Business Insight

Tuesday September 23 2014

New target for life at the doubleHow business can work with reservists: pages 2-6

Tuesday September 23 2014 | the times

Business Insight2

Inside Operation Co-operationBusiness works with reservistsPages 4-6Business educationThe Executive MBA with added buzzPage 10

The Times Business Insight reaches more senior business people in the North of England than any other quality newspaper. Indeed, with 184,000 readers* and reaching almost 20 per cent of the all c-suite executives**, there is no better place to be seen.*Source NRS July 2011 - June 2012 **Source BBS 2011

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Welcome

Forward togetherThe North of England has long been the prime recruiting ground for the British armed forces, and is expected to remain so as reservists are called upon to play an increas-ingly signifi cant role in the defence of the realm. This will be achieved with the help of businesses in the North, which are being asked to support reservists who give up their time for short-term training and, where necessary, for long-term deployment to confl ict zones around the world.

Charged with making this happen are the three Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations in the region, to be found in the North West, Yorkshire and Humberside, and the North East. It is their role to explain how the new Future Reserves 2020 Review (FR20) will seek to remove some of the issues surrounding employee reservists – including extended notice when they are to be involved with lengthy deployments in places such as Afghanistan, the costs involved in replacing them, and training in skills that can be transferred back into the workplace for the benefi t of employers.

This is all part of a new era of communication for the armed forces and for business, requiring skills in which they have not been well versed in the past. These topics were aired at length in a special Forum from The Times which is featured in these pages.

We also take a look at the benefi ts that businesses are currently enjoying from employing reservists, and what the reservists themselves feel they bring to their companies and organisations.

Elsewhere in this issue, for a change of pace, we consult the fi nancial planning expert Mark Goldstone on the “gaping hole” in the Government’s auto enrolment pensions scheme, and also meet the new head of Executive MBAs at the University of Salford.

Co-operation message must fi lter down fromthe major companies, hears Mike Cowley

Volunteers have played a key role in Britain’s armed forces since the Castlemartin Yeo-manry Cavalry, made up of gentlemen farmers and their

tenants, earned the only battle honour awarded to an Army unit for action on British soil when it routed a small-scale invasion by the French in 1797.

The Yeomanry and other volunteers offi cially became the Territorial Force by Act of Parliament in 1907, and fought alongside regulars in the First World War. Come 1918, the Territorial Force was dis-banded – before rising again in 1920 as the Territorial Army (TA).

As war clouds loomed over Europe in 1939, the Government authorised the doubling of TA strength. Come the end of the Second World War, the TA was dis-banded once again, only to be reformed a year later. In subsequent years, it suffered from being under-manned and under-equipped until the 1970s because of its im-age as the “force of last resort”, with num-bers repeatedly slashed. It came back into

favour again in the 1990s when, in a volte-face, it was deemed “the reserve of fi rst choice” and supported the regular Army in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

Now, as the Reserve Forces, it has moved back to centre stage with the deci-sion to make reservists a larger percent-age of the armed forces, prompted in part by cost factors in the time of austerity. It was soon seen that one of the hurdles to this happening lay with the employers of reservists, and the requirement for them to be supportive of the voluntary role to

ensure that jobs or career paths would not be adversely affected.

This was addressed by the Future Re-serves 2020 Review (FR20), which formed the basis for a consultation into the future of Britain’s Reserve Forces by the Minis-try of Defence (MOD). It was proposed to have a new relationship between reservists, their employers and Government, with a transparent approach whereby employers are given more certainty about the timing of possible mobilisations and more notice when they occur.

Key changes – apart from improved communications, which the military recog-nise they have not been good at in the past – include reservists receiving more trans-ferable and accredited skills to take back to their day jobs, and increased fi nancial as-sistance for employers while employees are away on mobilisation. Reservists can now be mobilised for any purpose for which a regular serviceman or woman may be used.

After all, reservists are not only going to be called on increasingly to stand side-by-side with the regulars overseas in times of confl ict, but also to play a more demand-ing role in keeping Britain safe at home, whether assisting with security at the Olympic Games or working to help people whose homes have been fl ooded.

Under FR20, it is proposed that the cur-rent fully trained reservist strength will be increased from 23,080 (the fi gure for 2012) to 34,900 by 2018, with the percentage of the total armed forces strength going up signifi cantly as numbers in the regular forces go down. Some £1.8 billion has been allocated over the next decade to improve equipment and to build up the operational strength of the reservists.

The current attitude of employers is that 75 per cent do not actively encourage or discourage employees in their policies from joining or being a member of the Reserve Forces. This is considered to be because most employers have little or no knowl-edge of the military, and measures being developed under FR20 are designed to counter that.

It was to discuss the measures to get the employers fi rmly on-side that a Forum from The Times was convened in York, heartland of the North of England, the area from where a large proportion of re-cruits for both the regular forces and the volunteers emanate. Under the guidance of Alasdair Nimmo, publisher of The Times North, senior representatives of the armed forces reservists and the Reserve Forces’

and Cadets’ Association (RFCA), Crown Servants charged to provide an interface with Northern businesses, met to discuss a series of key questions.

The Forum delegates were fi rst asked to consider what initiatives are being imple-mented to highlight to employers the bene-fi ts of employing a reservist. Colonel Mark Underhill, chief executive of the North West RFCA, responded by disclosing new legislation to be introduced on October 1 under the Defence Reform Act which will mean that reservists can now be mobilised for any task currently done by a regular soldier, sailor or airman.

