The Naval Secretary on how he’s making HR a seafaring profession
In a world where thrusting technology businesses encourage employees to create their own job titles – with an inevitable surfeit of ninjas, gurus and rock stars – there’s something reassuring about the long-standing lineage of Rear Admiral Jonathan Woodcock’s role.
As Naval Secretary since 2012, he is the 64th man to hold a post which spans back 120 years to the days of Sir Hedworth Meux, famed commander of HMS Powerful. Not that Rear Adm Woodcock, an engineer by trade and a 30-year veteran who saw action in Iraq aboard HMS Ark Royal, is beholden to history: “In most businesses,” he says, “I would be the HR director.”
It’s a role which comes without direct responsibility for training or recruitment, and with board-level representation handled by the Second Sea Lord. But other challenges facing the HR lead for the Royal Navy will be familiar to many in civilian organisations.
Most strikingly, the Navy – in common with the other Armed Forces – has faced reductions in regular numbers, having shed 5,000 people in the past three years to sit at a little above 30,000 personnel. This transformation programme has seen the skills base shift significantly and its operational context is evolving rapidly as Britain engages in combat in Iraq.
HR’s aim is to make careers attractive and rewarding, potentially over the course of decades, while ensuring the overall size and skills base of the Navy suits the country’s needs. Or as Rear Adm Woodcock puts it: “In our business, HR is the output. From board level downwards, everything we do is about people. Sometimes in the past, HR has moved too far away from the business output, so that equipment has been the biggest driver of things. But today we have the balance right.”
The Naval Secretary’s role, however, is further constrained by an easily overlooked consideration: with recruitment restricted to only entry level, many of the traditional salves to workforce planning or strategic skills issues are off the menu. “We’re a bottom-fed organisation,” says Rear Adm Woodcock. “We have to devote more time to that part of the workforce than most industries would, because it’s the only group I have from which to develop my very senior cadre of 20 years’ time.”
It means engaging the right sort of young people is arguably the most vital part of Rear Adm Woodcock’s role. But how does a naturally rigid hierarchy sit with millennials who, we’re told, crave autonomy and have a loathing of command and control models?
“People come in as recruits having made a life choice to be part of the Navy and, interestingly, they like the bit about the parade ground and the shouting. It’s part of the game of transition. But our job when training them is to show why certain behaviours are central to our fighting abilities.
“Young people today aren’t prepared to do something simply because they’re told to. Individuals are expected to do extraordinary things while in a very junior rank… we respect them to do that. But they must also understand where they sit in the organisation. We invest in our core values, and clearly everyone who joins us believes in them.” What else can HR directors on Civvy Street learn from the Navy’s people management experience?
Careers need structure
Rear Adm Woodcock is a marine engineer by profession but, in common with most long-serving Naval officers, has held a variety of roles. That constant sense of change is for many part of the attraction of a career in the Armed Forces, but he concedes there is a balance to be struck: “It’s always been seen as bad practice by people outside the Navy that we move people around so much. Everybody used to get a new role every two years, and we’re slowing that down now in order to gain an element of accountability and sustain knowledge.”
Managing outflow is a key part of the role, exacerbated by the demand for high-end engineering skills in the private sector, which often costs him experienced individuals. “Although a navy of 30,000 is an organisation, it’s also 30,000 individuals,” he says. Get the “bulk career offer” wrong and you’ll lose too many senior personnel. But concentrate too rigidly on building a career and you risk having the wrong skills in the wrong place: “The objective for us is to develop a navy that can fight battles and win – that must come first.”
Specialism vs generalism
The summary of a Navy career can sound relatively linear. “People come in with a skill level to perform a role, they go to sea and do that role and in doing so they gain skills for other roles,” says Rear Adm Woodcock. Every step of the process is recorded and examined, and as officers become more senior they are likely to settle on a certain number of specialisms. Even so, dedicated career paths are rare: the procurement function is an exception, where staff are encouraged to develop expertise over a number of years.
And now, says the Naval Secretary, HR could follow suit: “It might be better that we have a few specialists who have worked for a long time in the area to provide baseline activity, while allowing others to flow in and out. The challenge is to professionalise without losing breadth, ensuring we have worked out what we want from our HR skillsets in the first instance.” Employment lawyers, for example, are already dedicated professionals, and others may join them, though Rear Adm Woodcock is keen to emphasise all would need to have seen operational duty first, to develop “core military skills”. And aptitude will remain paramount: “After all, there’s no point having an explosives expert who knows nothing about explosives.”
Hire for latent ability
Recruits come from a range of academic backgrounds, many with few formal qualifications, says Rear Adm Woodcock. But that isn’t a problem. “We need young people who are bright and hard-working, but that doesn’t mean loads of GCSEs. We have to see the latent ability.” Stringent testing aims to identify such hidden talent, while the “physically and intellectually demanding” training gives a realistic appraisal of what’s to come.
Nobody joins the Navy for a short career, says Rear Adm Woodcock, but the psychological ties between employees and the service are more complex than many imagine. “While it is not about a formal contract for individuals on joining, the implicit contract is very important.” This is embodied in the “covenant” recruits make with the nation: “It says they will do extraordinary things. And that means what we are doing is selling a completely different lifestyle more than a career.”
Family matters
Every central decision taken around deployment must be made with the impact on families in mind, says Rear Adm Woodcock. It’s part of a wider diversity drive of which he is proud, but like many core considerations, it comes with a caveat – the Navy’s operational capacity is paramount. “Part of the responsibility of command is to ensure you understand what is going on with your people in their lives, and ensure that feeds into your decision-making.
“A sailor joins to go to sea, but being away endlessly becomes less attractive to someone with a family. Understanding the shocks they face, and making sure we mitigate them, is key. But we also have to remember our job is to operate. We’re not there just for our own good.”
Be brutally honest
HR has been at the heart of the complex business changes taking place right across the Armed Forces. All of which means being honest and accurate in crucial conversations, says Rear Adm Woodcock.
HR professionals, he says, owe it to themselves to put in place processes that realistically assess capabilities. And when it comes to redundancy, homework and honesty are key: “If you’re doing something life-changing to an individual, they deserve you to have spent some time preparing. Decide what you are going to tell them. I like, if possible, to have something they go away with and feed back on. But you also need quite hard-nosed honesty. You have to be clear what has been said, and that it can’t change.”