With work seven days most weeks, a master’s degree to study for, and two netball teams to keep happy, you’d be forgiven for thinking Rachel Hockenhull might be in need of a break. But on the contrary, she is brimming with enthusiasm and energy – most of all for her role in the Army Reserve.
“One day I might think I need a lie down,” she says. “But for the minute, it’s all good.”
Hockenhull divides her time between the NHS, working as a specialist physiotherapist dealing with musculoskeletal outpatients, and the Reserve, where she is a physio officer. It’s a change she made fairly recently – she used to work more for the NHS – but says she wanted to “give a little more to the Army”.
Hockenhull joined the Army Reserve in 2014 because of the groundbreaking trauma work and training that she says she wouldn’t have access to in everyday medicine.
“The Army is pushing the boundaries and doing things others aren’t doing in the NHS. I work in trauma and orthopedics and the Army rehab is outstanding. In 2015 I went to Gibraltar and we did a major incident medical management and support course. That’s something a lot of my colleagues [don’t] have.”
Beyond specific courses, she says being in the Reserve has improved her confidence, and developed her leadership and management skills. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“When I’ve had feedback from people, they’ve said I’ve come on so much in two years that I’m almost a different person. You’ve got to put yourself out there and take every opportunity that you get. That’s definitely something that I wasn’t confident enough to do before.”
It was just under three years ago, when Ian McGuinness moved from the public to the private sector, that he joined the Army Reserve – partly, he says, “to retain a strong sense of commitment to public life”.
Today, McGuinness works for property consultancy Knight Frank as a researcher/geographer, and in the Reserve is an officer with 135 Geographic Squadron, Royal Engineers.
It was during officer training at Sandhurst that he says he learned how to better manage stress, communicate in a crisis, to influence and negotiate, and lead under varied and demanding conditions. “You need the will to keep going when they are throwing everything they can at you,” he adds. “There are things you learn in that very intense environment that it’s just not possible to experience in a normal 9-5 job.”
The Reserve has also enabled him to accrue continuing professional development (CPD) hours to submit to his accrediting bodies – the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Royal Geographical Society. Previously, his CPD work covered disparate activities and was entirely self-guided, but the Army Reserve “makes all of that progression very structured, you do it almost unconsciously … as a learning environment, it constantly keeps you engaged and planning for what’s coming next”.
McGuinness has also found he’s become a better manager at work – “you become more adept at leading people” – and is more keenly attuned to the different ways people are motivated to achieve.
“The Reserve definitely offers an incredible challenge,” he adds. “You see the best and worst of yourself. But frankly that’s what you need to grow.”
Sandy Hennis was in the Regular Army for 14 years before she wanted a new challenge. She now freelances as an outdoor instructor, leading expeditions, teaching kayaking and climbing and running teamwork training for corporate clients.
But while she wanted to leave the Regular Army, she “didn’t want to completely cut ties” and decided to transfer into the Reserve to maintain the support network she’d become used to. Today, juggling her career with the Army Reserve does take a lot of planning because of her schedule – she’s just returned from a month in Peru with a group of 16-year-old girls, for example. “But the 37 Signal Regiment has been absolutely brilliant with me,” she says.
The Reserve has also undoubtedly helped her get her new career off the ground. Hennis has taken a mountain leader qualification; last year she took a mountain bike instructor course, and a trip to Nepal in 2014 gave her the necessary high altitude experience to climb mountains with clients all over the world. At the moment, she’s training for the Ice Maiden challenge – an all-female British Army expedition to travel 1,700km across Antarctica, which will be another highlight on her CV.
“[Going freelance] has gone relatively smoothly for me and I attribute that to being in the Army Reserve,” she adds. “I’ve made contacts that have helped send jobs my way, and other people have recommended me because of the Reserve connection.
“I work on the whole seize the day attitude,” she says when asked what advice she would give others inspired by her story. “You can’t really lose joining the Reserve. If it doesn’t work for you, if it doesn’t fit, you can just walk away. It works brilliantly for me and I absolutely love it.”