In light of this, Colonel Underhill con-fi rmed a previous recommendation that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or charities employing reservists will receive £500 per month for every em-ployee while they are mobilised. The re-servists themselves will also receive more protection in terms of employment and RFCA bodies will now be called on to pre-sent an annual report to parliament on the implementation of the Act.

John Davies, chairman of the Regional Employer Engagement Group, questioned whether the legislation “increases the awareness of anything”, and insisted that the only answer lay in marketing. Evidently not impressed with what has been happen-ing in this area, Mr Davies suggested it was hoped that “anyone with a slight interest” might stumble across “the toolkit that is on the internet that answers most of the ques-tions”.

Lieutenant Colonel Rosie Stone, a re-servist in full-time employment with the Army, was more optimistic, particularly given the “better communication with employers” aspect, with 20 large employ-ers already working more closely with the Reserve Forces. One of these, Capita, has set itself a target of 3,000 reservists. “These direct communications with employers mean they are carrying all the messages back into the business environments,” add-ed Wing Commander Gavin Hellard of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.

Asda, one of big names offering full backing to the reservists, had two repre-

Frontline voices onthe 2020vision...

Intense focus on military points

ForumForum on ‘Reserve’ relationships

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday September 23 2014 3

sentatives at the Forum: Bruce Renwick, a regional divisional manager, and one of his employees, Neil McCann, a driver who is also a sergeant in the Reserves. It seems that Asda has got the message, with a commitment at all levels, as Mr Renwick pointed out that they were quite happy to let Mr McCann have time off as a reservist as he always provided sufficient notice to ensure a replacement could be found.

Naturally, however, there were certain exceptions to this harmonious approach. “If he came and asked for the week off before Christmas,” Mr Renwick said, “that would cause a problem. But such is the relationship we have, he would make sure that wouldn’t happen. We have an ar-rangement with a lot of agencies, so for us it is easy to replace like for like.”

Most of the panel agreed that, while the message was getting through at the top level with major companies such as Asda, it was not necessarily filtering down to middle management or shop floor level where people actually dealt with reserv-ists and were responsible for allocating time off for training or deployment. The Forum consensus was that the situation was worse when it came to the SMEs, with their smaller workforces, and much worse for the self-employed.

“Getting through to the SMEs is much harder, as it hurts them much more when they lose someone to deployment,” said Roger Curtis, a commanding officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, “and obviously it is because they are financially not so well equipped.” This in turn led to questions about how to get the SMEs on-side – and one member of the panel was in the unu-

The Panel�� Bruce Renwick, regional district manager, Asda�� Paul Nash, managing director, Fg Trailers and Army reservist�� Lieutenant Colonel Rosie Stone, Army Reserve staff officer, 42 Infantry Brigade�� Sergeant Neil McCann, Army reservist and Asda driver�� Alasdair Nimmo, The Times North �� Major Jonathan Stewart, reservist staff officer, 15 Infantry Brigade�� Wing Commander Gavin Hellard, commanding officer, 611 Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force�� Roger Curtis, chief of staff Royal Naval Reserve, Northern England�� Colonel Mark Underhill, chief executive North West, Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association�� John Davies, chairman, Regional Employer Engagement Group

�� The MOD will build closer relationships with employ-ers, with the aim of giving greater predictability as to when reservists will be required for training or de-ployment: 28 days’ notice for “short notice contin-gent operations”, and at least one year’s notice of a reservist entering the peak period of their “readiness cycle” (during which mobi-lisation is likely).�� The accredited military training that reservists receive will develop highly valued skills that can be easily transferred to their civilian roles.�� For employers of mobilised reservists, the MOD will revise financial assistance regulations and introduce a financial incentive for small and medium-sized enterprises in the form of a further £500 per month

during mobilisation, which will be in addition to the existing financial assist-ance available.�� The intention is that Army and Maritime Reserves will be mobilised no more frequently than once in every five years, with Royal Auxiliary Air Force Reserves to be mobilised no more frequently than once in every three years.�� Training for Army reserv-ists will increase from an annual average of 35 days to 40 days. The precise level of training required will vary according to how close a reservist is to the peak period of the “readi-ness cycle”.�� The MOD “will always aim to give sufficient notice to both reservists and employers to allow enough time for employers to plan”.

�� To support employers, the MOD is looking to provide accreditation for specialist skills to make them recognisable and valuable to employ-ers (particularly in the construction, cyber, logistics, oil and gas, medical and retail industries).�� By working with trade bodies and awarding organisations, the goal is to match military training closely to existing qualifications and standards.

�� The MOD is working to increase the level of accreditation that would available to reservists completing trade courses.��Officer Initial Training at Sandhurst is already accredited, with plans in place to accredit Soldier Initial Train-ing in the near future.�� The MOD also plans to recognise non-technical skills that military training develops, such as leader-

ship, communication, motivation, confidence and ability to work under pressure.�� Additional initiatives will include developing joint graduate train-ing schemes in conjunction with employers, aligning reserve recruit-ment within higher education, and exploring how military leadership training could play a part in civilian apprenticeships.

Plan to match military skills with current standards

Key recommendations of FR20 for employers

Colonel Mark Underhill used The Times Fo-rum as a plat-form to appeal to employers not to overlook the importance of the role of the Cadet Force adult volunteers, the unsung heroes of the reservist sector. “We cannot stress enough how important they are in the equation,” he said, “and that employers should look on them the way they do reservists.

“Cadet training is often the first step to the values and standards you will find in reservists. They need time off for training for their role with the Cadets. The fact they are not subject to mobilisation means they are often overlooked, and our job with the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations is to ensure this does not happen.”

sual position of not only being the owner of an SME which employed reservists, but also a sergeant in the Reserves himself – Paul Nash of Fg Trailers in the North East.

