People are the key to our success, identity, and legacy across the UK.
At Raytheon UK, we are investing in our talented workforce. Through creating skilled jobs and supporting future generations to succeed in careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) we are strengthening the communities in which we operate.
Employee Community Support
Every year, our employees spend thousands of hours volunteering in our communities, giving help to the most vulnerable in our society and working to inspire the next generation into careers in STEM.
Global Month of Service
We work with national and local organisations across the UK to support the communities around our sites. From volunteering at foodbanks, taking part in park clean-ups and donating to hospices we aim to ensure that we’re helping our communities in whatever way we can. Volunteering is very much a grass-root-led activity and is spearheaded by our volunteer network.
Each April, we run our Global Month of Service (GMOS) initiative, encouraging volunteering as a way of giving back. During GMOS 2023, 77 volunteers spent more than 800 hours helping in their communities.
In 2022, our Glenrothes colleagues were officially awarded for their initiative during the global pandemic. The team had used their tech expertise to quickly shift production to ventilators, helping the NHS save lives.
Talent attraction, development and engagement
We take a partnership approach with schools and universities throughout the country to help inspire the next generation of tech and engineering leaders. We aim to have 20% of our workforce become STEM Ambassadors.
Another of our targets is to have 90% of our apprentices converted into employees by 2025. We are currently employing 80 apprentices and are looking to grow this number every year.
Cyber Academy
We run annual Cyber Academy workshops for university students, veterans and the unemployed to help support the education of coding. We deliver this through basic, intermediate and master classes to help plug the global cyber skills shortage.
Cyber First
Our team has begun leading a group of SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) to build an education and training system to support diverse cyber talent in Southwest England.
Quadcopter Challenge
The Quadcopter Challenge is one of our main programmes to inspire the next generation into STEM careers. Open to schools and Air Cadets around the UK, we offer the STEM challenge to 13 to 14-year-old students.
Every year, students from across our four nations are tasked with building a full-scale quadcopter - a four-bladed, remotely piloted drone – and guided through the process with help from our STEM Ambassadors.
Partnered with RAF Cadets, 2024 saw the students create a quadcopter that can collect data from extreme locations, breaking the boundaries of exploration.
In the latest challenge 101 teams took part, with more than 1,700 students mentored since 2015. The 2024 champions were announced in December at RAF Cosford.
Mental Health
Raytheon UK treats mental health as critically as any other area of health and safety in work. Our employees have access to a network of mental health ambassadors; colleagues who are trained to listen and provide counsel on a range of problems and concerns. We also work with Combat Stress, an organisation that helps former service members cope with mental health related issues.
Case study: ‘Fortunately we are moving towards a place where people in the defence industry can speak about how they feel and seek help’ – conversation with a Raytheon UK mental health ambassador
One of our ambassadors discusses why supporting mental health is key and what Raytheon UK is doing to change attitudes toward mental health in the defence sector.
‘Our position now is much improved to a decade ago. Fortunately, we are moving away from thinking that talking about feelings is a weakness, and towards a place where people can actively speak about how they feel and seek help around really important issues like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.’
‘There is a general acceptance now in the armed forces and the defence sector that mental health is really important, and we are starting to provide the necessary systems and services to support people.’
‘We are really lucky here at Raytheon UK - the business has developed a number of support systems to help employees across the country deal with mental health issues. The first one is the Mental Health Ambassadors programme – we go through a series of training sessions, teaching us how to be mental health first aiders, showing us how to listen to our colleagues and signpost appropriate sources of help.’
‘More widely, there are seminars that run for Raytheon UK teams across the country on understanding some of the signs of people struggling and how we can take an active effort in helping us and those around us’.
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