Supporting Armed Forces Spouses in our Business
Our Armed Forces spouses policy recognises the important role spouses play in supporting their partners who are serving in the military – these are individuals who often have to manage family life at home, alongside working while their spouse may be posted overseas or relocated.
We have committed to:
- Providing an additional day of leave to support pre or post-deployments of three months or longer.
- Endeavouring to redeploy military spouses to an alternative role internally on notification of a spouse's posting. This is now compulsory across the UK business.
- Recognise and celebrate the contribution of military spouses through a selection of events on our company annual Spouses' Day.
Lucy Hunt - Communications Director
My husband has been in the Royal Navy for over 20 years. We have luckily only moved 3 times, but each time I have had to consider and manage the impact on my career. Shortly after I started working for Compass, we signed the Armed Forces Covenant. I remember feeling immensely proud to work for an organisation who recognised not only those serving, veterans, reservists but spouses too.
Juggling everything on your own when your other half is away can be challenging, but I have always received exceptional support from my managers, leadership team and my own team. I also really enjoy being part of the AFC committee and the wider forces community at work. There is a great understanding of what life is like as military spouse, which means you don’t often have to say out loud when you need some support, people just know to give it!
Jeanette McNaughton - Business Director, Defence, Marine & Aerospace
My journey began back in 1998 whilst my husband was stationed in Germany. I was keen to embrace the whole military experience and applied for my first role with Compass Group, as a General Manager at Oxford Barracks in Munster looking after the catering, cleaning and support services for 600 soldiers from the First Battalion, Irish Guards.
In 2001 I returned to the UK and held a selection of ESS Contract Manager posts, including the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Over the following 15 years I added various contracts to my portfolio and loved every minute of being the Operations Director. Edinburgh Castle and MOD Whitehall were particularly interesting to oversee with their unique challenges.
In 2016 I became the Business Director for ESS and I have and now with my team look after the Defence East Region, the Royal School of Military Engineering, the US Air Force and the National Training Estates across the UK and Ireland.
Sarah Tott, Resourcing Partner
My husband has been in the Army for 14 years, and my journey with Compass started when my husband was posted to Lyneham in 2017, we had racked up a fair few moves by this point, and it was becoming challenging to hold down my career.
I took a zero-hour position, so I had something when I arrived to keep me busy and look for something new once I had arrived– I never intended to stay but Compass had other ideas.
They recognised me as a person, saw my qualifications and experience and I soon progressed to supervisor, shortly after Front of House Manager and then on to Mess Service Manager but then the dreaded move came around again but with the added stress of the pandemic…. The whole team worked together to help find me a new position at our new positing and thankfully I became a Schedular in our newly formed HUB.
My journey does not stop there, I recently promoted into a Resourcing Partner for Compass One and now I get to share and help others start their journeys with Compass.
As a military spouse it can be daunting to keep starting over or juggling everything on your own whilst your other half is away but with Compass has provided such a massive support from my Line managers to the teams on site - There is a strong forces community in Compass and it’s great to have people to lean on who make a great team together.
