Boost for service personnel and their families as Priory signs Armed Forces Covenant

• Covenant aims to remove some of the work disadvantages suffered by armed forces personnel and their families
• Priory to help provide job opportunities to those who need to move around the UK as a result of their partner’s military postings
• Guarantees interviews, and other measures, for service personnel moving into civilian life and wanting to find work with the Priory
• Priory “honoured to celebrate the armed forces community”

Priory has announced that it has signed the Armed Forces Covenant, demonstrating its commitment to support veterans, reservists and their families currently in employment - and to encourage those who serve, or have served, to join the Priory team.

The Armed Forces Covenant is a voluntary pledge that aims to ensure all members of the armed forces community, past or present, are treated with respect and fairness by the communities, businesses, and people they courageously volunteered to serve.

Priory, a major UK employer with a workforce of more than 20,000, pledges to support employees who continue to serve as a member of a reserve force, and to encourage employment of veterans of all ages by offering flexibility with granting leave and accommodating training/deployment.

Karen Langton, Group Human Resources Director at Priory, said signing the covenant was about “recognising the value of serving personnel, reservists, veterans and military families”.

She said Priory was “honoured to celebrate the armed forces community”, and it “looks forward to building on this commitment over the coming years”.

The suggestion that the organisation sign the covenant came from Louise Watts, who is the Director of Human Resources for Education and Children’s Services and Central Services. She explained that she is passionate about the project as “a forces daughter and wife of a retired army major”. That background meant she was keen to support the armed forces community and utilise the “transferable skills of our veterans”.

Case study 1

“Like starting a new school over and over again” is how Rebecca Taylor, Head of Group Projects for Priory, describes the effect of being married to an infantry officer on her own working life. She and her husband moved 18 times in 20 years, to places ranging from Devon and Aldershot, to Northern Germany and Paris. With the family constantly relocating, Rebecca found building and maintaining a career difficult. As she explains: “My CV did look frightening to any potential employer, with such regular changes.”

As Rebecca says, in today’s world “it's usual now for both parties to be able to contribute financially”, but that's “extremely difficult” for military spouses. This is one of the concerns addressed in the pledge to which Priory is committed.

Each organisation which adopts the Covenant signs a set of pledges tailored to what they can offer the armed forces community. 

Priory signed the covenant on 3 September 2020, and among the commitments it has made is to help people like Rebecca.

Specifically, Priory is committed to establishing a UK relocation scheme when a forces family moves due to redeployment. This will include allowing a Priory employee to transfer not only between sites but also between its divisions, as well as to a range of roles in central support. In addition, service spouses and partners will be offered career breaks of up to 24 months with “guaranteed re-engagement” at any point during that period. 

Rebecca says that allowing service families to relocate is vital because it “will allow you to be ambitious” in your career. She said that it “removes the loss of earnings” associated with having to find a new job every couple of years, which she describes as a “fantastic” development.

She has worked at Priory for almost 4 years, and says joining the company “was the first time I saw myself staying somewhere long-term”. She has been impressed with the company’s willingness to “accommodate their staff”, and with the wide range of sites across the UK which means Priory can allow staff lots of relocation opportunities.

The covenant also commits Priory to begin introducing paid time off for reservists from January 2021. Priory has also committed to making its rehabilitation services available at discounted rates for members of the armed forces community. Priory will offer guaranteed job interviews for service leavers, and establish a tailored career pathway for service leavers to join Priory when transitioning from the armed forces.

Case study 2

Being a good employer for former service personnel already brings huge advantages to Priory. Priory Healthcare Deputy Ward Manager, Fay-Melanie Cambridge, served in Northern Ireland and Germany before joining Priory, where she has worked for the past 8 years. She says that experience in military service means veterans bring “pride in their work, drive for excellence, and staying power when things need to change for the better”. She added that the “vast life experience and drive” ex-forces staff bring with them is an asset to any organisation. 

ENDS

Contact: [email protected]

Photographs below of Karen Langton, Group Human Resources Director of Priory with the signed Covenant, and of Fay when she was in the army.

About Priory and MEDIAN

Priory is the UK’s leading independent provider of mental health services. We treat more than 70 conditions, including depression, anxiety, addictions and eating disorders, as well as children’s mental health, across our nationwide network of sites. We also support autistic adults and adults with a learning disability, Prader-Willi Syndrome and brain injuries, as well as older people, within our specialist residential care and supported living facilities – helping as many people as possible to live their lives.

Priory is part of the MEDIAN Group, one of Europe’s leading providers of high quality mental health and rehabilitation services. The MEDIAN Group comprises 290 facilities with 5,000 beds caring for 28,000 people in the UK, 120 facilities with 20,000 beds caring for around 250,000 patients in Germany, and 15 facilities with 2,000 beds caring for 13,000 people in Spain, with more than 29,000 employees overall.