Loyalty and leadership is a winning combination for Saab
As a veteran of both the British Army and the Australian Army, head of Land & Aerospace at defence and security contractor Saab Australia, Marc Bryant believes employers can fail to recognise the commercial value of military service.
Marc Bryant is a champion for the business and cultural value of ex-service members in the workplace.
Bryant is the head of Land & Aerospace at defence and security contractor Saab Australia and the chair of Saab’s internal veteran advisory committee. As a veteran of both the British Army and the Australian Army, and through lived experience, he believes ex-service people are not always able to effectively articulate their skills and experience, and employers can fail to recognise the commercial value of military service.
The former artillery officer says Saab is leading by example – 15 per cent of its 1100-strong workforce is made up of ex-service people – and encourages other employers to consider employing veterans.
As an ex-serviceman himself, Bryant promotes the often under-appreciated potential of former Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in the broader business environment.
He says Saab and other employers reap the benefits of employing ex-service people with specific technical knowledge, but their real value lies elsewhere.
There’s a long list of qualities that the military inculcates into its members, he says: leadership, teamwork, risk management, communication skills, empathy, punctuality, and the ability to work and make decisions under pressure.
For industries that run on specialist knowledge, and where it can take years to train up managers, he also cites loyalty.
“We tend to get good retention with veterans,” he says. “Their sense of loyalty is nurtured all the way through their military service: they are always putting the team first.”
He says many employers struggle to see the added value that veterans bring to the workplace, partly because their qualities can be hard to describe during the application process.
“There is a huge amount of value that comes out of these softer skills. They are often quite difficult to translate into a CV or covering letter, but they transfer really well to the cut and thrust of business.”
Former service members may have fewer tertiary qualifications than the general population, and military training often includes specialist skills that employers outside the defence sphere may struggle to understand. Bryant says recruiters and hiring managers should look beyond the qualifications towards the specific and implied skills that a military background confers.
“In their time, they will have had hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars-worth of technical and leadership training: they are coming in as ready-made leaders,” he says.
Part of the challenge, Bryant says, is to change the perception.
“The media narrative at the moment is all about mental health and the alleged war crimes in Afghanistan: none of that is good for somebody who’s trying to transition from defence to start a second career,” he says. “The reality is that a minority of people are negatively affected, physically, emotionally or mentally, by their military service. The vast majority of people are enriched by their military service.
“So we’re trying hard with our relatively small program – working with the federal government, state governments and through word of mouth with other employers and veterans – to switch that into a more positive message.”
Saab’s program extends to ADF reservists, who sometimes struggle to find employers who understand their need to take time to fulfil their military commitments, and to the partners of serving and former service people.
“The posting cycle in defence is typically once every two years, and their partners and families usually move around with them, which is obviously not always great for their own professional careers,” Bryant says. “Saab’s a large organisation, so we do our best to offer options wherever that posting may be, or helping them network in that locality to find something suitable.”
Saab Australia has joined a number of bodies committed to promoting former service members, not just within its own ranks, but also in the broader business world.
In addition to its own internal Veteran and ADF Partner Support Program, Saab has joined the government’s Veteran Employment Commitment, an initiative of the Veteran Employment Program through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, that sets benchmarks for workplace policies and practices that support veteran employment. The company is also an active supporter of the King’s Trust Australia, which provides mentoring and training support for ex-service people who are starting their own business.
“The most important thing for us is not actually getting the veterans and ADF partners into Saab, it’s getting them into meaningful employment wherever that might be. And if we can benefit from employing veterans and partners then, of course, that’s a great outcome for us and it’s good for the veterans, but we’re just trying to help people.”
