Reimagining Army Careers: A New Approach Fit for the 21st Century

As noted in the article by RUSI Research Fellow Dr Jack Watling, Programme CASTLE has the lead on many of our talent management changes and will establish a new Army Talent Management System (ATMS). The system will create a new career structure for officers and soldiers and redefine how we manage our people and their talent, account for the needs of their families and fundamentally provide more choice. It will provide competitive, attractive and flexible careers, suitable for the 21st century and the demands of future soldiers.

The ATMS will recognise that not everyone wants to follow a conventional career path and that some may prefer to specialise in a certain area, such as Capability and Acquisition (Cap & Ac) or Defence Engagement. A change in approach would not only benefit those individuals, but would also allow the Army and Defence to benefit from having the right people with the right skills in the right appointments at the right time.

The RUSI paper focused on the utility of the two-year assignment, during which officers must learn their trade before progressing to a new appointment. It is worth noting that two years is an average for junior officers, with some Lieutenant Colonels being appointed for three years and those in the General Staff routinely assigned for three years. These three-year assignments are for exactly the purposes the paper suggests, namely stability and the time to become good at the role.

While developing a career for a generic Army officer, a fine balance needs to be maintained between the need for stability and the objective of gaining broad experience. The British Army today wishes its officers to have a comprehensive background so that they have a better understanding of the context of decisions. Hence, we feel this is still best delivered via a broad mix of staff and Regimental Duty (RD) appointments, which balances gaining knowledge, skills and experience with a broad career.

As the RUSI commentary suggests, the initial stage of an officer’s career is focused on gaining experience at RD so that they can be selected to be a Battery, Company or Squadron Commander. However, this level of command is seen as fundamental in most careers and sets up their potential route to further command. Hence, there is a focus on gaining command experience in early service with some staff broadening if possible.

The structure of the Army officer career sees all junior majors in a staff appointment after completing their Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land) (ICSC(L)). ICSC(L) delivers a broad training syllabus, including some information on Cap & Ac, but fundamentally acts as the baseline for the middle stage of an officer’s career.

Addressing the issue of credibility to undertake a Cap & Ac appointment, we should remember that those officers selected to undertake key roles routinely attend the Battlefield Technology Course (BTC) at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham. During the BTC they undertake a Battlespace Technology MSc that equips them for technology-facing appointments up to and including Lieutenant Colonel.

In terms of senior officer employment in key Cap & Ac appointments, we believe there is another way of considering the problem. It is recognised that the acquisition appointments require more specific knowledge, skills and experience (KSE) than those in capability development. Hence, it is unlikely that senior officers would first step into acquisition appointments at general officer rank. The vast majority will have the KSE before taking up a general officer appointment in acquisition and would almost certainly stay in the appointment for at least three years. However, as capability development is broader and potentially requires more knowledge of field army context, general officers routinely step into capability appointments with less experience of the procurement cycle, but with a greater feel for the field army requirements, leaving the detailed acquisition work to those with the key skills.

Regarding Jack Watling’s argument about the management of relationships – be these in industry or in partner countries – this is a point well made: these obviously need time and should not be rushed. This is one of the reasons we are looking to lengthen officer careers by approximately four years on average to allow a slightly longer period in each appointment, moving the average from 24 to 30 months as part of our Single Officer Terms of Service (SOTOS) project. Under SOTOS, we are exploring how to merge Late Entry and Direct Entry careers by managing both cohorts as one, improving the opportunities for both and reducing any barriers to employment.

Jack Watling’s article suggested that four-year appointments would be ideal. In some cases they would, but not without the attendant cost of reducing the number of officers that could gain relevant skills in areas such as acquisition. A four-year appointment cycle quickly becomes a competition between generating very specialist officers who have deep understanding but are hard to replace, and producing more officers with shallower experience. We believe that there is a middle ground to be found.

In the wider context of Programme CASTLE, we are focusing on retaining the key skills we require while developing satisfying and rewarding careers for our people. In the future, we will group our people together under ‘Professions’ – common skills and outputs to help individuals map out their career path – rather than cap-badge affiliations. This approach aligns us with the other Services and will provide a more agile workforce, enabling us to match our talent to the task at hand.

For this to happen, we are creating a framework that defines the knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours of everyone in the Army and all the appointments they fulfil. Known as the Army Talent Framework, this will form the basis for how we select people for appointments in the future, matching talent and skills as precisely as possible to the job at hand. In so doing, we can develop and exploit skills in Cap & Ac with a far greater degree of certainty.

Simultaneously, we are digitalising our talent management processes to make it far easier to engage with careers, placing key information on soldiers and officers’ personal phones later this year; this will be known as the Career Management Portal.

Overall, we believe the British Army officer career structure remains credible, but that it can be improved. Programme CASTLE will deliver the changes needed shortly, as we match talent to appointments with far greater precision while simultaneously offering more choice to our people. CASTLE is for the whole Army and will enable the Reserve, Regular, Soldier and Officer cohorts to pursue the careers they desire, helping us to deliver the Future Soldier required in the mid-21st century.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

Have an idea for a Commentary you’d like to write for us? Send a short pitch to commentaries@rusi.org and we’ll get back to you if it fits into our research interests. Full guidelines for contributors can be found here.