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How businesses can unlock the value of ex-military talent
Across the UK, a significant talent pool is hiding in plain sight: ex-military service leaders. While many employers intuitively understand that ex-military candidates bring commitment, leadership and resilience, converting that potential into successful, long-term hires remains a challenge for many.
Too often, organisations reinvent the wheel. They build policies, pilots and buddy schemes in isolation, rather than learning from those who’ve already navigated this path. This is the gap the Enhancing Veteran Pathways initiative aims to close. It’s designed to help employers gain more value from ex-military talent, while also sharing that expertise back into the wider employer community.
Phil Bearpark, Solutions Manager for defence, technology, telco & media at Reed Talent Solutions, shares more.
The opportunity: Why ex-military talent matters
For many service leavers, the journey to civilian employment begins two years before they hang up their uniform, through the Career Transition Partnership (CTP). This window is crucial. For those with decades of service, moving into the civilian workforce involves a profound shift in identity, culture, and language.
For employers, this transition presents a unique opportunity to secure high-calibre talent.
High-performance hires
Ex-military candidates typically bring strong problem-solving skills, accountability and the ability to deliver under pressure. If your business needs people who can take a brief and see it through to completion, this is a rich talent pool to tap into.
Future skills potential
In a market where ‘future skills’ are constantly evolving, adaptability is currency. Ex-military hires are accustomed to training and reshaping their skills for new environments. With the right learning pathways, they can adapt quickly to new technologies and ways of working.
Financial incentives
Beyond productivity gains, employers can also benefit from national insurance savings for eligible ex-military hires during their first year. These savings can materially offset training and onboarding costs, making the business case even stronger.
When employers understand this full picture, and share what works, everyone wins: the individual, the business and the wider economy.
The problem: Great efforts, but too siloed
A robust ecosystem already exists to support ex-military employment, including the CTP, the Forces Employment Charity and the Defence Relationship Management (DRM) Covenant scheme.
However, much of the activity happens in silos. As a result, employers often find themselves:
- Building insight days and policies from scratch.
- Repeating the same myth-busting work.
- Struggling to translate military experience into civilian role profiles, often sifting out excellent candidates at CV stage.
This leads to the same problems being solved multiple times, across different organisations, while other challenges remain unaddressed. Enhancing Veteran Pathways was created to unify these fragmented efforts into a coherent, collaborative employer movement.
Events convene ~40 employers from diverse sectors, including defence, tech, finance, engineering and the public sector. The mix includes established Armed Forces Covenant Gold award holders, alongside organisations new to hiring veterans. Crucially, the focus is on those who influence change: HR leaders, talent leads and dedicated veteran recruitment specialists.
The value of this collaboration extends beyond the events. Employers are also encouraged to share candidate journeys and signpost strong applicants to other network members if they aren't the right fit internally. They also adopt proven policies, like spouse policy roadmaps, and debunk myths using real data, such as evidence showing that military spouse leave requests are often far lower than expected.
How employers can gain value – and give it back
If you’re an employer considering how to increase your impact, there are two sides to this initiative: what you gain and what you give back.
What you gain
- Practical know-how: Learn from organisations that have successfully translated military roles into civilian jobs and implemented tailored onboarding.
- Wider talent access: By adjusting hiring practices, employers unlock candidates who might currently be filtered out by automated systems or rigid criteria.
- Cost-effective change: With NI savings and free access to CTP resources, many improvements can be made with minimal net cost.
What you give back
- Data and experience: Sharing retention numbers and lessons learned helps others avoid common pitfalls.
- Policies and frameworks: Offering templates or internal playbooks helps other businesses move from intention to action faster.
- Voice: By educating hiring managers and speaking openly with peers, employers help shift the market away from a ‘100% skills match’ mindset, towards inclusive hiring, based on potential and transferrable skills.
Practical ways to support onboarding
Naturally, there are considerations employers need to make, but first, we need to dispel the misconceptions.
Many employers believe hiring ex-military will be ‘too difficult’, as they lack commercial awareness and experience in corporate environments. However, CTP training academies and learning credits help military leaders to gain civilian‑recognised qualifications, before they leave.
Some employers also believe they will be alone in the provision of specialist wellbeing or mental health support. However, Forces Employment Charity and other commissioned services provide ongoing specialist support, at no cost to the employer.
The other misconception is around onboarding, with many believing that getting it right can be expensive and time consuming. The process can take as little as four weeks, and it’s often about refinement rather than reinvention:
- Tailor the onboarding: Include explicit support for commercial awareness and clarify language differences between military and civilian roles.
- Strengthen buddy schemes: Pair new ex-military hires with colleagues who have made the transition themselves to create a safe space for questions.
- Leverage external support: Use CTP training academies and work with the Forces Employment Charity for complex support needs.
- Fix your data: Ensure HR systems capture ex-military status reliably to track outcomes and claim NI savings.
- Educate hiring managers: Provide guidance on reading military CVs and challenge the default of seeking a perfect linear career match.
Whether you’re already hiring ex-military personnel or just starting your journey, we invite you to join our network of over 200 employers. Participation provides access to shared resources and targeted networking, helping us move from isolated good practice to a collaborative movement that unlocks the full value of ex-military talent for UK employers.
Reach out to [email protected] for further information.
About the campaign
techUK’s TechTogether campaign continues with a focus on ‘equity by design'. Our insights this week focus on the importance of inclusive design in product development, creating technology that is accessible to people with disabilities, tackling affordability, connectivity, and digital skills gaps through cross-sector partnerships and community-led initiatives, and, ensuring public services are co-designed with disabled, ethnic, and older users.
TechTogether - Week 3
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