U.S. soldiers participate in a training exercise at Kahuku Training Area on Oahu, Hawaii, March 13, 2020.

U.S. soldiers participate in a training exercise at Kahuku Training Area on Oahu, Hawaii, March 13, 2020. Army Pfc. Jessica Scott

It’s Only Going to Get Harder to Recruit and Retain Troops in a Post-Pandemic World

The Pentagon needs to accelerate its transition from industrial-age to information-age personnel policies.

The U.S. military has long seen the need to move past various industrial-age personnel policies as it works to attract and retain talented people, and has begun to do so. But the pandemic will bring changes to the labor market and to defense budgets that will make it harder to compete for the talent that is key to great power competition. Now is the time to press forward with reforms.

The COVID-19 crisis has shown how critically important personnel are to overall readiness. Yet for all Defense Department leaders’ talk about the qualitative advantage that American troops possess over our adversaries, still innovation and investment in people processes have taken a back seat to exquisite and expensive weapons. If the trillions of dollars in pandemic-relief spending lead to lower defense budgets and end-strengths, the services will need to be better equipped to identify and retain exactly the right people with the right mix of skills and experience.

Current record levels of unemployment, coupled with the way calamity often draws Americans to public service, may yield a bumper crop of talented recruits in the months and years to come. But the work-from-home revolution engendered by the country-wide lockdown shows just how flexible corporate America can and will continue to be. The move toward virtuality in work and personal life will further power the tech industry’s ascendance in a post-pandemic world, driving competition for people with technical skills. 

Meanwhile, all of the pre-pandemic pressures are still in effect. Demographic trends show a declining population of young men and women who are eligible for service. Public-opinion polls show that fewer Americans have a personal connection to the military. Changing societal norms and technological advances mean that recruits and troops want flexibility in career and family decisions. Skills that are vital to a 21st-century military are also coveted by well-heeled corporations. Defense budget cuts and a predilection to cut military personnel/end strength before multi-year acquisition programs will continue to strain the force.

In response, military leaders have been mulling, and in some cases actually implementing, personnel policies and personnel management technology that acknowledge and serve the needs of a modern work force. They have also been removing inefficiencies in recruitment and retention by eliminating outdated barriers to entry and reentry into military service. Related: Esper to DOD: Expect to Telework for 'Weeks For Sure, Maybe Months'

Related: The US Navy Needs More Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchells

Related: Barred from Combat, These Women Rose to the Top of Military Intelligence.

Take the “up or out” system, whose rigidity can delay the advancement of talented people — or force them to leave the service altogether. Using existing regulations and provisions granted in recent defense authorization acts, the services have announced some changes and begun implementing others to promote officers based on merit and performance. Officers deemed high-performing by promotion boards, for example, will wear the rank and be compensated for the promotion up to a year before their peers. The Army is implementing a new weeklong in-person assessment that will determine suitability for battalion command; officers attending Captains Career Course will take the GRE as an additional assessment measure. 

Some of these efforts seek to retain people with certain valuable skills. The Navy has its Professional Flight Instructor program, while the Air Force is changing its promotion process so officers in specialized communities are not evaluated against pilots and other Line of the Air Force officers. It is also expanding the number of career promotion categories to retain more people with the skills to counter the threats of today and tomorrow. And such efforts are not entirely limited to officers; the Navy has expanded its Meritorious Advancement Program, which aims to advance the most qualified enlisted sailors less by seniority than by observed high-quality performance.

Such programs are good signals that services value talent and performance. But most focus on officers and specific technical communities. The pressures that the pandemic will generate on the force mean that the military’s talent-management changes need to be force-wide and accelerated.

Services need to make a common thing of permeability — the ability to muster people in and out of the military, or to transfer them among military branches, as their skills are needed. The recent call-up of thousands of personnel to respond to the pandemic shows the urgent need for fast and flexible options to identify and activate reservists. Congress has awarded immense provisions for lateral entry, though limited options exist beyond medical, JAG, and cyber pathways; the services should fully embrace and expand these options. Such programs should be combined with easing transition from the active component to the reserve component and vice versa. Losing former active duty individuals from the military because of bureaucratic inefficiencies is an immense waste of talent. For career fields that would be best suited for lateral entry, such as cyber, the services would benefit from enabling moves to and from the reserve component so skills remain competitive and talent is retained. Current policies and regulations prevent a timely transition between the components, further hampering retention. 

More prosaically, the military must become better at human resources, as experienced by troops and civilian employees, with tools that offer the kinds of services that are common in the corporate world: access to benefits information, job marketplaces, reimbursement processes, and the like. The IT burden of service cannot be on the margins, but one comprehensively addressed. The pandemic crisis has put into stark relief the need to support a virtual work environment and modern IT practices. If these varied process and IT issues remain antiquated and cumbersome, the military risks losing service members out of frustration of accessing services. In a post-pandemic world, talented individuals may express more interest in public service, but with decreased defense budgets the military will have to adapt and be flexible enough to match the right talent with the right job at the right time.  

The biggest change must be one of mindset and culture at the military’s top levels. New statutory authorities supported by Congress and nascent programs allow service members to opt out of promotion boards and request different career opportunities through Career Intermission Programs. But the success of these programs depends on leaders and culture backing up career intermission, education, and other options.

Pilot programs can test new initiatives, but real cultural change must be transformational and sustained in policy changes and with support from leadership. A groundswell of support from the force can further foment change: when servicemembers take career intermissions and still get promoted or move from the active to the reserve force with no impact on upward mobility, then the force will believe that the services are serious about managing and nurturing talent. In a post-pandemic era of great power competition, people, as a key enabler of American readiness, will only become more critical.

 The opinions in this piece are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. government.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.