Changing Attitudes? Thoughts on the 2019 Continuous Attitude Survey

The results of the 2019 Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (AFCAS) have been released, and make for fascinating reading. This survey, open to the military to complete represents an opportunity for everyone, regardless of rank and rate to honestly express their view about how they perceive the state of the Service.

There is a common perception if you look online that somehow ‘everything is shit’ and that the pay sucks, everyone is threaders and all planning to leave ASAP and ‘the only reason Pte Bloggs is hanging on is so that when he finishes his 22 he can retire on an RSM pension’ or other such nonsense. In reality these results make for far more positive and upbeat reading but are worthy of analysis and questioning about how things can be improved further.

Royal Marines in action in Afghanistan- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The first key statistic is that overall individual and unit morale seems to be improving but is below the levels last seen in 2010. Overall 41% of respondents said their self-morale was high, down from 52% in 2010 – this perhaps reflecting the challenges of a decade of deep cuts, a drawdown from ‘punchy’ operational tours like HERRICK and changes to service life.

When asked whether people are satisfied with service life, there has been an increase this year with 61% of Officers and 43% of Other Ranks indicating they are satisfied overall. This is again a drop from the high of 2009 (73 and 58% respectively), but perhaps reflects changes to the service experience over the last 10 years.

The significant disconnect between satisfied Officers and Other Ranks is puzzling and probably worth further investigation – particularly if it is also linked to retention of experienced people. Is it being caused by frustration in the job, dissatisfaction with the experience of service life or the wider package and offer?

The challenge of entering the military as a junior rank (particularly if you have real world experience) and discovering many of the limitations and at times deeply infantilising processes and rules is almost certain to frustrate some. Whether this is fed into the survey, or if it is something else is not entirely clear.

Of particular interest is the situation with the Royal Marines who seem to be experiencing low self-morale (just 34% of RM rated their self-morale as high) coupled with a wider sense of low job satisfaction (the Royal Marines had just 44% job satisfaction, the lowest of the Services). There has also been a steep drop from 48-36% in the number of Royal Marines who feel valued by their service. Paradoxically, the Royal Marines score the most highly on the ‘engagement index’ which was the series of questions about pride in the service and willingness to recommend the job.

There is clearly a challenge within the RM of offering a lifestyle that meets expectations. Having recruited people who almost certainly want to deploy on challenging operational tours, particularly the experiences seen on HERRICK, the discovery that the Corps is stepping away from this sort of work and back into to the maritime security and nuclear weapon safety role may be frustrating. The opportunities for ‘adventure’ are there but the chance compared to 9-10 years ago of getting into a ‘two-way range’ are very, very limited at present.

This, coupled with the move back to sea which is a cultural change for an organisation that for the best part of 15 years had spent very little time at sea, means a major period of readjustment, where there are almost two cadres within the Corps – those who served on TELIC/HERRICK and those who have joined since then.

At the same time though, the ‘cult of the Green lid’ remains strong, and its members are clearly extremely proud to be part of something unique. It will be interesting to see how the job satisfaction changes over time as the older hands move on, and the Corps memory readjusts to being one focused around delivery of specialist roles again, and not acting as a light infantry brigade in Afghanistan.

More widely the survey reports that only 36% of respondents felt satisfied with the standard and availability of major equipment. This is an intriguing statistic because it represents such a diverse range of areas – availability in the Royal Navy could mean having a Type 45 able to go to sea, while in the Air Force it could be that the former hangar queen used for spare parts is now able to fly, or in the Army that the FV432 that your grandfather drove is serviceable for use on exercise.

In many ways’ equipment is at the heart of what drives and motivates people. The sense of using cool stuff to do your job, be it go to sea to fire a missile, launching a helicopter to conduct a troop lift or driving tanks to go on exercise is what drives people. Its about access to opportunity, adventure and a way of work that civilians just don’t get. There are probably very few military personnel out there who don’t get secretly excited when they get to use the big vehicles and equipment as intended.

Paradoxically, when it doesn’t work, it can have a big impact on morale. The cancellation of an exercise due to insufficient tanks working (remember the stories of the many broken down tanks in big BAOR exercises) can impact morale – if the vehicle doesn’t work in peacetime, what hope is there of it working in wartime? If you must regularly work late even when in barracks to fix a technical issue or regularly failing equipment, and miss much needed time with your family, this will also impact on how you feel.

Similarly, the failure of a missile system due to spare parts being stuck in the system, or budget restraints meaning that funding isn’t available to update an issue for months can really frustrate people. If you work for an organisation built around an equipment-based service, and the equipment isn’t working as planned for a multitude of reasons, then it is easy to have this impact how you feel about work.

The challenge of leadership and change management is something that grips many organisations, but it is telling that there is a growing view that a substantial minority of personnel feel that senior leadership do not communicate, listen or look out for their interests.

In part this may be because there is no common agreement on what senior personnel is – to a junior private in his first unit, a senior officer is likely to be his Company Commander or CO, but to someone working in Main Building, it could be a 4* Admiral.

