Recommendation 8

The Department said that engaging with society and employers was essential. Effective engagement with employers, building on the RFCAs’ Defence Relationship Management function and securing employers’ support for their staff to be involved in the reserves, will be important for the Department achieving its ambitions.11 The Department emphasised the huge success of its employer engagement, which had exceeded its expectations having increased the number of employer accounts from fewer than 1,000 to more than 13,000. It explained that the RFCAs were adopting a customer-segmentation approach so they could most effectively use the resources available given that their workforce and budget had remained largely unchanged for seven years. This meant focusing on larger national employer accounts at a national level and using regional teams to manage local accounts.12 Increasing cadet numbers