Mr Nash was unimpressed with what had happened previously in terms of com-munication with employers – “the Stone Age”, as he described it. “An employer wants as little hassle as possible,” Mr Nash added. “He doesn’t want to jump through hoops to allow himself to be inconven-ienced, he wants to see a carrot and that has got to be achievable.” What he was referring to was the difficulty of obtaining reimbursement for an employee who had been mobilised, and the time and effort needed to get all the necessary paperwork in place, which meant that small employ-ers – like himself – were not even getting the money they were owed because they did not have the time to tick all the boxes. Yet Lieutenant Colonel Stone told the Fo-rum that this situation was to be addressed as part of the ongoing initiative to engage with employers.

However, while the Forum heard that SMEs may soon find that this issue will be resolved (and was, a couple of days af-ter this gathering), the same was not yet happening with the self-employed. “At the moment we believe the Defence Reform Act isn’t going to cover the self-employed individual in terms of money,” Colonel Underhill said. “Yet if a small business is getting £500 a month, then why isn’t the self-employed person getting that so they could ensure somebody could carry on with their business?”

Again Paul Nash stepped into the de-bate, saying that many owners of small businesses – like himself – were effec-tively self-employed anyway, often work-ing on the shop floor. When someone is deployed, he pointed out, he often has to fill the vacancy himself. “I appreciate that the process is going to be streamlined, but I want to see it much simpler.”

Major Jonathan Stewart – a reservist who, as a consultant, has had a wide expe-rience of business – agreed with Mr Nash that the emphasis of the new legislation should be to make it easier for the SMEs. “It should be a matter of push rather than pull in all areas such as money,” he said. “Things such as payment should be auto-matic unless they suspect fraud.”

On hearing this, John Davies added: “Let’s just cut out the trivia and just give them the money.” This in turn prompted Wing Commander Hellard to comment. “The fact we are even having this conver-sation is a sign of how much things have changed,” he said.

The chairman then switched to the sub-ject of the how much support the reserv-ists can now expect from the public sector. Lieutenant Colonel Stone revealed that an agreement had been reached with the public sector that 1 per cent of all its em-ployees would be reservists by 2019. “From the feedback I’ve got,” she said, “1 per cent is achievable.”

But Mr Davies insisted that “you can’t fight a war with statistics”, and went on to question the difference between the private and public sectors in terms of re-servists. “Perhaps the public sector has a different mindset,” he said.

The NHS has set the pace in the pub-lic service reservist arena, the Forum was told, as here is one situation where skills are obviously transferable and both par-ties reap the benefit in terms of experi-ence. And with the Reserve Forces now placing a greater emphasis on transfer-able skills and seeking full accreditation for them, so that they relate better to the workplace, this is seen as a unique selling point in the campaign to get employers to look increasingly favourably on employ-ing reservists.

So what is the likely impact of the measures being introduced under FR20? “We don’t know because it hasn’t been in place for long enough,” Mr Davies said. “The £500 payment, working with the employer on the longer-term plans, the skill sets, the accreditation – I think it all has to be under constant review. If in the civilian world you were launching such a product, it would involve a major national marketing campaign, but marketing is something new in military terms. Gener-ating awareness is the key.”

Colonel Underhill did see signs that the message was starting to get through. “I think in large companies we are now seeing support for the reservists in the fact that they are being included in HR [Human Resources] policies,” he said.” That’s fine for a large organisation be-cause they’ve got the manpower. The dif-ficulty we have comes with SMEs. We are now more open with employers, and this is a sea change from previous years. We should have been doing this for years.”

Lieutenant Colonel Stone felt that FR20 was already having an impact. “We’ve taken the relationship away from being a one-to-one, employer-to-reservist,” she said, “to being a three-way conversation. It is genuinely a conversation now – not a monologue. Again we are moving into new space. There’s now more honesty.”

Then there was the question of wheth-er there is a moral obligation for an em-ployer to support reservists. “The answer is absolutely yes,” Major Stewart said. “There’s nothing more important than the defensive security of this country. This is a damn good country and the defence we all take for granted, and we wouldn’t be in business without it. “

So what is left to be done? “The key remains communication,” Colonel Un-derhill said. “It’s something we haven’t been good at in the past. This starts at the lowest level, having that conversation with the employer whenever possible and listening to them. It’s the three-way rela-tionship that’s the key. It’s not going to be easy. It will take time, but we are in it for the long haul. It’s not the 100 metres, it’s the marathon.”

Top trainers

Tuesday September 23 2014 | the times

Business Insight4

Reservists

The number of UKfirms marching with the Reserve Forces is growing – and it’sgood for both sides,writes Mike Cowley

Jon Smitham is just one of more than 100 groundworkers who can be found on they payroll of Grant-reel Construction in Ellesmere Port – and the managers readily admit

that they would like to employ more like him. The reason comes directly from Mr Smitham being a volunteer reservist with 156 Supply Regiment, the Royal Logistic Corps, having just returned from a tour of Afghanistan.

Rather than seeing the prolonged ab-sence as a negative, the Grantreel man-agement welcomes the fact that the 26-year-old has chosen to be a volunteer reservist, as this has provided the com-pany with a set of work-related benefits that outweigh the downside.

The bottom line is that, being a vol-unteer reservist, Jon Smitham brings to the table a range of attributes that make him an outstanding employee. He scores heavily in terms of reliability and time-keeping – as would be expected of any Grantreel worker – but at the same time he brings an unusual degree of self-dis-cipline that goes hand-in-hand with his military training.

