Leveraging diversity for military effectiveness: Diversity, inclusion and belonging in the UK and US Armed Forces
Abstract: In an evolving strategic environment, the Armed Forces need to effectively leverage all available advantages, including those stemming from their workforces, to maximise strategic and operational effectiveness. To support this effort, RAND researchers conducted a study to examine the opportunities for leveraging workforce diversity to enhance military effectiveness.
The study comprised a large-scale literature review as well as semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts and practitioners from the UK and United States to produce three outputs. Firstly, the study provided a framework to help guide the UK and US Armed Forces in their assessments of links between different kinds of diversity and military effectiveness, and how these links may be better leveraged in future. Secondly, the study team developed six vignettes illustrating the framework in relation to various operational and strategic requirements identified by the UK and US Armed Forces. Lastly, the study identified key implications and options for the Armed Forces as they consider leveraging the various operational and strategic advantages provided by diversity.
The study findings show that there are significant opportunities for leveraging workforce diversity to enhance military effectiveness across a wide spectrum of Defence activity. These opportunities cumulatively position diversity as a strategic enabler for the UK and US Armed Forces.
Abstract: One of the key achievements of Forces in Mind Trust’s (FiMT) Our Community - Our Covenant series of reports, beginning in 2016, has been to establish a toolkit for local authorities to help them develop support for their local Armed Forces Community (AFC). The 2016 report launched the idea of a “core infrastructure”, supported by self-assessment questions and some wider tips. Formal research and informal engagement show that the toolkit still provides an important contribution to successful local delivery of Covenant pledges and wider AFC support. It’s a baseline in the face of ever-present funding stresses and a point of reference when there are changes in member and officer responsibilities. This means it is important that the toolkit remains up to date. It was last reviewed in 2022 and presented as an Annex to FiMT’s research report A Decade of the Covenant. Since then, there has been further research into local support for the Armed Forces Community for the next iteration of the Our Community - Our Covenant series. This updated toolkit reflects these recent findings about local practice as well as developments following the introduction in the Armed Forces Act 2021 of the duty of due regard to the principles of the Covenant in the focus areas of housing, education and healthcare. As with the original document, the toolkit remains targeted at local authorities. It covers their own direct role in supporting the local AFC, but also the crucial activity of convening local partnerships and so enabling effective local collaborative action. The key changes to the core infrastructure and self-assessment cover: (1) More emphasis on embedding AFC support into the mainstream of local authority work. (2) An extended top tips section with more advice based on recent research. (3) We have dropped the descriptive scenarios of challenges that members of the AFC face. These have now been overtaken by analytical scenarios included in the freely available national training material and in the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Covenant Legal Duty toolkit, which helps to explain the legal duty aspect of the Covenant. (4) Some additional material about the individual roles, collaboration, communication and vision and commitment elements of the core infrastructure. This toolkit update is being made in spring 2025 at a time when further change in the Covenant environment is likely, with potential extension of the Covenant duty and expected re-organisation in English local government and creation of new combined or strategic authorities. Additional modules could be added to the toolkit to reflect these ongoing policy developments.