One once observed, “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
The Center for New American Security’s (CNAS) “Onward and Upward: Understanding Veteran Retention and Performance in the Workplace” is all about those known unknowns, and even some unknown unknowns, related to veterans in today’s workforce.
To build a truer picture of veterans and employment, CNAS consulted a range of resources beyond simple hiring numbers. CNAS considered traditional resources like the U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Labor, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. CNAS also surveyed veterans, managers, and human resources professionals, and interviewed subject matter experts, private-sector leaders, veterans, and policy experts. What they discovered is surprising.
KNOWN UNKNOWNS
As far as an understanding of veterans and employment, CNAS discovered that “[t]here is no single legal standard, nor a single best practice adopted by most businesses, for collection of data regarding veterans in the workforce.” On one hand, that finding may not seem too troubling if you’re not trying to understand the finer points of veteran performance.
On the other hand, since there is no single standard or best-practice across industries, then it’s difficult for employers to really determine with much confidence the value veterans bring to their workforce. CNAS reports that “few companies expressed confidence in their data regarding veteran representation in the workforce. Fewer still expressed confidence in their data regarding retention and turnover, let alone performance.”
More broadly, if there’s no standard for veterans, there’s probably no reliable industry-wide standard, say, for Millennials, for Generation X’ers, and so on, population groups with very different ways of seeing the world and working in the world. And shaping it. And so there’s no reliable way to determine with much confidence how these groups might perform best in business. Of course, with no clear understanding of those factors, it’s fairly impossible to design the most effective on-boarding, training, and retention programs. In short, organizations are likely losing millions because of a simple lack of understanding that could fairly easily be corrected.
CNAS found that there are real problems linking veterans to companies looking for veterans. Having studied veteran employment initiatives such as The White House’s Joining Forces Initiative, I found this conclusion surprising. In May, on the fifth anniversary of the Joining Forces Initiative, The White House announced that “since the launch of Joining Forces, more than 1.2 million veterans and military spouses have been hired or trained as a result of ongoing outreach.” What’s more, in concert with that anniversary and announcement, “companies have pledged to hire more than 110,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years . . . .”
Among those companies are Amazon, Boeing, BAE, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and other notables. There are seven popular companies that have committed to hire 1,000-3,000 Veterans or military spouses. And, beyond those, there are 15 companies committed to leading training specifically for veterans to facilitate transition. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Altogether, The White House announced “more than 110,000 new hiring commitments and nearly 60,000 new training commitments for veterans and military spouses over the next five years, primarily in the fields of aerospace, telecommunications and tech.”
All that’s great. But CNAS found that “[b]oth veterans and companies report difficulty in finding each other in the marketplace. On the veteran side of the ledger, individuals say it can be difficult to locate companies with veteran-focused hiring programs.” Companies, on the other side, indicated that it’s difficult to find veterans who are transitioning to civilian ranks. In part, they reported, “because of longstanding policy barriers that preclude DoD from sharing data about (or providing direct access to) imminently separating service members . . . .”
UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS
And veterans aren’t necessarily making those veteran-hiring efforts easier. CNAS found that many veterans outside those groups that are protected by Federal law—that is, “disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, and veterans who serve in certain conflicts”—simply do not identify themselves as veterans. “Self-identification by veterans was poor,” CNAS reports, “outside of these classes of personnel and that most corporate data significantly undercounted the number of veterans in the workforce because many veterans did not identify themselves.”
That’s not too surprising. Personally, I’ve never walked around telling people I’m a veteran. Some veterans probably fear hiring professionals might equate veteran with PTSD, an equation and stigma veteran advocacy groups have been working hard to overcome. However, I doubt any veteran would deny his or service, if asked, so perhaps employers simply need to ask the question during hiring. Indeed, among those companies looking to hiring veterans, that quality could be the one that lands the veteran the job, after all.
While we applaud the great successes in veteran employment over the last five years and can learn lessons from those successes, the most valuable lesson could be how little we really know about veterans in the workforce, and how much both veterans and companies are missing out with one another.