The Grantreel management, in turn, also have an added bonus in the sense of pride they get from backing someone who is standing up for his country.

Not that Mr Smitham is unusual, as the company has previously had another volunteer reservist on the payroll who demonstrated a similar level of commit-ment. That is why Grantreel director Dominic Vesey openly admits he would relish employing more reservists on his team.

“It shows a lot more commitment to give up your weekend, which again is car-ried over into his work,” he says. “He’s not your average Joe. That’s why he is a key worker for us.”

Mr Vesey, whose father founded the family business, says reservists bring their own set of standards to the job which guarantees payback for their employers. “They always turn up on time, they are committed to the job, they are well or-ganised, they can be relied on,” he says. “Also, if people give up their weekends to be a reservist rather than spend their leisure time relaxing, they are obviously going to be in better shape for work.”

Nor are the benefits of being a reserv-ist confined to the workplace. Jon Smith-am’s mother Kathryn, who happens to be the company accountant at Grantreel, says that her son’s time as a reservist (he joined aged 17) has made him increasingly self-sufficient on the domestic scene, with cooking, washing and ironing being among his many attributes.

With Grantreel riding a new boom in the construction sector and working on multi-million-pound subcontracts for gi-ants such as Wimpey, the need for a to-tally reliable workforce is increasingly important. “We need good people more than ever before, and reservists fit the bill in every way,” Dominic Vesey says.

But what about the issue of reservists needing time off for training or having to be deployed abroad for extended periods, such as Jon Smitham’s recent absence in Afghanistan? “We are given plenty of notice these days,” Mr Vesey says, “and, with a workforce of more than 100, it is relatively easy to organise. If you know what you are doing, you should always have backup in place for such things as holidays and illness anyway. So there is no difference.”

This unreserved commitment to volun-teer reservists has seen Grantreel named as the winner of the North West Armed Forces Business Award for its unwaver-ing support for reservist employees sent on operations. Not that Grantreel is alone in this approach, as a recent survey has shown that 78 per cent of all UK employ-ers felt the Reserve Forces were a neces-sary element of the British armed forces, with 63 per cent seeing them as an asset to any company for which they worked.

A further 67 per cent said that the Re-serve Forces should be supported by their

employer as a matter of principle, while 87 per cent of those interviewed said they would “be very or quite supportive” if an employee was mobilised. In all, more than 14,000 employers already have measures in place – or are in the process of adopt-ing measures – to support reservist em-ployees.

All in all, then, the number of British companies now marching firmly in step with the Reserve Forces is escalating, with household names such as Asda mak-ing an increasingly public commitment. The increased co-operation between the Reserve Forces and major employers has seen the matching of skills acquired in the three services to employer needs – Asda, for example, works closely with the Ar-my’s transport division.

Reserve Forces are increasingly becom-ing part of the training mix, along with the apprenticeships that are contributing to the wellbeing of UK plc.

Although corporates such as Asda are keen to both co-operate and be support-ive, the actual day-to-day involvement of reservists is more likely to be organised and handled at branch level where the potential for any disruption will have the most impact. Bruce Renwick, distribution manager at the Asda Chilled Distribution Centre in Washington, Tyne and Wear, has two reservists on-site, as do most of the Asda depots across the country. Both Washington workers are drivers for the company and for Army transport.

Neil McCann and Craig Clennell, the reservists in question, were originally in the Territorial Army (TA) until it mor-phed into the Reserve Forces, and have successfully divided their time for two decades between being at work and ef-fectively being on parade. During that pe-

Grantreel employee Jon Smitham: fighting fit in his other role riod, the local Asda depot has built strong

ties with the nearby Army depot to which the reservists are attached, holding joint events such as tug-of-war competitions.

“We’ve always welcomed reservists here since it was the TA,” says Bruce Renwick. “That not only goes for us, but all the Asda depots have a sprinkling of reservists. Reservists are structured and well-disciplined and show a good appli-cation to work – something they need to be as an Asda driver servicing around 50 Asda stores in the North East from here.

“We have benefited from their train-ing, as have the Reserve Forces from the training they get here. So both parties get something out of it.”

The real impact of having a reservist on staff, however, is potentially most notice- able at companies with a limited number of employees. Companies such as Snug-pak, which was set up as a cottage indus-try in 1977 making insulated bodywarmers in the founder’s kitchen and selling them on local markets, and which can still be found today in the heart of the Yorkshire countryside at Silsden.

Snugpak remains a relatively small – but highly successful – company with 40 employees, one of whom happens to be reservist Jason Shaw. He is one of three “cutters” who deal with the material as it comes off automated machines before it goes to be made up.

Now best known as an international brand for insulated jungle sleeping bags and clothing – it has twice won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in inter-national trade – Snugpak’s customers include the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and its products have been used by the military in every conflict since the Falk-lands.

Call to arms thatcan reinforce the day-job operation

We have always welcomed reservists – they are structured and well-disciplined and show good application for work

Snugpak director Darren Burrell: glad to have a reservist on board

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday September 23 2014 5

The implications of the Future Reserves 2020 Review will be far-reaching, not only for the role of the members of the Reserve Forces but just as importantly for their employers.

Set up as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review – which plans to see the Reserve element form a much larger proportion of the UK armed forces – employers are seen as increasingly important as they are a potential hurdle to overcome on the way to achieving this.

