MyNavy
Service design to solve the Navy’s retention challenge
The Royal Navy is no normal career.
And recruiting and retaining members of the Royal Navy Service is no normal challenge - recognised by the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts in their paper Skills Shortages in the Armed Forces.
"The armed forces need to exploit more innovative approaches to recruiting and retaining people with specialist skills"
This is where Great State stepped in. With over eight years of experience working across the Royal Navy, Army and RAF, we were able to see the problem through the eyes of serving personnel and apply our understanding of existing systems to proactively present a solution.
This solution is a companion App, designed to meet the changing needs of individuals as they move through their Naval careers from training to Veterans.
MyNavy progressive web app
The key to long term success was to create an extensible platform upon which new services could be developed over time. Essentially creating a one stop shop for any ‘organisational service’ spanning everything from career management to healthcare access, to travel bookings and family support
It also solved one of the single most challenging problems the Navy faces – consistent and timely communication with a geographically dispersed workforce, many of whom rarely sit a desk.
The approach and MVP were developed in a compressed timescale – just over three months from concept to launch – achieved by running two agile teams in parallel. We had a user panel of 38 participants across all services, branches and ranks who were able to feed into the two-week development sprints.
In addition to the initial deliverable we created the platform and frameworks to enable a range of suppliers to build new services that will continue to offer a consistent experience to the user base.
The platform launched with 50% of serving personnel regularly engaging in the MVP. It has proved huge value throughout the COVID 19 crisis as it has been the primary channel for two-way communication.