Duelling with Diversity - the RAF and Recruitment

It has not been a good couple of weeks for the RAF, with several uncomfortable stories entering the public domain. From the state of the flying training system, to allegations about the ‘Red Arrows’ display team, there has been difficult coverage of the force and its activities. The most recent difficult story has been on diversity and whether the RAF has ‘stopped recruiting white men’ to join as part of efforts to raise the diversity of the force.

An easy way to see internet debate explode is to chuck in the phrase ‘diversity’, then wait as people kick off with angry rants featuring phrases like ‘woke’, ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘when is international men’s day’ (19^th November apparently). People get very cross when they see efforts made to improve diversity and representation, particularly if they think that others are being seen off in the process.

The specific issue here is that the RAF is allegedly pausing recruitment of white males and instead emphasising recruitment of women and people from minorities to help improve its overall diversity and gender balance. To some this is a bad thing because it is seen as pandering to various agendas, focusing more on social manipulation than in creating a cohesive fighting force. To others it is a move long overdue to help the RAF being a fundamentally ‘male, pale, stale’ organisation.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

There is no doubt that the armed forces are underrepresented by women and people from minority backgrounds.  Despite over 30 years of increasingly close integration, culminating in a point where women can serve in practically any military role (standfast Roman Catholic priest), there remains a significant disparity between numbers of serving male and females. Similarly there is a significant underrepresentation of minorities, meaning that demographically the armed forces are not representative of the society that they serve.

Some will counter that in the 20^th century ‘we managed to beat the Nazis without worrying about all of this diversity nonsense’ and that is true. But during that period there was an explosion in the numbers of women serving across the armed forces, and victory would not have been possible without the incredible efforts of the nations which formed the Commonwealth & Empire – for example the Indian Army which became at 2.5 million strong one of the largest all volunteer armies raised in history, and won 31 Victoria Crosses, and suffered almost 100,000 killed or missing in action. This remarkable contribution across all theatres of war remains less well known than it should be in the UK today.

The social and demographic constructs of the 1940s and 50s are also a world apart from modern British society which is diverse and drawn from a hugely diverse population. Yet go to a modern military base and you’ll find yourself in a world where the overwhelming majority of serving personnel are young, male and white. The military is rapidly falling out of alignment with the country and culture that it defends.  There are a lot of questions to be asked about why this is the case – why do few women and minorities want to join the armed forces and what can be done to raise overall representation levels? It is a question without an easy answer or straightforward solutions.

The RAF has adopted the approach of trying to raise its overall percentage of members from female and minority backgrounds by choosing to focus more recruiting effort in this area. Allegedly they will try to, in some cases, focus on bringing in people from this demographic over males to try to even the balance out. This has caused significant discomfort and negative reporting saying that effectively ‘white men are not wanted’ by the RAF.

The challenge here is that this well-meaning plan has the potential to cause significant disruption and problems. The first is that of perception  - in a service which prides itself on people being treated as peers, some may feel that those recruited via this scheme got ‘special treatment’ – that they were admitted not because of their talent, but because they were female or from a minority. Such a view is nonsense – the recruitment process has not changed its standards or lowered the pass rate for people from some backgrounds – anyone applying to join will still need to meet the same absolute standard as before. But, it may unintentionally create perceptions of biased treatment among some quarters who feel they have been wronged as a result.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The next challenge is that if people think the recruitment process is not looking for people like them, then they may not join. The risk here is that in focusing recruiting effort on specific sections of the population, others who may have joined may be lost and go elsewhere. For every person who wants to fly a jet or serve in the RAF from the moment they can walk, there are plenty of others who join it as a career, not a calling, later in life. In the battle for talent plenty of people need to be recruited with niche skills and experience such as engineers that are in high demand in the private sector. If they feel that there is no route for them into the RAF, then the risk is that they can, and will, go elsewhere.  This isn’t just a short-term risk but one that risks becoming embedded in folklore, shaping attitudes and views for many years to come – ‘don’t bother joining the RAF mate, they’re not interested in people like you’ is an easy way to turn someone off a career they’ve expressed vague interest in. This is particularly important as the lag time between converting an initial expression of interest into an interview and then joining up can in some cases be many years, and if people don’t get interested early, or feel put off, then it may be a long time , if ever, before they join.   

