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Jimmy Quinn, immediate past president of IOSH, highlights the invaluable skills of Armed Forces veterans and the helping hand they need to complete the second half of a career change.
I’m Jimmy Quinn, veteran, volunteer, father, husband. One of my main themes last year during my presidency was to further the Armed Forces veterans agenda. Now, as immediate past president, I continue from where I left off.
In the last few months, I have continued my mission to highlight the amazing skills of veterans as part of the ever-growing network of those companies wishing to employ those from the veteran community. ‘Halfway there’ is my new expression of what the veteran brings to the world of second career employability, the skills any employer requires: teamwork, problem solving, self-reflection and awareness, along with a unique ability to be people-facing is quite simply ‘nulli secundus’.
The other half is about learning the role and tasks for their next career. Employers are now starting to realise too that veterans are ‘halfway there’. We all know that soft skills are very difficult to learn and, along with learning a new role, this can be daunting. The veteran brings many skills already, so employers just need to teach them the other half.
The veteran is a unique person who has come from a unique organisation; the perception of this individual as ‘institutionalised’ has long since passed. Service personnel may well have been broken down and retrained to a specific way of thinking. However, as this person becomes an individual again, the rationale of an institutionalising experience becomes a strength, not a weakness.
Levelling up for female veterans
In my second career as a health and safety practitioner in the construction industry I have found an environment very similar to my role in the army. Teamwork, leadership and a work ethic to match have seen me excel in this industry. It’s an amazing one, although there remains a glaring lack of women in construction, especially in OSH and other disciplines within construction.
This aspect of construction is very poor, even more so for female veterans who have the same skills, attributes and employability as their male colleagues and are ‘halfway there’ too. So why is there not an abundance of female veterans in health and safety when they operate from a very similar if not the same skill-set?
We must continue to call for change and act to level up opportunities for all talents, inclusive of gender, ethnic diversity and background, within construction and OSH.
The community of veterans within OSH and construction now has support from initiatives such as the Armed Forces Covenant, and from organisations such as Project RECCE, on social platforms such as LinkedIn. All these showcase veterans’ skills and those who are succeeding in their second career as well as those also just starting out. This all proves that skills that can be adapted, that are coachable and transferable, are in abundance.
The IOSH Veterans LinkedIn Group forms a network to support veterans in health and safety as well any other opportunities and roles. This support is welcome and long may it continue. If you are a veteran looking for networking opportunities, or an employer looking to recruit, join this group.
So, my key message to you, is that veterans are employable. They are already ‘halfway there’, so help them achieve the other half to continue their career journey.
