Biggles Grows A Beard...

Just before April the 1^st this year, an MOD briefing document was doing the rounds claiming the RAF was going to abolish the long held ban on beards, and permitting service personnel to grow them if they felt it was appropriate. Despite a positive response, the article turned out to have been an April Fool.

It was with some trepidation today that people reacted to the news in the Sun newspaper that the ban would be lifted soon. Quite a few people wondered if this was a delayed April Fool, or was it potentially actually going to happen for real?

It looks like this time it is official, and that RAF service personnel will be able to grow a bear for the first time. Already the social media world is up in arms, with many retired veterans, and others whose service medals accrued include all of the Call of Duty Campaigns proclaiming outrage at the idea that the descendants of Trenchard could possibly have facial hair. Frankly its all a bit ‘snowflake’ like from people who claim to know better.

Apparently standards are dropping, its all ridiculous namby pampy PC gone mad and its all a sign of the rot setting in from todays ‘yoof’. Frankly Humphrey is mildly surprised that given the opportunity for airtime, we’ve yet to hear any comments from retired allied supreme intergalactic space commanders about how this is a PC lunacy that is the fault of people with boobs and that people will be killed, or other such hysteria…

RIAT 2016

In reality this is one of the most sensible decisions taken in a long time to broaden the appeal of the RAF to a new generation of recruits, and retain existing serving personnel. The battle for talent in the 21^st century isn’t easy for recruiters – the modern pool of individuals who can join is talented, capable and willing to work bloody hard and often in very dangerous conditions – just look at the long history of conduct this century in Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, Libya, Syria, South Sudan to name just a few places where UK forces have operated with distinction.

The modern recruit though has grown up in a vastly different world to those of their predecessors of the 20^th century. Their expectations are different and they want different things from their career. The idea of the ‘job for life’ is an anathema – rather they are a workforce that expects the employer to reflect and respect their core values and beliefs.

Many younger people today grow beards – they are proud of them and they define who they are as an individual. They may well want to join the military, but feel that their beard is part of who they are, and not want to lose it. Equally, they may feel that an employer not prepared to take them with beard is an employer who clearly doesn’t want, or value, their services, so they won’t apply to join.

That’s fine if you work in a world where the talent pool is large and vacancies small. If though you need to recruit a highly skilled workforce, particularly of engineers, technicians and other people with skillsets that command high salary premiums in civvy street, then you need to be competitive.

Closing off the opportunity for people to join without sacrificing their beard may sound a small change, but it could be enough to help get more people through the door, and more people into the system who would otherwise be lost.

There are two real responses to this – one is to mumble ‘bloody snowflakes’ and harrumph loudly about the state of the youth of today. The other is to realise that if you want to remain a credible employer and be attractive to as many in your target recruiting pool as possible, you need to make minor changes to how you do business.

Possession of a beard does not magically make you less of an airman, soldier or sailor. History is replete of pictures of uniformed people wearing beards and still completely capable of killing the enemies of the sovereign of the day. The Royal Navy has for centuries permitted beards (and until recently tarred pigtails) and seen no impact on operational effectiveness, nor its ability to look smart when required.

In a similar way, this decision may help retain people who are thinking about leaving because they are tired of the petty rules that prevent them from living life like their peers. If you’ve served for a few years and are getting bored or frustrated, then growing a beard may not be high on your list to do, but the fact that you can’t grow a beard may be the perfect means to channel your internal frustrations into being a vocal reason for leaving. Indeed, Humphrey can think of one recently ex-RAF friend who has proudly grown a beard for the first time in nearly 40years – because he can!

Simply put, the pettier the rule, the more irritating it is to peoples lives or the more irrelevant it is to modern service personnel, the more likely it is to be the first reason to consider leaving. The more that can be done to get rid of this unnecessary sort of rules and process (the so-called ‘micro-bullshit’) then the more people can focus on what it is they actually want to leave for.

