Resettlement – the Royal Irish way

Driving through Belfast in the early morning, it is easy to forget that this is a part of the world rocked by bitter inter-factional fighting. Open streets with modern housing and supermarkets instead of burnt-out slums, abandoned cars and urban wasteland testify to the regeneration of this part of the UK.

But the security threat is still real, as Warrant Officer Class 2 Sam Jackson explains: ‘I have no photos or silver on display in my house. My next-door neighbour doesn’t know what I do for a living – it’s never discussed. There are still punishment beatings, with some people feeling the troubles are not over yet.’

Jackson is one of the 2,000 full-time Home Service (HS) members of the Royal Irish Regiment. There are another 1,000 part-time HS soldiers as well as the Regiment’s First Battalion, which takes its place among the other regular Infantry units. All HS soldiers will leave the Army in a series of tranches, which will be largely complete by the end of July, although a few will not discharge until March 2008.

Although something of the sort was long expected, the 1 August 2005 announcement of the HSF disbandment came as a shock to many. While most people were glad that it was no longer felt necessary to retain this strong security footprint, they were sad about unit disbandment and nervous about employment prospects.

Until a few years earlier, Northern Ireland resettlement had been a relatively small operation, according to Regional Resettlement Centre Manager Trish Mullen: ‘When I arrived we were running at around 350 people a year, but visits to units gradually persuaded more Royal Irish soldiers to book on to them. By 2005 numbers were up to 650. We then had to cater for 3,000 people over a two-year window, so something had to happen – fast.’ And it did: the Centre has been running three-day Career Transition Workshops including personal counselling sessions at the rate of four and five a week to deal with the necessary throughput.

The HS termination package for part-timers is a £14,000 tax-free payment and a one-day Employment Support Programme (CV writing, application forms and some interview techniques). Full-time element soldiers made redundant receive a tax-free £28,000, and a special capital payment based on rank and time served. Some also qualify for immediate pensions, and are entitled to the same resettlement package as their Regular Army counterparts.

Because the vast majority of HS soldiers want to stay in Northern Ireland this resettlement programme has really been the first test of the newly established Regional Employment and Training Manager (RETM). Step forward ex-Staff Sergeant Tony Lane, a close protection specialist from the Royal Military Police who worked for Group 4 in Asia and Africa for two years or so after leaving the Army in 2004.

His first act as RETM was to conduct a ‘training needs analysis’ to discover what skills and personal qualities local employers wanted, those that were already possessed by HS soldiers, how to enable them to gain those skills they did not already have, and how to make employers aware of this pool of talent. For those skills that cannot be acquired from scratch within the weeks or months available for resettlement, Lane has been working on fast-track training schemes, work attachments, workplace assessments and a whole variety of other ways of enabling Service leavers to gain useable qualifications as well as translating the skills and experience developed during their military careers.

In doing this, he has been to a large extent trialling the role of the other RETMs now established in each RRC area to perform a similar role. Service leavers will be able to make informed decisions about the training they need to do to develop a skills set that is in demand in the area in which they want to settle at the end of their contract.

So successful have been the relationships built with employers that some major businesses will now take untrained Service leavers because they value their personal qualities so highly that they are prepared to invest in their training. Another key attribute is that Service leavers come with some level of security clearance, and even first aid and health & safety qualifications – a surprisingly valuable bonus. Civilian work attachments then introduce potential employees to employers.

Local training organisations have been contracted to provide courses for which there is local demand, and the whole process closely tailors resettlement to the individual. While some skills are the same everywhere, there are different employment patterns in different parts of the UK, so Service leavers who can target their pre-release training at specific vacancies are even more employable.

Jackson’s main concerns were the huge numbers leaving at the same time, overcome by the tranche system, and ensuring that everyone had the basic and key skills that they needed for an effective job hunt. He arranged literacy and numeracy training with local colleges, and followed this by negotiating such courses as ECDL, CLAIT, health & safety, ADR and equal opportunities. Most of this could be funded by learning credits but he reports that ‘a sense of realism led to soldiers being ready to pay some costs themselves’.

It can be easy to imagine a certain ingrained reluctance for Roman Catholic or Republican employers to take on someone who used to serve in the Army. Surprisingly this has not been a big problem, but some of the worst resistance has come from fellow employees of any political affiliation or none. After being stopped and searched every week for 20 or 30 years, some have little affection for someone who was involved. So some ex-soldiers encounter low-level harassment from the very people they were trying to protect.

Employment statistics are encouraging. Many of the part-time soldiers have simply continued in their day jobs or made the normal adjustments to find full-time work or develop other opportunities. The 2,000 full-timers face exactly the same problems as their Regular Army counterparts and receive very similar resettlement support.

John McClenaghan is a recruitment consultant with Modern Staffing Systems Ltd, a subsidiary of Grafton Recruitment, a large local agency feeding jobs to the Career Transition Partnership. For the last eight years he has been recruiting people at all levels for the Northern Ireland Civil Service and its offshoots, and is now keen to reverse the process to help with military outplacement.

He stresses the attraction of security clearance for many employers, and is building trust with HSF leavers so they will feel comfortable in providing the details that will enable them to be matched with job opportunities. His services are free to the leaver and he believes that HS leavers are ‘a very employable set of people’.

He continues: ‘I expect to spend an hour with a Royal Irish candidate, to drill down into their thought processes and expectations. I need to find a position in industry that matches their skills sets. I can say to the RETM, “I have a client looking for so many people with these skill sets. Do you have anybody?” We can also find positions for two to four months so people can try out sectors and companies. Job hopping can be OK nowadays.’

Sergeant Christine Bourne is now on a work attachment with Modern Staffing after 12 years in the HS. With eight GCSEs and a Social Care BTEC, she had chosen the Army before university and is using her ELCs to fund a part-time HNC in Business and Finance. With a salesman husband, an 11 year old at home and another baby expected shortly, you might expect that she would take some time off when she leaves …

‘I’ve done the ECDL and learnt management accounts, and I’m also learning Sage. I hope to start a CIPD diploma in April and I’ve got a three-month probationary period with Grafton after I have the baby.’

Her start in recruitment was not easy: ‘I was used to knowing what I was doing, and I wasn’t used to people working for their own benefit – even in a team. My new colleagues were suspicious of me because I had never worked in recruitment, and I felt like a fish out of water. The office was bedlam, with 12 people shouting and phones ringing. The only quiet time was lunch, but I’m now one of the team.’

Lance Corporal John Beacher spent six years in the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment before a tour in Omagh and an Ulster girlfriend persuaded him to stay in the Province. Eight years on, his daughter lives 40 minutes’ drive away, and he has a host of friends living near him. He took a resettlement course in tree surgery with Kingswood in Tonbridge, which he found through Quest. He has a work attachment arranged through the RETM with a big company, on which he will use his new skills.

‘I have to be optimistic. If the job with the company doesn’t pan out, I’ll look into grants to help me set up my own business. The cost of setting up in tree surgery is huge – something like £20,000 for the equipment and insurance. I’ll miss the fellows and the craic with the lads, but I’ll make a break and build up a business gradually.’

Overall, then, there is optimism in Ulster; with the direct linkage of employment prospects with resettlement training and advice providing a lesson for the UK’s other regions, and it is one that is certainly being learnt.