Saturday 27th June is Armed Forces Day, a chance to recognise and celebrate the contribution of serving personnel, veterans, and their families. As a proud signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant, we’re committed to ensuring armed forces families are treated fairly and not disadvantaged in their day-to-day lives. We’re also honoured to hold the Bronze Award from the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.
To mark the day, our Deputy Programme Manager for London, Frances Norris, shares what it really means to be a Navy wife, and why finding the right employer makes all the difference.
My name is Frances, and I’m the Deputy Programme Manager for London. I’m also a mother of four and a Navy wife. People often ask me if I chose to be a Service Spouse (no, that came with the husband), how I cope (I don’t know) and whether I knew what I was getting into (not really – 16 years on and I’m still finding out).
If military life is an adventure, it’s also a crash course in project management. You just have to roll with whatever gets thrown at you and sometimes fit some very square pegs into slightly too small round holes (and I’m not just talking about my furniture into Married Quarters!). Then when all that’s done you look for a job… and you hope you can find someone who doesn’t mind a patchwork CV and slightly sketchy reliability around deployments. Interesting and fulfilling is a bonus by that point.
Right from my interview with The Breastfeeding Network I felt comfortable and confident. There was no need to explain the frequent job changes and strange gaps in my CV. Armed Forces Friendly employers don’t expect exhaustive detail about a Service Spouse’s lifestyle, they already know what we’re up against and they respect the skills we’ve gained from handling military life.
This really hit home when I was asked about a project that I’d recently handled. I’d just completed an international move – and I felt 100% confident talking about how I’d planned and executed packing up a household, navigating customs and finding a house, schools and extracurricular activities from a different country. I didn’t need to filter anything, and clearly my genuine love and mastery of Excel spreadsheets shone through because I got the job!
Two years down the line I can wholeheartedly say in the BfN I’ve found an amazing, supportive community. I’m proud to work somewhere that doesn’t just pay lip service to supporting my military community, but really does care. Service life can be wildly unpredictable. But having a role within an organisation that bends instead of breaks makes everything so much easier.
For more about the Armed Forces Covenant and what it means for you, visit: www.gov.uk/government/policies/armed-forces-covenant
Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS): www.gov.uk/government/publications/defence-employer-recognition-scheme