Employers and their recruitment processes must become more open to employing military reservists as the size of the UK’s reserve force is set to double and become a more central part of the defence force throughout the current decade.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says it will “set out a new deal for reservists and employers” in a consultation paper due to be released this autumn.

The Army 2020 report released earlier this year outlined the increasing importance of the Territorial Army (TA), and the UK’s reserve forces – part-time members of the armed forces – will double in size to 35,000 as the regular army cuts 20,000 soldiers by 2020.

This will bring the UK more in line with other nations such as the Canada and Australia, where reservists make up more than 40% of the military force, but is a potential problem for employers. 

An article on the front page of The Daily Telegraph earlier this week (25 September) reported the Duke of Westminster, who left his role as the head of the TA this month, as saying reservists were suffering “outrageous discrimination”, and he had been asked “on more than 100 occasions” by his soldiers why application forms can ask if an applicant is in the TA but they cannot ask about aspects such as race or religion.

Ahead of this autumn’s consultation, defence secretary Philip Hammond has already set out a clear view on the matter, saying in a statement released to Recruiter: "We quite rightly don't allow employers to discriminate against potential employees who may need time off to have a baby, so why should we allow discrimination against reservists who are prepared to put their lives on the line for their country? This is an area we will consider carefully in the Green Paper on Reserves that we will publish this autumn."

But the comments from the Duke should not be “blown out of proportion”, a spokesperson for SaBRE, which provides support for Britain’s reservists and for their employers or prospective employers, tells Recruiter.

“It is something that has come up, but I do have to say that there are 1,000s of fantastic employers out there,” the spokesperson adds. SaBRE operates a helpline for reservists, and “anecdotal” evidence from calls received suggests that recruitment issues affect only a “small minority” of those.

Dean Hyde, the managing director of Nottinghamshire-based Amalgam Training, which trains accident investigators and has employed service leaders and reservists for over a decade, tells Recruiter that he has always felt well supported by SaBRE and indeed is aware that were an employee of his to be mobilised, his company would be eligible for MoD compensation. “We’ve always had very good information from SaBRE,” he says, adding that the organisation is very helpful but sadly “resources are limited”.

While Hyde says that in “in some respects he’s [the Duke of Westminster] absolutely right, that it shouldn’t be a question”, he tells Recruiter that “the biggest problem by far is the prejudice towards armed forces today”. He adds that if he as an employer were to decide not to employ reservists simply on the ground that they might have to be deployed, then by the same token “surely I wouldn’t employ any women on the grounds that they could go off and have a baby”.

Hyde was taken to Afghanistan by SaBRE a few years ago to see the role of reservists in action, and since then has been “quite in demand” to speak about his experiences and reflect on employing reservists. Employers “have to be better educated”, he says, adding that with the MoD making cuts “surely some money could be ring-fenced” to further support reservists in employment.