Skip to contentSkip to footer
      employer cover photo
      employer logo
      employer logo

      The British Army

      Engaged Employer

      The British Army reviews

      Compare reviews

      3.9

      72% would recommend to a friend

      (3,102 total reviews)

      Nicholas Patrick Carter

      63% approve of CEO

      46% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.1

      Career opportunities

      4.0

      Diversity & inclusion

      3.8

      Culture & values

      3.5

      Compensation and benefits

      3.2

      Senior management

      2.9

      Work/Life balance

      The British Army has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 3,102 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The The British Army employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Government and public administration industry (3.7 stars).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      3K reviews
      1.0
      Jun 3, 2020

      Think carefully before joining (UOTC)

      Officer cadet
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Physically demanding - good workout, keeps you fit. Get paid (although not very much). Met a few really decent people who I'm still friends with. Can do some fun stuff like skydiving that you might not normally get to do. No commitment to continue with training after completion. For me ultimately, it was very useful to learn the sort of thing that I didn't want to do with my life.

      Cons

      The positive reviews on here I can guarantee are not representative - about 60-70% of people I signed up with dropped out in the first year. Big time commitment, interferes significantly with your studies though obviously you can make it work. Very much geared towards people who were in the cadets or (in some cases) the TA/daddy was Major-general and/or very firmly set on entering the military (doing degrees I didn't even know existed like 'War Studies'). If you are not part of one of these three groups, don't even bother joining - you'll be way behind and constantly made to feel like an idiot. Insular, very right wing, bullying, borderline racist/colonial attitudes and a lot of stereotypical RAH types. It seems for certain people they viewed the UOTC as a 'safe space' to say things they wouldn't normally say in civilian life. A handful of the instructors - not the actual army officers who were professional, just the cadets who were a year or two ahead of us - clearly enjoyed abusing their position and generally thought they were the Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

      4.0
      Jul 10, 2017

      Officer: Great initial career - and then...

      O4 - army - major
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Fantastic first few years/tours, especially at Regimental Duty Great opportunities and training with a superb social life amongst some great people with a similar outlook

      Cons

      And then, at senior Captain and junior Major you realise it's all wafer thin... The senior leadership fail to deal in real issues and instead talk in a 'big hand' indecipherable diatribe that seems to be aimed at avoiding any actual decisions they can be held accountable for. Endless meetings with no agenda or objectives that make no decisions

      2.0
      May 12, 2018

      Some good points, including an excellent PR outfit, but a brutal culture of bullying

      British army officer - major
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      - Free uniform. - Training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is great for your CV. - Opportunities for Adventurous Training travel around the world (although these seem to be disappearing, as money runs out). - Perhaps (depending how bankrupt the organisation is) still worth doing for a three-year Short Service Commission - but it's exceptionally difficult not to become stuck in the Army through a poisonous combination of inertia and cowardice (i.e. the default position is that you stay in, and the longer you remain, the harder it gets to leave, the more you have to lose, and the less employable you are outside. Former officers struggling to adapt to the real world can be quite pitiable). - If you join for three years, get as many travel, Adventurous Training, and other CV-building opportunities as possible, then have the self-awareness and self-discipline to get out in your mid-twenties before your employability falls off a cliff, you can use the Army as a superb springboard - hence the 4* 'career opportunities' rating below. Beware, though! Too many friends found their arms in the mangle, due to a superficially compelling procession of 'beige list, ICSC(L), sub-unit command, pink list, unit command', etc. and then struggled to find proper jobs, having dropped precipitously behind all their civilian peers of similar ages.

      Cons

      - Desperately, pitifully short of money - the lack of which infects everything from training, accommodation, morale and welfare. The Army lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan and politicians are unlikely to trust it again for decades - if ever. Accordingly, they are starving it of funds, and this is killing it slowly, from the inside out. - A callous and often brutal culture, in which rank is the only arbiter of how people are treated. - A rank-obsessed organisation, in which power matter more than right or wrong. - Persistent, and long-standing (25 years+) culture of bullying, and failure to properly handle grievances/complaints. Search for "Army Deepcut" or "British Army Bullying" for stories like this: "A second inquest into the death of Cpl Anne-Marie Ellement, who was found hanged, has found the effect of an alleged rape by two serviceman and bullying by colleagues were factors in her taking her own life." - BBC News, 3 March 2014. What you read in the news is just from those whose stories are covered. The Army blocks access to Employment Tribunals, and 'marks its own homework', so most people who encounter problems don't manage to get any coverage, they just have their dreams crushed, and their careers destroyed.

      Viewing 1 - 3 of 3,102 Reviews
      Related searches: The British Army jobs | The British Army salaries | The British Army benefits | The British Army interviews
      ReviewsThe British Army reviews

      Glassdoor has 3,159 The British Army reviews submitted anonymously by The British Army employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if The British Army is right for you.