Employers need to look to the Cadet Force for future talent pools 

This week, as we mark the first-ever National Cadets Week, it is worth looking beyond what the Cadet Forces represent today and thinking about what they could mean for the workforce of tomorrow.

For me, one of the most interesting things about the Cadet Forces is the opportunity they give young people to develop skills that employers will increasingly need, often before they have even entered the workplace.

As HR leaders, we spend a huge amount of time thinking about how we develop future talent. We invest in qualifications, training programmes, apprenticeships and early careers initiatives.

But we should not overlook the experiences young people are already gaining outside the classroom.

Being part of a Cadet Force gives young people the opportunity to learn by doing.

They work towards individual goals while also overcoming challenges as part of a team. They encounter different personalities and different strengths. They learn who is good at solving problems, who can motivate others and who can bring a team together. They teach you how to be resilient when facing adversity.

These are experiences that start to build the human skills employers are looking for, particularly in the emerging world of AI.

You cannot simply sit in a classroom or read a textbook and develop all of those capabilities.

Confidence and resilience, in particular, come through lived experience. They develop when people are challenged, when they have responsibility, when things do not necessarily go to plan and when they learn how to work with people who may think or operate differently from them.

That is what makes the Cadet Forces such an interesting talent pool.

The young people taking part in the Cadet Forces today are, potentially, the employees and leaders of tomorrow.

That does not mean that every cadet will go on to join the Armed Forces. There are roughly 138,000 cadets in the UK, and more than half join the civilian workforce.

One of the strengths of the cadet experience is that it can give young people a foundation of skills that can be applied and transfer seamless into many different career paths.

Some may go into engineering, healthcare, hospitality, facilities management, technology, public services or any number of other professions.

What they take with them is not necessarily a predetermined career pathway, but a set of experiences and skills that can help them navigate whatever comes next.

As employers, we need to recognise that. There is a strong business case for this. Not only is this better for the employee, but it can directly and positively impact the bottom-line.

We increasingly talk about careers as being less linear. People build their careers through a series of different experiences, creating what I think of as a collection of ‘skills blocks’.

The Cadet Forces can be one of those important building blocks.

The opportunity for employers is to connect those existing skills with opportunities to develop further.

An apprenticeship, for example, can provide technical and professional experience in the workplace while the cadet experience continues to develop complementary skills.

Sometimes those skills will overlap. Teamwork is a good example. At other times, the experiences will be completely different but will combine to create a broader and more capable individual. That is why I believe we should be looking at the Cadet Forces not simply as a youth organisation, but as an important part of the future talent landscape.

If we are serious about future-proofing our workforces, we need to think differently about where future talent comes from.

The Cadet Forces are already helping to develop it. Our responsibility as employers is to recognise that potential and make sure there are the opportunities available for young people.