Confidence in the head of the Royal Air Force and his leadership team has halved in the past two years to its lowest-ever level and aviators are at their least happy since records began, a survey has revealed.
The gloomy figures, released on Thursday, will be a blow for Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, who steps down as chief of the air staff on Friday at a ceremony at the officer training college at Cranwell, Lincolnshire – his career celebrated with a flypast and band.
But his time in charge will likely be best remembered for a well-intentioned but calamitous recruitment drive to improve diversity that ended up unfairly disadvantaging white men.
Sky News revealed this week how applicants were dismissed as “useless white male pilots” – as pressure mounted to attract women and ethnic minorities – and that the RAF had to pay £5,000 each to 31 white men who were impacted by the policy.
It only stopped when, as first revealed by Sky News last August, the then head of recruitment resigned in protest at what she deemed to be an “unlawful order” to discriminate against white men.
The Ministry of Defence’s continuous attitude survey of military personnel across the three armed services – a key benchmark of morale – found a mere 18% of aviators had confidence in the senior leadership of the RAF in 2023, sharply down from 36% in 2021.
Barely a quarter (26%) of those surveyed felt the senior leadership team – led by Air Chief Marshal Wigston – was keen to listen to feedback, while a feeble 15% felt their top bosses understood the impact of changes in the RAF on personnel.
“While attitudes towards RAF senior leaders rose in 2021, they have fallen markedly in the last two years to their lowest reported levels,” the survey said.
This question has been asked annually since 2015.
“As a result of these decreases, RAF personnel are now the least positive about their senior leaders compared to the other services.”
Overall satisfaction with life in the RAF plummeted nine percentage points to 37% from a year ago – its lowest level since this question was first asked in 2007.
“RAF personnel feel less proud (71%), less engaged (57%) and less valued (26%), according to the findings.
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Satisfaction with service life and pay plunges
While much criticism has been directed at Air Chief Marshal Wigston over the adverse impact of his diversity drive on white men, the survey also found that the proportion of personnel who agreed that their leaders were committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace had dropped 15 percentage points to 57% since 2022.
The data were collected from more the 9,000 personnel across the RAF, army and Royal Navy between September 2022 and February of this year.
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Across all three services, satisfaction with service life fell eight percentage points since 2021 to 42%.
One factor was concern about pay amid the rising cost of living and high inflation.
The survey found that satisfaction with the basic rate of pay had returned to its lowest recorded level of 31% after falling considerably over the last two years.
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Problems with service accommodation – which houses more than three quarters of all military personnel during the working week – were another drag on satisfaction.
When asked about their thoughts on the quality of maintenance or repair work on their home, only 19% of respondents said they were happy.
