A senior British Defense MP said a wider pool of candidates would help fill the skills gap.
UK Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence, Veterans and Military Families Andrew Murrison said the Armed Forces are considering recruiting more older and neurodiverse people to broaden the spectrum of qualifications in the troops, reports The Financial Times.
Murrison stressed that, due to the tightness of the national labor market, “there are bottlenecks where things are quite serious”, so he believes that the Armed Forces should adopt a more flexible approach in terms of hiring and retention. again staff.
Also, as the Army becomes a more skills-based organization, with an increasing emphasis on cyber prowess, it should “cast the net wider” to hire more “neurodiverse” people.
Given that neurodiverse people with dyslexia and dyspraxia are already serving in the UK Armed Forces, Murrison proposes to explore the possibility of recruiting people with autism, Asperger’s syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who can “have skills and qualities that other people do not have”.
Murrison also suggested the possibility of extending the working lives of older employees, explaining that “There are no philosophical barriers that prevent raising the retirement age”.
In June, a government-commissioned report concluded that the British Army is having difficulty attracting technically-skilled recruits, thus undermining the country’s ability to fight on modern battlefields.
In January, the Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallaceadmitted that the UK is far behind militarily compared to its partners, as its Armed Forces are “Devastated and Underwhelmed”.
According to UK Defense Staff Statistics, “the total size of the full-time British Armed Forces (trained and untrained) on 1 April 2023 was 152.400” people. The number of troops in permanent formation amounted to 133.570.
The report, prepared by the entrepreneur Rick Haythornthwaitereveals that low pay, inadequate accommodations, rigid career structures, lack of diversity, and pressure on military families have led to low morale, high turnover, and poor hiring.