Gone are the days when reservists did not even bother to tell employees they were such: lengthy deployment overseas has seen to that. Now there is a growing realisation of the need to build closer relationships with employers to get them on-side, with even the carrot of financial incentives under consideration for small and medium-sized enterprises. There is also more emphasis being placed on transfer-able skills for reservists, thus making them more appealing to employers.

Finding themselves in the front line of the new charm offensive are the chief executives of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, 13 of them spread across the country and aligned to regional Army brigade boundaries. Of these, arguably the three most important can be found in the North of England – the North West,

Yorkshire and Humberside, and the North East – among the traditional main recruiting grounds for UK armed forces.

Holding the key chief executive positions in all these are former full colonels in the regular Army who have since retired and moved over to their new posts as Crown Servants. It is their role to deliver the relevant key messages of the 2020 review to employers in their regions, either by direct contact or through networking events.

The messages convey a new openness through improved communications, such as: ��One year’s notice of a reservist entering the peak period of reaching their “readiness cycle”, during which mobilisation is likely.�� The intention that Army and Maritime Re-serves will be mobilised no more frequently than once in every five years.All this comes at a time when the UK is

emerging from recession and with an increased need for employers to keep key employees up close.

In the driving seat in the North West – the largest of the three regions – is Colonel Mark Underhill, who left the Royal Logistic Corps in March last year after 34 years’ service. Unlike the regional Army brigade commanders who are usually in place for less than three years, he and his colleagues are effectively an immovable feast to ensure continuity.

Colonel Underhill comes from an Army family – his father was also a full colonel – and he took the traditional route of the Combined Cadet Force at King William’s College on the Isle of Man, then Sandhurst, before being commissioned.

Like his peers in the two other Northern regions, he is approaching his new job with military precision, seeing open engagement with employers as “working a way up through the chain of command” and ensuring there is an interface between business and the military at each level. He readily admits that this is a totally new approach.

“Before, we simply didn’t do that,” he says. “Now we have to be more open, showing them things like the programme for next year and asking for their support. It is a dialogue and commitment on both sides.

“It is critical to get employers on board, and the MOD has now realised it must be more open with them because, if we do not get the relationship at every level, we will not gain their support.”

Over in Yorkshire and Humberside, Colonel Carron Snagge – late of the Royal Green Jackets – reports that only in the last couple of years has there been a real awareness of the difference between recruiting a regular and a reservist. “The difference is that the

regulars don’t have that extra gatekeeper – the employer,” he says.

Colonel Snagge accepts that the way the armed forces had attempted to communicate with employers in the past suffered from mixed messages. “Employers just want com-munication to be simple,” he says, “so they don’t have to spend so much time on it, and for it to be consistent. So that everyone from the employee to the generals – and someone like me who is trying to help – are actually saying the same thing.”

Colonel Johnny Hackett in the North East, formerly with the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters – now the Mercian Regiment – believes one mistake the MOD made in the past with reference to dealing with employers was to treat them all “as one amorphous lump”.

This resulted in big and small all being treated the same, a situation that is now undergoing a dramatic change. “You can turn them off immediately if you don’t give them the right message,” Colonel Hackett says. “In the end, you mustn’t forget they are dealing with the bottom line.

“They need to be able to plan ahead to meet the requirements of their business, and the more we help with this, the more they will look kindly on employing reservists.”

New confidence: Jason Shaw, the Snugpak reservist

We can see the changes in him ...and they are all positive

‘It is critical to get the employers on board’

Darren Burrell, the company’s sales di-rector, is very happy to have a reservist on board – and, like many employers who have them on the staff, would relish the

opportunity to employ more. Jason Shaw was already working for Snugpak when he decided to become a reservist. This, in turn, allowed Mr Burrell and the Snugpak management team to observe at close hand the impact of military experience on Mr Shaw both as an employee and as an individual.

“We can see the change in him – not that he was a bad employee before – but we can see effects that being a reservist have had on him,” Mr Burrell says. “All are positives. Attitude to work, punctual-ity, professionalism, increased pride in his work.

“Compared to other employees we have had in the past with whom we have parted company, it is the “get it right first time” approach. I guess you’ve got to do that in the Army – if you don’t get it right first time you could be in real trouble.

“He is also much more self-confident and has developed a real ability to com-municate. The fact that he was able to chat easily with the then Minister for Armed Forces when he visited us showed that. Jason held his own and was quite happy to chat about what he did in the Reserves and at work. I think before he joined the Reserves he would have strug-gled to get his point across and not be in-timidated.”

While Jason Shaw has still to be de-ployed to see active service, he is reput-edly “chomping at the bit to get there” and was deflated when, due to do security at the Olympics, he was gazumped at the last minute.

The Snugpak management is also pleased with the way the process of an employee becoming a reservist was handled. “We checked out what was in-volved,” Darren Burrell says. “We filled out a form which asked if we were inter-ested in learning more, then a gentleman came across and explained all the ins and outs. It was to make sure we understood and that we were supportive. Then they gave us a certificate.”

But what of the downside, the times when Mr Shaw may have to miss work?

“The way we look at it is you have to have cover for any position,” Mr Burrell says. “He could call in sick on Monday – things do happen and as a business you have to have that cover in place anyway. I always think if it was a lady doing the job, you would have to provide cover for mater-nity leave over several months.

“It is good business practice to have a plan B. Being open, having that commun- ication, knowing that he is a reservist, knowing what notice we get, what help is in place for us as an employer, makes it a lot easier. When he’s coming back to work, there is an agreed reintroduction to work. We are told when he is coming back – he just doesn’t reappear. There is nothing different than someone going on holiday.

