Rethinking defence workforce strategy
Defence organisations globally face mounting pressure from evolving threats, disruptive technologies, and a changing workforce. Key challenges include attracting and retaining talent, rapidly building new capabilities, and leveraging technologies like AI. With rising demands and uncertain budgets, operational readiness and strategic advantage are at risk. Practical strategies and new leadership approaches will help defence organisations build a resilient, future-ready workforce.
Attracting and retaining talent
Defence forces rely on complex platforms in hostile environments, requiring deep specialists for operation and maintenance. These specialists develop skills attractive to the private sector, but the defence organisation value proposition has stagnated, not meeting new-generational workforce needs. Different measures are being looked at by defence organisations around the world to tackle service member attrition including pay hikes in Poland, expanded conscription in Denmark and a UK ‘gap year’ programme. For countries with professional militaries, the challenge is making armed forces attractive, which is proving difficult amid low unemployment, private sector competition, and flexible, remote working.
What needs to be different?
Enhancing workforce experience: Defence forces need to re-evaluate their value proposition and what it has to offer a modern workforce, articulating exactly what it means to join the defence sector, including delivering on expectations of the day-to-day culture and working experience. Simply repackaging the existing proposition will not work; it requires improvements to the day-to-day experience of employees by focusing on aspects like work-life balance, job satisfaction and personal development. This starts with a detailed understanding of the current approach and identifying where the significant pain points are. Mapping these insights across the employee lifecycle enables organisations to design targeted interventions and initiatives for an impactful value proposition to help retain critical talent.
Rapidly building new capabilities across the ecosystem
Traditional military threat responses—relying on large platforms, long equipment programmes, intricate training, maintenance, and complex crewing—remain relevant. However, modern warfare demands spontaneous and innovative workforce capabilities. Rapid capability building is imperative. In Ukraine for example, the equipment lifecycle is now just 3–6 weeks, in stark contrast to current procurement mindsets. Leveraging skill adjacencies to support faster upskilling and agile mobilisation of diverse talent across both permanent and contingent workforces is needed.
What needs to be different?
- Anticipating and developing future skills: Defence organisations must anticipate future skill needs and manage existing gaps to maintain their edge. This means identifying and cultivating skills for tomorrow’s challenges, ensuring the workforce stays relevant amid technological and market shifts.
- Building a frictionless workforce: Cross-sector careers offer defence organisations opportunities to bring in mid-career professionals and help them contribute quickly. The UK Government supports ‘zig-zag careers’ via pilots and skills passports. Organisations are using secondments across the talent ecosystem to promote mobility—this should be accelerated. This builds a workforce with broader, more adaptable skills and supports nimbler organisational structures.
- Rethinking the location of ‘work’: Thinking differently about where and how work is done is increasingly relevant. NATO is exploring transferring training and certification to industry to ease pressure and build capacity for example.
- Decreasing the barriers to entry: As autonomous systems shift control to remote centres, traditional soldiering becomes less critical, opening doors to a more diverse workforce. Easing entry requirements could increase supply in a shrinking talent market. National security restrictions limit mobility; reviewing barriers like “national eyes only” requirements outside top-security projects can help.
Mobilising GenAI– building a leading workforce model
Security and ethical concerns have slowed GenAI adoption in defence operations and workplaces. While understandable, this hesitation limits productivity and responsiveness to workforce demands. AI technologies require swift upskilling to a more adaptable workforce and present both opportunities and challenges for personnel. Defence organisations should pursue regional innovation ecosystems to rotate civilian talent into AI roles. Programmes like Eurodrone show how public-private structures support AI in contested domains. At the same time defence leadership approaches must evolve to meet a shifting labour market. Defence leaders can build on their existing strengths to guide teams through uncertainty and reinforce leadership fundamentals like navigating change, inspiring innovation, and building inclusive teams.
What needs to be different?
- Maximising workforce efficiency: Re-evaluating organisational models and clarifying roles is essential. Organisations must decide whether to be talent magnets and attract the skills they need — or talent factories that develop skills in house. Balancing this across skill needs will determine strategic success. Whichever path is chosen, maximising efficiency helps deliver consistent results and manage people-related costs.
- Underpinned and enabled by technology: To transform, defence forces must combine human ingenuity with automated, AI-enabled systems. Integrating these tools empowers employees, optimises processes, and supports better decision-making aligned with defence aspirations.
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