Capitalising On Military Talent: Everything You Need to Know About Employing Armed Forces Veterans

• Ex-Military
• Healthy_Communities
• Employment and Skills

Capitalising On Military Talent: Everything You Need To Know About Employing Armed Forces Veterans guides employers through the practical steps of setting up an accessible, Armed Forces friendly recruitment practice in England and Scotland. Veterans represent a unique, diverse and high-performing source of talent. Yet many employers are missing out on this great talent due to a lack of knowledge about the military or misconceptions based on negative stereotypes. This toolkit, produced by Business in the Community (BITC) in partnership with Salute My Job and the Scottish Government, can help change this.

This toolkit covers the business benefits of employing veterans in your business and includes practical guidance on how you can

• inspire and prepare veterans for civilian employment
• create a recruitment process that is accessible and friendly for veterans
• enable a supportive culture that helps veterans to develop and progress.

There are over 1.6 million unemployed people in the UK, despite employment levels steadily rising in recent years. Just under a third of these people have been unemployed for over a year. Some groups remain disproportionately represented within these numbers, the ex-military community is one of them. Working age veterans are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as their civilian contemporaries¹.

Businesses can benefit from opening up opportunities to veterans, discovering the diverse talent that ex-military personnel can bring. Capitalising On Military Talent: Everything You Need To Know About Employing Armed Forces Veterans also includes an employers’ checklist and impact stories from a range of different businesses.

Employing armed forces veterans in Wales

You might also be interested in Inspire, Hire, Grow: How to Capitalise on Military Talent – An Employer’s Toolkit, which provides a simple guide to employing Armed Forces veterans and reservists in Wales.

Recruiting well-trained, work-ready talent is a growing challenge for businesses in Wales. A Welsh Government skills survey of Welsh employers showed that six per cent had at least one vacancy due to skill-shortage – equivalent to 9,000 vacancies across Wales² .

Business in the Community Cymrudeveloped Inspire, Hire, Grow: How to Capitalise on Military Talent on behalf of the Welsh Government. BITC designed the toolkit around the tried-and-tested Inspire, Hire, Grow employment framework. It leads business through a straightforward process of developing a strategic, forces-friendly recruitment and retention programme.

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Business in the Community is developing a skilled and inclusive workforce for today and tomorrow