“In fact, we get more notice than we would in the civilian field because, unless there are extreme circumstances, these things are planned well in advance – so we get several months’ notice. It takes

a weight off our minds and we can plan within those constraints.”

But how will being a reservist impact on Jason Shaw’s career at Snugpak? His sales director sees nothing but good com-ing from his confidence and aptitude. He points to the fact that the current owner, Michael Dobson – who bought out the business with the financial director, Su-san Parrish – had started out on the firm’s production line.

“So the sky is the limit for Jason with his new-found confidence,” says Darren Burrell, who sees nothing but benefit in an employee being a reservist. “It is obvi-ously no longer just a case of turning up and shooting guns. You have to learn how to manage your own time, take pride in your work – and that’s where we are get-ting the benefits, the transferable skills.

“Any employer should be happy to have a reservist – and, conversely, any employee should be happy to become a reservist.”

Tuesday September 23 2014 | the times

Business Insight6

Reservists

Major Roger Brown: rigorous fitness tests

A phonecall to his office at the Yorkshire Building Society, where he was a member of the senior management team, was the catalyst for John Davies to

eventually move into voluntary work on behalf the armed forces. The caller was looking for a company with Yorkshire in its title and which was supportive of re-servists, so they could present them with what was then the 100th certificate of ap-preciation from the Ministry of Defence.

“That’s when I became aware of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association in Yorkshire and the fact that our policy at the Yorkshire Building Society at the time was to support anyone in the re-servists,” Mr Davies recalls. “So I began to help with my network to build con-nections between the military and the business world.”

Mr Davies, who once considered a career in the RAF before finding out that he was too old to join aircrew, is now playing a leading role in persuad-ing employers of the benefits of employ-

ing Reserve Forces. As chairman of the Regional Employer Engagement Group (REEG) for the Yorkshire and Hum-berside region, his main objective is to explain to employers that an employee with military experience can deliver real benefits. “They get more training in

leadership skills during the course of a year than most firms give them in a life-time,” he says.

John Davies and his engagement group team find themselves having to counter the perception among employ-ers that the war in Afghanistan as de-picted on television “is like an Xbox game”. He adds: “This has no connec-tion with reality, no connection with the values or the skills reservists learn. They just see a uniform, not the person inside it.”

One initiative that has had an impact is Exercise Executive Stretch, where all three services run a three-day training exercise for managers. Here is a real taste of what it means to be a reservist, with action man (and woman) demands such as using ropes, planks and logs to cross a river and reaching a grid refer-ence by 11pm – things that make couch potatoes feel exhausted even when they are merely watching on television.

“While I was at the Yorkshire Building Society, we used to send 10 people a year on this to learn about team-building, communication, problem-solving,” Mr Davies says, “and they were queuing up at the door to get on. Being a reservist is all about comradeship, loyalty and re-spect – if a company had those values in its workforce, that company would be indestructible.”

Staff Sergeant Neil McCann is a driver both on “civvy street” for Asda and as a reservist with an Army engineering unit based in Ripon. He can look back on adventures about which most people can only dream. He volunteered both for Kosovo – where he was put in charge of an ammunition dump, a potential tar-get – and then Iraq, where he faced the threat of a gas attack after being told the war was over.

Originally, Sergeant McCann was go-ing to join the regular Army to get away from a dead-end job in a factory. But then he joined the Territorials got his Class One HGV licence – whereupon “the world became my oyster”.

He has picked up a further range of transferable skills and linked qualifica-tions as a reservist – driving cranes, low-loaders and dump trucks being a few. And recently he has become an instruc-

tor for the new off-road MAN truck which allows him to go where no Asda lorry would ever venture.

Whenever he heads off with the re-servists, his branch manager says: “Just be safe. We’ll see you when you get back.” But he knows that he brings something to the company as a reservist that won’t

be found in all its employees. “I stay at work until the job is done,” he says.

Jonathan Stewart is a high-flyer who used to be commercial director of North-ern Rail and at one time ran the biggest bus company in Jordan. He is currently a transport and logistics consultant who advises companies working on billion-pound project bids, the latest being the Hong Kong railway’s MTR Corporation.

His busy life doesn’t begin and end there, however. Having joined the Ter-ritorial Army at the age of 17, he is also currently a reservist logistics staff of-ficer with the rank of major in the Roy-al Logistic Corps. Originally with the Royal Irish Rangers as he has hails from Northern Ireland, he was on parade in Enniskillen when the bomb went off on Remembrance Day 1987, killing 11 peo-ple. So what motivated him to join the

How skillingfields bringhome frontadvantages

ranks of reservists? “I suppose the op-portunity to do things you wouldn’t oth-erwise get to do,” he says. “It offered a bit of adventure and it still does.” And how has being a reservist helped his ca-reer and the companies which employed him? “It actually helped build my con-fidence and personal characteristics. Doing the recruits’ course gets you into good personal habits and develops per-sonal fitness.

“Then, when you go through the of-ficer training, this starts to get you to think in a certain way and it gives you a mechanism and an approach that’s very positive.”

Major Stewart cites the time when he had to give a briefing to Government ministers, and was able to deploy the benefit of his military training. The re-sult was that the special adviser to the minister said it was the best briefing they had ever had.”

Another reservist – this time a major in the Royal Marines – who believes his military training offers clear and posi-tive benefits to his employment is Roger Brown, the technical support manager for Crown Paint in his native Lanca-shire.

What Major Brown sees as the key crossover skills are his Marines training in “the fundamental process of framing and taking a decision”, linked to a multi-disciplinary approach – attributes which he constantly brings to the fore in his day job.

