone. That in industry, it’s more than working for a weapons or munitions manufacturer. Ultimately, working in defence is about protecting our way of life and with it, the safety and security we’ve come to take for granted over generations of living through peacetime.
My route into defence was something of a happy accident (a marketing role was being advertised, and it sounded interesting, so I took it). Having worked within the industry for over 8 years, it’s this mission that instils a deep sense of pride and keeps me here. It’s also what gets many of my industry colleagues out of bed in the morning. The human element creates such a powerful sense of purpose. Ultimately, our equipment and platforms would be redundant without a skilled workforce to operate them, so it doesn’t make sense to always focus on the tech.
By drawing on imagery that reflects people back to themselves, by promoting role models that are a true reflection of our diverse population, defence can become more accessible for people from a wider demographic. If you can see it, you can believe it. In turn, this diversity will strengthen resilience and operational effectiveness. I see it as a win - win.
If We’re Being Honest, Do We Fully Develop the Skills We Recruit?
We're putting significant effort into recruiting for the critical roles identified in the Defence Investment Plan, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, are we still missing a trick? Are we providing the correct level of investment and creating the right kind of opportunities for those individuals to succeed and add the most value they can?
Everyone is super busy delivering against their project milestones and are up against it with resource constraints. As a result, often, when candidates are hired for a specific role or function, they can become confined to that role indefinitely (or until they get fed up and leave the business, or worse, the industry altogether).
Could we be guilty of always looking at the requirements immediately in front of us rather than what the future might need them to look like? Our approach to recruitment seems driven by defence procurement and the way in which the investment comes through. By changing this narrative, we could shift our focus from a short-term to a mid- to longer-term one.
Are We Compounding the Problem?
Encouragingly, lots is being done at the Early Careers, Apprenticeship and Graduate levels to bring fresh skills into defence, but what about the vast number of people approaching retirement? There is a significant skills gap that will need to be addressed as these individuals retire.
Then there are the capability and resource challenges: can we flex capacity up and down to meet project surges, and are we unintentionally reducing the available talent pool through our security clearance processes?
National security is, and should always remain, the priority. However, if security requirements are preventing us from accessing global skills or delaying start dates while individuals await clearance, should we be exploring other ways to reduce or remove these barriers where possible?
We can only create true workforce readiness and resilience if we have clear pathways to build, develop and flex capability. Collaboration across the defence enterprise is essential to create industry-wide pathways for people to pivot, transfer, learn, and develop to meet new capabilities and new demands. Without these pathways, organisations tend to just be looking for somebody who's already been there, done it, and got the T-shirt. And unfortunately, that talent pool is small and not very diverse.
Where organisations have been more purposeful with their diversity strategy, the argument could be made that they are sitting on a wealth of talent which is likely being underutilised. Driving the right company culture and promoting the right leadership enables pathways to fully explore and utilise adjacent or transferable skills as development discussions focus on the skills employees possess for future roles rather than the roles they fulfil today. These development opportunities help reduce skills attrition.
Finally, for talent to thrive within an organisation, support networks are vital. Employee Resource Groups are one such example as they provide a space for employees to act as change agents for the business by drawing on the complete range of their skills – over and above those they might use in their day jobs.
In turn, this fosters a sense of belonging and helps create an environment where people want to work. A strong sense of inclusion attracts talent into our industry, where it can be nurtured, developed and ultimately retained. I’d say it’s not rocket science, but in a small handful of cases, it actually is!
People: Defence's Most Important Capability
Defence competes for skills like any other sector — but we must do more to show where those skills fit. The future defence capability depends on how effectively organisations can recognise, combine and deploy those skills both now and in response to the challenges of tomorrow.
Attracting top talent, supporting progression, retaining expertise, and enabling people to build long-term careers across the defence sector should be viewed as critical for building and sustaining readiness.
We all have a part to play in improving perceptions, changing the narrative and creating a genuine sense of belonging across the sector. If defence readiness is ultimately about being prepared for tomorrow's challenges, then investing in people must be viewed with the same strategic importance as investing in platforms, technology and equipment. Our operational capability depends on it.