Canny Comms awarded Defence Employer Recognition Scheme Gold Award

We are proud to announce that Canny Comms has been awarded the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme Gold Award, the Ministry of Defence's highest recognition for employers that demonstrate outstanding and sustained support for the Armed Forces community.

The ERS Gold Award recognises organisations that go beyond their Armed Forces Covenant commitments by embedding forces-friendly policies, championing Reservists, supporting veterans and military families, and creating workplaces where people who have served can genuinely thrive. This year, 162 employers across the UK received the award, representing organisations of every size and sector.

For Canny, this recognition means something personal.

When Lindsay Compton founded Canny Comms, one of her central motivations was to build something that could make a real difference to the Armed Forces community, and in particular to military spouses. Military spouses face some of the most persistent and underacknowledged employment challenges in the UK. Frequent relocations, career interruptions, the difficulty of building professional networks when postings move the family every few years. Lindsay knew this world from the inside, and she wanted to create an organisation that could offer genuine, flexible, meaningful employment to people navigating it.

"Achieving the Gold ERS award means a huge amount to all of us at Canny. Most of our team are part of the armed forces community ourselves, as spouses and family members of serving personnel, veterans and reservists. Supporting the forces is not a policy we adopted, it is who we are and how we live. We work exclusively in defence and security, so we see every day the calibre of people who serve and the value they bring. Gold recognises that this commitment runs right through the business, in how we hire, develop and champion the community we are part of. We are proud to stand alongside them, and this award encourages us to keep doing more."

Lindsay Compton, Founder and CEO, Canny Comms

That commitment has shaped how Canny operates from the beginning. It informs who we hire, how we work, and the clients and causes we choose to support. The Armed Forces community is not a sector we work adjacent to. It is part of who we are.

To achieve Gold Award status, employers must demonstrate additional paid leave for Reservists, supportive HR policies for service families and veterans, active promotion of the Armed Forces Covenant, and a long-term proactive commitment that exceeds the scheme's baseline requirements. We are proud to meet every one of those criteria, and prouder still that they reflect how we have always tried to operate rather than something we had to build from scratch to qualify.

Minister for Veterans and People, Calvin Bailey MBE MP, said of this year's recipients: "For a veteran starting a new chapter, or a Reservist balancing two demanding roles, having an employer in your corner makes an enormous difference. These 162 organisations have gone out of their way to make veterans, Reservists and military families feel genuinely welcome and supported."

We are honoured to be among them.

If you are a military spouse, a veteran or a Reservist looking for an employer that will genuinely support you, or if you are an organisation looking for communications support that understands the Armed Forces community from the inside, we would love to hear from you.