Finding new ways to serve after leaving the military

Created by VERCIDA for Sage

Ross Hold and Mark Hendry talk about making the transition from the military to working at Sage, with the help of the Pathways scheme

Tell us about your careers in the armed forces, before you joined Sage.

Ross: After school, I studied History at Northumbria University and while I was there, I joined the University Officer Training Corps, which is quite a popular way for university students to socialise, travel, and start their journey into the armed forces.

I joined the British Army in 2009, and on commissioning from Sandhurst, joined The Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, an infantry battalion that was based in Germany at the time. On arriving at Battalion, I immediately deployed with my platoon on an operational deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, which remains one of the most memorable and testing periods of my life.

From there, I followed a traditional path of any Army officer by bouncing around different postings all over the world.  I’ve trained young officers at Brecon and Sandhurst, been the personal assistant to the commanding officer, served as a staff officer in Defence’s crisis response HQ in Northwood. and just before retirement, was fortunate enough to command 160 Scottish soldiers in the Battalion, where my career first began.

Mark: I come from the north of England and went to university in York without any real idea of what I was going to do with my life. I then went travelling for a year and stumbled into the army by chance in January 2001, just prior to 9/11. When I was in the military, I spent most of my time working with the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers, and served in Iraq during the war in 2003 as a junior officer, which was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

As well as serving in operations in Afghanistan, Nepal and the UK, I led a team of 150 specialists who travelled the world doing a raft of projects, including construction activities and humanitarian operations. My military career of 23 years finally culminated in being Commanding Officer of a regiment with more than 1,000 soldiers based in Kent. Following this, I felt it was time to look for a new challenge in the civilian world and further prioritise family life.

What does your role at Sage involve?

Ross: Mark and I joined Sage at the same time, in June this year. I’m the new Business Resilience Manager and I have a global responsibility to support the business's organisational resilience ambitions, and help the company, and its teams, prepare for the worst. I help produce continuity and disaster recovery plans, and engage with the various emergency and crisis management teams to coordinate response options for when significant disruption occurs.

Experiences gained through military service have been invaluable in establishing myself in this role at Sage. The operations and exercises that I have prepared for and been deployed on throughout my military career have given me a level of authority and expertise in crisis response, risk, and contingency planning. Experiences that I draw on every day at Sage.

The soft skills that I have developed over my career have also been hugely important to transitioning effectively into the commercial world. Skills such as active listening, leadership, delivering key messages in written and verbal form, and just general people management skills have all been crucial in getting established.

Ultimately, a large part of my role is trying to convince people to plan for events that might not happen or, if they do happen, are going to be chaotic and stressful. Having the right skills to persuade, and then lead people through uncertainty, cannot be understated.

Mark: When I returned to the north of England, I looked for an interesting, successful company to work for and Sage had some good opportunities. I currently work in the global data office. We look at ways to optimise the workforce, improve the colleague experience and increase productivity across a global workforce of over 11,000 people.

A really interesting part of my job is also working in the ESG space and we have been looking at ways to reduce our carbon emissions and empower employees with data insights. I hope to work with the Sage Foundation, the arm of the company that supports charities and non-profit organisations, to find ways of helping with some of its new initiatives and challenges.

Like Ross, my military background has helped me in this role. Army officers are trained to read a room and generally develop an innate understanding of how humans behave. I think we have a culture of delivering an objective and being able to work through complexity to reach consensus and find a solution.

How has the Pathways scheme helped you make the transition from military life to working in the corporate world?

Ross: When you make the transition to civilian life from the military, you feel you have an understanding of where your skills lie and what roles might suit your experience. The reality is you have no idea and it can be hard to translate these experiences to the commercial world, especially when you don’t see the skills you use on a day-to-day basis in the military as being all that special.

The Pathways scheme was invaluable to me in highlighting the skills I have, and showing me opportunities within Sage where I can use those skills. To be told that I was made for the role I am now doing and to have someone advocate for me during the interview process was really important.

Of course, there are big adjustments to make – the language is different, the pace of life is different, people are different – but I’ve been given the time to settle in. The approach from Sage’s leadership has been great and I immediately felt like one of the team.

Mark: Pathways also helped me with the translation of my skills from the military environment to the civilian world. This is where Sage stood out for me. Everyone has taken the time to help me understand what my skills are, so I know I can do this role and add value to the organisation. My team – and the leadership team – have had bags of patience with me and placed trust and faith in me within a really short space of time.

One can become a bit institutionalised after so long in the military, so making the transition to a fast-moving, dynamic, leading-tech company has been both a challenge and an amazing opportunity.

What are your ambitions for the future with Sage?

Ross: One of the big draws for me with Sage was the potential exposure to a wide variety of commercial roles. Delivering impact and making a difference is important to me and I am reassured that when the time comes to move on from my current role, there are countless options within Sage where I can draw professional satisfaction.

For the time being though, I continue to be passionate about business resilience and crisis response, and have a clear vision of where I want to take the role and the department within Sage. After that though, who knows?

Mark: At the moment, I am all about building business acumen and learning the new language of a new workplace. But looking ahead, I can see there’s a host of really interesting opportunities with Sage.

I’m still making the transition to become a civilian and right now, I want to succeed in my current role. It’s a great platform for me to look across the business and see what else I can do to add value to Sage in the future.