Aged 12 at the time of the Falklands war, he recalls “watching in awe” images of Marines yomping across the islands. This made such an impression that he joined the Territorial Army after being in the Officer Training Corps at Leeds University, where he studied colour chemistry.

He was initially commissioned with the Light Infantry (forerunner to the Rifles) battalion at Wakefield, before switching to the Royal Marines when he took a job in London. With reserv-ists having to undergo the same rigor-ous tests as the regulars to be accepted – with a nine-mile speed march com-plete with 22-pound pack plus rifle in 90 minutes, and a 30-mile run over Dart-moor in eight hours being just two – it is certainly true that challenge is the name of the game.

Major Brown has to undertake regu-lar rigorous fitness tests – including run-ning eight miles in full kit in less than two hours – to keep his place in the Ma-rines. To maintain this required stand-ard of fitness, he is a keen fell runner.

All of this is essential for when he has been deployed, such as to Helmand Province in Afghanistan for six months in 2008-09 when the Taliban were ar-guably at their most active, or for two weeks this year on a joint NATO exer-cise aboard a US ship.

Today, as the officer commanding the Manchester Detachment of the Royal Marines Reserve in Merseyside, he also has a secondary role as the unit employ-er support officer, with the latter seeing him acting as an interface between the reservists under his command and their employers.

Now aged 44, he has another six years as a reservist before having to retire from the Marines, where he has enjoyed every minute of his service “amongst a collection of like-minded individuals.”

Having once considering becoming a regular, he decided that being a reservist offered a better life balance – the excite-ment of the military, plus the opportu-nity to still pursue a career and a more conventional family life.

If it’s seen as debatable that employing reservistsreturns definite benefits, consider the evidence of the persuaders and examples, writes Mike Cowley

They get more training in the course of the year than most firms give in a lifetime

John Davies: network of connections

Major Jonathan Stewart: adventure

the times | Tuesday September 23 2014 7

Tuesday September 23 2014 | the times

Business Insight8

Pensions

The problem with auto enrolment is that it includes an opt-out clause for em-ployees which has left a gaping hole in the pensions net, through which fi nan-cially hard-pressed or less scrupulous

bosses of small and medium-sized enterprises may well attempt to squeeze employees.

Faced with extra costs at a time when many fi rms are just climbing out of recession, this leg-islative loophole is open to exploitation in the form of employees being “persuaded” not to join, or simply not being fully informed of the long-term benefi ts now available to them.

What auto enrolment – otherwise known as pensions in the workplace – was meant to achieve was that employers now had to align themselves with Government requirements in order to ensure that their employees save in high-quality, value-for-money schemes.

This means that the auto enrolment pension scheme has to work within capped charges, as outlined by the Financial Conduct Authority, and provide a pension scheme that will offer a choice of lifestyling investment funds.

Minimum quality standards required are set percentages that both the employer and the employee have to make from their staging date, which is automatically tied into their account-

ing date and PAYE reference, leading to a high-er level of contribution, usually over a three-year period. The intention here is to ensure that the exposure to asset classes and geographicalareas is tailored to meet with the client’s chang-ing circumstances throughout his or her life-time up until retirement.

My main concern is that, like the previous stakeholder pensions initiative, the end result will see a vast number of small to medium-sized businesses simply not encouraging their mem-bers to join, in order to mitigate increased op-erating costs.

Despite a Government advertising campaign and efforts by both independent fi nancial ad-visers and insurers to promote the scheme, the opt-out clause undermines the very founda-tions of what is otherwise a serious attempt to provide a privatised pension in retirement.

I feel it is incumbent on every independent fi nancial adviser to pursue employers to imple-ment the scheme correctly and within the mini-mum quality standards, so that their employees have an additional level of security in retire-ment in addition to any state benefi ts accrued during their working lives.

If you are an employer, you need to call on your independent fi nancial adviser to discuss

the implementation of a scheme on a fairly costed basis, with appropriate employee meet-ings set up to ensure there is a clear under-standing of the new legislation and the benefi ts it offers them.

There can be no half-hearted approach in relation to the new legislation. After all, you would not have a business without your em-ployees, and an employer who shows he or she cares will reap future rewards in terms of in-creased motivation.�� To contact Mark Goldstone for further information, phone 0161-428 4237 or visit www.mag-fi nancial.co.uk

Opt-out clause in employee scheme leaves gaping hole in auto enrolment netThe Government’s auto enrolment pension scheme has been introduced to ensure the future wellbeing of employees – but there is a major loophole in the legislation itself, one which could well negate the good intentions.Mark Goldstone, a leading UK independent fi nancial adviser for corporates and individuals for more than 30 years, and an acknowledged expert in the fi elds of pensions, investments and inheritance tax planning, explains:

Mark Goldstone: urging increased motivation

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Tuesday September 23 2014 | the times

Business Insight10

Students are all for the different approach ofDr Moogan’s ExecutiveMBA course at Salford,reports Mike Cowley

Dr Yvonne Moogan used to lock the doors if her MBA (Master of Business Administration) students were more than 10 minutes late for a lecture, and

would not let them in until the break. Not that she is by nature confrontational – although the students with whom she has worked during a wide-ranging ca-reer that has spanned both the higher education and further education sectors always know where they stand with her, probably because she is a blunt-spoken Northerner.

Born and bred in Bolton and the first member of her family to go on to attend university full time, Dr Moogan is always there for her students – unusually giving them her personal mobile number along with the advice that they can ring her any time.