This is where the RAF’s well-intentioned efforts may backfire by creating division or internal tensions, and in actively turning off recruits that it still needs, causing longer term damage to personnel levels. Trying to get the balance right, improving diversity and representation but doing so in a way that makes people feel that they are able to join is going to be an extremely difficult challenge. It has been made harder by the confused messaging that press offices have put out on this issue.  Over the last few days it has evolved from denying that there is a ban on white males joining the RAF to tacitly admitting that there is a subtle prioritisation being given. The problem is that the story has evolved and changed over time, allowing space for rumours to flourish. Given the story has changed, it is harder to have faith in what the RAF is saying and what is actually true – instead of a clear accurate statement from the outset, the situation remains vague and unclear. This has helped fuel the fire of the story, rather than letting it fade away – always a risk, particularly during the August ‘silly season’.

The question that hasn’t easily been answered is whether this move means that the RAF is likely to get sufficient recruits for it to meet its recruitment targets in sufficient numbers, or if there are other factors holding people back. Rather than focus on pure numbers, perhaps it would be better to ask why women and people from ethnic minorities join in proportionately smaller numbers and attempt to do something about the underlying reasons, rather than ‘stack the deck’ and bring more people in – recruiting more people doesn’t solve the problem if they still quit in large numbers over the same cultural factors that shape their service experience.

Here is the real challenge – at its heart the armed forces culture is one that can be challenging and off-putting to people who feel they do not necessarily belong. It is an environment that has historically been male dominated and whose values, tradition and heritage is steeped in this tradition. While it is changing over time, the people that are looked up to as positive role models are overwhelmingly long dead white men, the career model is still inherently biased to those who choose not to become parents and is not always a family friendly place to be. For all the good change done, there are still many who would argue that there is an at times toxic and even dangerous culture towards women in the armed forces – the grim reading of the Atherton report makes that clear.  Until many of these deeply challenging behaviours and trends change, the armed forces will continue to struggle to recruit and retain women and ethnic minorities, while at the same time driving away many recruits who feel that ‘they don’t want me’.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Some will moan about discrimination towards white men, as if this is the first time any form of discrimination has been practised in the armed forces. You only have to look at the decades of restrictions that actively prevented women from having full careers (the obligation to leave upon marriage, lower pay, less career opportunities) and the at times racist culture that treated people from minorities less equally than their white peers to realise that these complaints are nonsensical. Similarly the other tired line is ‘I want the best person for the job to do it regardless of colour’ is a cover for ‘why do we need to change this broken record’ because if you’re not getting sufficient applications from the whole of society, you’re not getting the best person for the job, you are getting the best person that applied for the job when plenty better could be out there.

Other people will moan about ‘I just want people to win wars’ – which is fine, but in the 21^st century conflict is not just about firing guns at each other. We need to be able to get into our opponents heads, conduct information operations, understand the cultures we may be operating in, speak languages of local residents and be able to act in a manner that secures victory. Arguably by this measure our recruiting approach to win wars has failed as we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, in part perhaps because approaching the problems of solving complex insurgencies in artificial countries with long and complex population dynamics isn’t something that can always be solved by a terribly nice white middle class chap. Why not try to recruit people who understand the cultures, people and environment where operations are likely to happen to reduce the potential of failing again in future?

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is no easy answer to the problems of solving diversity in the workforce. It is a slow process, involving cultural change not just in the Services but in society more widely. There is for example a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting many ethnic minorities in the UK do not see military service as a credible or respectable option for their children – how do you change this view over time to shift this perspective, and is it the responsibility of the military or the community to do this? If recruitment targets are not met, do you blame the RAF or do you blame the community?

What does matter here is that the RAF is able to get the recruits it needs to staff a workforce that will be responsible for delivering air and space power for the next 40 years. They need to be able to not just fly, but operate across multiple environmental domains, handling technology that is evolving daily and be able to operate around the world to respond to an ever more complex set of global crises and conflicts. Having a force that is able to break away from stale group think, create a culture that embraces change and equality of opportunity and where it is able to harness the best of what people can do in order to be ready to go to war and defeat the enemy is what matters. If that means looking again at recruitment practise, ways of working, culture and other areas then that is worth doing. Just because you have been operating one way for 100 years does not mean you always have to do it that way. But getting the balance right matters – veer too heavily in one direction of travel and you run the risk that you do more long term harm than good to recruitment and retention. Getting the balance right is not always easy.

A final thought is that it is depressing to see the way some have made the debate about the personalities behind the decisions, rather than discuss the policies and principles. There is something deeply uncomfortable reading the abuse thrown at senior RAF officers, and one must ask whether this is appropriate or if it merely goes to reaffirm the reasons why change is needed here.