Employer Hub – Best Practice Ideas

Military spouses and partners can offer a huge amount to your organisation as employees.

Developed as a result of their military lifestyle, many will have great transferable skills such as adaptability, teamwork, communication, resilience and problem solving. Traits that can be a real asset to your organisation.

As one of our Forces friendly employers, we are keen to share best practice ideas that can help you in delivering your Armed Forces Covenant pledge to support our military community.

Employment Programmes & Placements

Offer employment programmes or placement opportunities to military spouses and partners. These pre-employment initiatives can give you the opportunity to recruit, develop and retain valuable members of the Armed Forces community, while helping them to overcome some of the barriers to employment experienced by military spouses and partners as a result of the unique challenges of a military lifestyle.

Guaranteed interview scheme

Have you thought about offering a guaranteed interview scheme to military spouses and partners who meet the essential criteria for the role in their job application? This is a great way to support them in overcoming some of the barriers they may face in getting into employment – it provides the opportunity for them to demonstrate what they will bring to your organisation, and to explore the reasons for any gaps in their employment history.

Flexible working

Flexible working (or an element of flexibility) is important for many military spouses and partners, enabling them to balance their job with supporting their family.

Many military spouses and partners, have a ‘solo-parenting’ approach as they are unable to rely on their service person being available to help all the time with the short-notice nature of the military. In ‘following the flag’ they are without local family support, so necessarily structure their life to ensure that they can shoulder their responsibilities hand-in-hand with their commitment to their job.

For some spouses and partners, flexibility can simply be knowing that their employer is approachable and will reasonably consider an element of flexibility in the role – possibly a later start-time to facilitate school drop-off when their service person cannot support, or breakfast club is unavailable.

For others, they look for part-time opportunities or a job-share, knowing that this is the best way for them to be able to fulfil their commitment to their job while being able to meet the needs of their family. If a role could be part-time or delivered as a job-share, it is great to highlight this when you post the vacancy.

‘Working from home’ is the most popular key word search on FFJ. For many military spouses and partners, they are living in isolated locations (unsurprisingly, military bases tend to be in out of the way places) and public transport links or access to a car can be an issue. As such, remote working and hybrid roles provide the opportunity for our jobseekers to access fulfilling employment. A real positive for military spouses in finding a remote working job is that this has the potential of being able to move with them when they are relocated as a result of their service person’s military role. If you have jobs that can be delivered remotely or are hybrid, please use these tick-box options when you post your vacancy. This will mean that they come up in any job keyword job searches related to this.

Deployment support

Deployment for any military spouse or partner can present unique challenges, which can be as varied as the operation or exercise that their service person is on! For some, deployments can come with plenty of notice, but be very long and without regular communications, for others they can be at a moment’s notice, shorter or more frequent.

As an employer, being sympathetic and understanding is hugely valued by any military spouse employee.

The nature of deployments is that dates do change, and R&R periods can be delayed. So being sympathetic to (possibly last minute) leave requests before, during or after deployments is a great way to support your employee. Some organisations now formally offer an additional day’s leave within policy to support their military spouse employee pre and/or post deployment.

There may be a need to consider a temporary flexible working arrangement during deployment, as without local family support, military partners may be unable to fulfil their regular shifts/hours while their service person is away.

Relocation support

Part of being a military family, can be the requirement to relocate on a regular basis - be it across counties or regions, between the Devolved Nations or overseas. Of course, this can have a significant impact on a military spouse’s employment options.

There are a number of ways in which you can support your employee such as by allowing remote working or agreeing a hybrid solution for them to remain a valued member of your organisation.

If remote working is not viable, then you could offer support in finding a role in their new area. If you are a national employer, or have partner organisations nationwide, then supporting your employee in applying for an opportunity in a local organisation in their new area means that your business retains a valued member of staff. The military spouse, in return, is likely to be further invested in you as their employer for supporting and enabling them to continue their career.

If your employee is unexpectedly posted at short notice, being open to the possibility of waiving any return of service requirements, or fulfilling the requirement in another way, demonstrates your understanding that the new assignment is beyond the reasonable control of the military spouse.

Armed Forces Covenant

Ensure that everyone in your organisation understands what the Armed Forces Covenant means, what you have pledged and how this helps with the unique challenges of being part of a serving family.

The needs of a serving military spouse are quite different to those of a veteran or reservist and their families, so it is important that managers have a good understanding of individual circumstances and how your organisation could support them.

Armed Forces Champions and Networks

Having an Armed Forces Champion or Armed Forces Network within your organisation is a great way to create a sense of community and peer support.

A network can be open to anyone who is part of the military community – be they the parent, child or partner of a serving person, a veteran or their family member.

Networks take all forms – some are simply the opportunity to meet and have a chat over coffee, others are formal and explore ways to support the military community both within the organisation and in the local area too.

If you have an Armed Forces Champion or Network, make sure that everyone knows about it so that they can signpost colleagues or join themselves.