Originally an accountant, she gave it up after a couple of years for a career “with a buzz”. This happened to be educa-tion and even now, many years later, that buzz remains.

The reason for the potential lockouts of students was that she was working for Kaplan Financial at the time, the world leader in professional private education – which, being American-owned, had its own set of rules and standards for the courses it ran, to ensure that students got the biggest bangs for their bucks.

Kaplan, unlike the public sector, is in it for the business of making a profit – which it does in a way that the public education sector can only look on with a degree of envy, despite the increased fees that are now on the table.

These courses involved young gradu-ate students – mainly from abroad, and therefore with a vast array of cultural differences which brought their own problems – rather than the mature stu-dents with whom Dr Moogan will now find herself working having just been appointed head of the Executive MBA programme at the University of Salford.

Now that she is back in the public sector, where she had previously been for two decades, Dr Moogan intends to transfer the best of the private to ensure that Salford tops the Executive MBA offering league – and she is uniquely placed and has the track record to do just this.

Dr Moogan was originally headhunt-ed by Kaplan from Liverpool Business School, where she ran the MBA pro-grammes and had successfully increased the student intake from 30 to 100 twice a year. Kaplan, best known historically for running accountancy and legal courses, had moved into education, which led to it offering an MBA course and, as the private sector does, looking round for the best possible person to run it. This turned out to be Yvonne Moogan.

Here was someone not only with a background in successful delivery of MBAs, but who had also undertaken in-depth research into what students want-

ed from universities – an area which obviously appealed to a private body es-tablishing itself at the forefront of higher education in the UK.

Somewhat unusually, Dr Moogan had two major academic papers published before she even completed her PhD. She became Kaplan’s director of MBA pro-grammes as well as director of research, responsible for the allocation of supervi-sors to dissertation students, while also teaching research method modules to MBA and MSc students.

What Dr Moogan also found herself doing was effectively educating her Kap- lan team colleagues, around 90 per cent of whom did not have the teach-ing qualifications which she had. She also found time to undertake research for those bodies involved in teaching in-ternational students – including Kaplan – via a paper that explored how best to approach the question of having to deal with a vast range of cultural differences. Her time at Liverpool had brought this home forcefully, when attempts at greet-ing Malaysian students in their own lan-guage resulted in them collapsing into laughter.

Eventually she was asked to take over Kaplan Open Learning, an online MBA programme launched by the company. “They picked me not because I was good,” she says, “but because I did things a bit differently. If you pick the phone up, make things more personal, that’s what students like, you’re then more likely to retain them – and that’s what I did.”

But the move over to open learn-ing meant she had to hit the road – or hit the rails actually, as this involved travelling extensively to the company’s centres around the UK. The work saw her shuttling between various major cit-ies – London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds – and often having to spend two nights away from home at a time. It was

Business education

Queues to catch her buzz

an itinerary that began to impact on her family, who live near Salford.

“When I went to Leeds, I had to get up at five in the morning and was not getting back until nine at night,” she recalls. “And even on holidays, I always had my Black-Berry on. They pay you well and you get good bonuses, but they demand a lot in return.”

With her 11-year-old son Adam about to start secondary school – “I know he wants me around less, but I wanted to be around more” – and an eight-year-old daughter, Emma, she decided it was time to call a halt to the prolonged enforced absences from her family. So she applied for the post at the University of Salford.

The reasons Dr Moogan chose to ac-cept the role as head of the Executive MBA programme at the university ef-fectively mirror why students themselves choose to head there. First and foremost it is because the University of Salford Business School is accredited by the As-sociation of MBAs (AMBA), which places it in the top 2 per cent of universities not only in the UK but around the world.

It also means students must have had three years of management experience with their companies before they can ap-ply – and this, in turn, dictates the quality of the student body itself, making it older and more experienced than on alterna-

tive courses which are not accredited. This is a badge which those who have it wear with pride

Salford is also a renowned centre for research, an area where Yvonne Moogan is keen to become more involved again, and the university has already provided her with a PhD research student to help with this. Also, Salford Business School has a different approach – “very quirky and brilliant,” Dr Moogan says – in terms of direct practical application to the real world. Each student is called upon to provide a 10,000-word report – the Busi-ness Innovation Live Project – which has direct benefits for their company and so, potentially, for their career.

The new head of the Executive MBA programme was also impressed by the way Salford had taken half of its intake to Hong Kong and the other half to Rio de Janeiro for a week the previous year as part of their course to meet business leaders – and for free. But didn’t this kind of thing happen at Liverpool when she was there? “No,” she says, “there you couldn’t take them on a bus to hear a guest speaker.”

The final unique selling point as far as Dr Moogan was concerned – and the clincher as to why she wanted the job – is the location for the Salford Executive MBA programme. It is on the vibrant new university campus in the heart of MediaCityUK, where even the BBC em-ployees relocated from London are now happy to be.

Flanked by both the BBC and ITV, here is a happening location, one which provides a real buzz of excitement for the students just as education still provides a real buzz for Yvonne Moogan and will continue to do so. It is a buzz she trans-mits to her students – which was why, even when she locked some tardy stu-dents out of lectures at Kaplan, they were still queuing, anxious to get in when she opened the doors again.

Dr Moogan: added private experience

Selling point: the Salford Executive MBA programme is on the new university campus in the heart of MediaCityUK

If you pick upthe phone, make thingspersonal, that’s whatthe students like, and you’re morelikely toretain them

the times | Tuesday September 23 2014

11

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Find out more about The Salford MBA and take a giant step towards a successful career in business management. Call 0161 295 2222 or visit www.salford.ac.uk/business-school

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