This is also reflected in the reality that there are not that many senior officers out there, and they are busy people. The time they must meet troops, listen to their concerns and feedback is limited. If you don’t get to meet generals from one year to the next, then it is perhaps inevitable that you feel that they don’t listen to you. After all, if there is no general on your exercise, how can they know what its really like to be in your position?

This mirrors in some ways the experience of the first world war, where the narrative about lions led by donkeys was arguably derived in part by having enormous armies of junior personnel, coupled with a pretty small staff corps. People just didn’t meet or see the Generals because they were looking after enormous forces, not up close and personal on the front line. Perhaps this sense of disconnect is driven by the reality that the military remains a large employer with a lot of niche areas and too few seniors to be able to get out to all of them properly?

What is particularly encouraging is the growing sense of awareness and respect for the skills and experience of both the Reserves and the Civil Service. 71% of respondents rated the Reserves as professional this year, and 78% rated the contribution of MOD civil servants as valuable.

This growing level of awareness of both groups is vital to helping build the ‘whole force’ concept. Ensuring that the regular military understands there is more than just themselves in Defence is critical. It is also notable though that there is a disconnect between Officers and Other Ranks in the contact they have with Civil Servants – 82% of Officers have worked with the Civil Service, compared to just 53% of Other Ranks. While this in part reflects the differing career structures and appointments both groups do, it is also a good reminder that for nearly half of all Other Ranks, they will not see first-hand the enormous benefits and good that MOD Civil Servants do to help support them.

There is broad satisfaction with pay, with roughly 35% of respondents agreeing that pay and benefits are good for what they do. But there has been a notable drop since 2010 on both this, and the wider pension issue. As changes have been made to the in-service pension, making it less generous than before (and causing major financial and tax headaches for many newly promoted officers too), the pension is becoming a far less appealing part of the overall package. This will have longer term ramifications as people consider whether to stay or leave, as the previous ‘carrot’ of the pension has now become more complex, and the possibility that staying in and getting promoted may paradoxically turn the pension carrot into a large stick.

In terms of operational deployments, there is an interesting issue with Royal Marines being particularly unhappy with their pre-deployment training, to the extent that this is driving the whole overall shape of the results. It is not clear what is causing this dissatisfaction, but it is clearly notable enough to alter the results overall.

Similarly, 44% of Royal Marines felt that their deployments were not often enough (compared to 12% in RAF and RN), perhaps reflecting the frustrations of a predominantly young, highly fit and motivated workforce that is not getting the same opportunities to deploy that it has previously had. This raises real motivation and leadership challenges for SNCOs and Officers to keep the force ready, when the chance to do the job they want to do feels more remote than it has for many years.

The Royal Navy seems to be managing the change from 6 – 9 month deployments reasonably well, although while respondents felt pleased that they were not deploying too much, there was a growth in unhappiness at the length of the deployment overall. This proves the real challenge in trying to generate ships for long tours and balancing availability with people’s morale and motivation. It will be particularly interesting to see how the wider efforts to stage crews through forward deployed ships like HMS MONTROSE in the Gulf impact on these results in future surveys.

There are positive signs that almost 60% of Service personnel plan to stay on until the end of their engagement, although there was a clear gap between Officers and Other Ranks when it came to looking for external jobs, with nearly twice as many Other Ranks looking for external jobs compared to Officers in the last 12 months. At the same time, more Officers would look to stay on via the Reserves than Other Ranks.

Finally, of particular interest is the results that show 78% of service personnel use military accommodation during the week, but that there is very low satisfaction with some of the facilities provided (just 29% of respondents felt that they were satisfied with the standards of contractor catering on their unit). Also 77% of Officers owned homes, compared to just 43% of Other Ranks – with affordability being a major reason for not owning a home.

This longer-term split and question about why more juniors don’t own homes will require careful thinking – how is it possible to encourage a culture of home ownership, particularly during the transition to the future accommodation model, for a workforce where 57% of Other Ranks do not own a home? What needs to change to make this possible, and how can this be properly supported?

This distinct split is also reflected in the wider questions on workload, leave and fair treatment, pointing to a system where Officers feel more in control of their lives, workload and confident of the disciplinary process than Other Ranks do.

This points to a significant disconnect between the two communities and the drivers for why they serve and leave. Over time handling this workforce, particularly the highly skilled and very technical force that the Other Ranks system is producing will be a real challenge.

Striking a balance between having to get junior people to do often dull jobs or put up with poor accommodation and respecting the fact that they are also highly trained technical staff whose skills command a significant premium in the real world will be difficult. But perhaps the time has come to 

look again at the wider offer and means of employment of junior personnel to improve retention?

Overall this document, while dry and full of statistics makes for fascinating reading and a good insight into the mindset of the modern regular armed forces. It is well worth a read to spot trends, and understand what drives people to serve, to stay serving and what is causing them to leave. It is well worth a read, and a ponder to understand what could be done differently to improve matters.

Perhaps most importantly it serves as a reminder that for all the ‘fantasy fleet Admirals’ out there speculating about buying lots of new warships (for example), there is little point investing in kit until you can look after your people properly. Invest in them properly, or otherwise your wonderful new force will be unable to operate or deploy due to a lack of people to do so. It is vital to put people first in everything you do, or the force will fail.