If you want to retain your work force, particularly your skilled NCOs who would take more than a decade to replace, then get rid of rules that add nothing to generate operational capability and do everything to irritate and annoy people who you may otherwise keep. Don’t give people an easy reason to justify leaving – make it hard for them to do so, as in turn it may keep more people.

Retention is a difficult battle at the best of times, so why not make it easier to keep people rather than rely on the hoary old chestnut of ‘tradition’ when it adds nothing beyond a sense of making people feel good that only cleanshaven and terribly manly men (and women) can possibly keep us safe in the air or on the ground.

The interesting question will be whether the Army follows suit, or if this is a step too far for them. Despite the rise of ‘ally tour beards’ being a good look on HERRICK where water discipline and the reality of life in a FOB meant many guys grew beards rather than shave, the Army seems rather fond of only allowing moustaches and not beards.

But more widely the Army has apparently had news that despite allowing women into the ranks of the infantry last year, only 5 have applied to change capbadges at a time when the Army as a whole is seeing units, in some cases, at up to 40% undermanning.

The issue of women in the front line as infantry is something that despite the grumbling from some, usually long retired, quarters, the Army has got on with and delivered. However is it a sign of trouble that so few women have applied internally to join the infantry? To be honest, probably not.

The decision to move branch or capbadge and retrain is an intensely personal one and something that carries a potentially large amount of career risk. Once you’ve completed basic and trade training, you embark on a career path that will see you move through certain jobs and roles to acquire the skills to promote. It can often take several years to get this experience, particularly for SNCO or more senior office roles.

If you decided to rebadge as infantry, you’d need to essentially go back to square one and begin your training again and regain credibility in your new career. For the military its not far off carrying out a career change in service that requires you to reset and retrain. This can have very serious consequences if you are career minded as suddenly you may need to requalify, or potentially face delays to promotion in order to get the experience needed to compete with your new capbadge, while also being left behind by your actual peer group.

Soldiers with beards? What would the King say? 

The risk of transfer for anyone career minded is quite high as it may hamper longer term career and earning prospects. There is also the practical reality that the infantry life is an arduous one and that the older you get, the less appealing it becomes to people. Humphrey has met many ‘ex infanteers’ who found the physical demands of the role harder as they aged and they decided to rebadge out to a job that better suited their circumstances.

If you are someone who is in late 20s or early 30s, then the prospect of moving to life in an infantry unit may not be that appealing – which when coupled with the potential career implications could easily explain why relatively few people are applying for internal transfers. The key test will not be in the first couple of years as the system gets used to accepting women into the front lines, but over the next 10-20 years as people join and become part of the Regimental Family for the long haul, and the units adapt to the wider cultural and social changes that this may mean.

The Army will doubtless do everything possible to make women feel they are an integrated part of the Army at every unit and level, but it will take time for their presence to become normalised as they work through the rank structures and gain experience to compete for the RSM and CO roles of the future.

To that extent we should not judge the move a failure, because it is far to soon to make that sort of call – for example Women have served at sea for nearly 30 years and it has taken time to work through the changes and mindset shifts required to get people used to working in a mixed gender environment after many years of working in an exclusively male domain.

It will be at least another 30 years till the last of the individuals who have served in ‘stag battalions’ (all male units) leave the Army and mixed service becomes the only experience everyone serving has ever known. It will take time to build the numbers, to build the experience and normalise the situation and stop it being seen in the eyes of some people as ‘a bad idea’. That day will happen – today the idea of women were ever not allowed to go to sea in the RN sounds a laughable idea and unthinkable to the current generation of new recruits, and in time the same will said of women serving in the Infantry.

This is to be welcomed because it means that 100% of the eligible workforce can now be part of the frontline units, helping address the personnel challenge and increase the retention and size of units as a whole. It’s a long term game, but in a world where the battle for millennial talent is very real, not taking every possible step to bring people in, to make them want to join and to drop artificial barriers holding them back from joining – be it beards, tatoos, sexual identity or physical gender, seems a very sensible and welcome move to embrace the workforce of tomorrow.