How the Army is bolstering its recruitment and retention efforts
The Army, which has large and crucial recruiting needs, created a new specialty talent acquisition technician as part of a larger workforce transformation.
It takes more than a gimme duffel bag and a sticker to recruit people to the Army these days. Much less to get to stick around once they do join. And yet the Army has large and crucial recruiting needs. That’s one reason they created a new specialty talent acquisition technician and a special school just for them. It’s all part of a larger workforce transformation. Col. Christine Rice, the lead offer in charge of workforce redesign, and Zenon Zacharj, faculty and staff development chief of the Army Recruiting and Retention College, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss the latest.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin: All right. So let’s begin with the basics. What is prompting this and how does it fit into the larger Army transformation picture? Col. Rice?
Christine Rice: So, Tom, that’s a great question. It’s a great point, right? So the Army published a report in July of 2023 based off analysis and findings of a focus of a study that focused on our Army of Sessions Enterprise. And for the most part over the past 50 years, recruiting has been a success story for the Army. But in the last 26 years, we have identified that the Army failed to meet that Sessions Mission a handful of times. And we started to see a significant decline specifically related to the delayed entry poll since about 2014. And I think, Tom, you might be tracking, right, that we have missed our recruiting goal the past few years. We made it this year, but the past few years, we missed that recruiting goal along with some of the other services as well. Right. And so as we have studied the dynamics and the change, right, as we look at the nation’s economy, culture and demographics and technology, the demand to compete for that labor market has become more critical, right? In order to, like you said, attain the talent and how do we keep and retain the talent over time. And that’s really what’s been driven here. And the target at workforce redesign, Tom, is focused on the fact that really over the past few decades, we have been changing or adapting some of the tools and the organizational design of recruiting. But we’ve never really targeted the actual recruiting workforce, Right. The people that are conducting, recruiting and engaging with the youth of America. Sure. So that’s really what has driven this change here.
Tom Temin: OK. And then we have the Army Recruiting and Retention College. And is that a physical college and what goes on there? Mr. Zacharj.
Zenon Zacharj: Right. So, yes, the United States Army Recruiting and Retention College, it really focuses on teaching 18 courses to two part of the human capital part of the Army has. One is the recruit and then one as to how to retain those that we do recruit. Again, there’s 18 courses here coming from your basic levels of how to be a recruiter to allow those leadership in senior leadership courses of how do you manage a recruiting force or sales force. The same thing when it comes to retention, right? We spend a lot of effort to identify Americans to become our soldiers. How do we how do we retain those soldiers?
Tom Temin: Right. And this could be separated types of functions. In other words, the recruiters are constantly bringing in new talent. Every year, there’s these goals and they’re regionally based, etc. When it comes to retention, it could be two years, four years, 10 years later, and the original recruiter is nowhere near that soldier at that point. So that it seems like the retention would need to be more the ability to know what it takes to retain people needs to be more widely diffused. Would that be a good way to put it?
Zenon Zacharj: Right. So that’s a good point. Right? So when it comes to the retaining the workforce, you think about the different generations that are currently making up the Army. There are different skills and I guess theories of how do you retain a younger generation versus the senior generation. And all of that is what’s being discussed in our classrooms.
Tom Temin: All right. And getting back to the recruitment piece, what are what have we learned, say? What has the Army learned in recent years, recent months, about what it takes to recruit someone off the street versus the way they did it 10 years ago or 50 years ago?
Christine Rice: Right. Go ahead Z. And then I’ll and then I’ll respond.
Zenon Zacharj: Sure. So, Tom, that’s a great point. Right. So in Army recruiting, we’ve really been created to be as agile as possible when we’re looking at the recent trends when it comes to the landscape that we operate. Right. Who are we trying to recruit? What of those generations? And really, what are those eligibilities of those who are trying to recruit to try to make this mission right? So in the last year, we’re seeing some identifiers that, hey, we have to adjust the way we do it. And again, to Col. Rice’s words of who is helping us to get to that mission. Therefore, 420 Tango, this chief warrant officer was really looking at, ‘Hey, this is a possibility that we can really meet this new need.’ And Col. Rice.
Christine Rice: So I think. One of the one of the probably salient points we need to hit on here is right. What what’s cause what’s changed? Like what symptoms have led to this over time. And so as the enterprise study exam gives you these points, we’ve also seen that both our academic partners and industry partners have learned quite a bit of this as well, that some of those symptoms. Right. We’re seeing that young people are making decisions later in life. And so we’re typically that the typical chase is or. Right. Those kids that are coming out of high school like that would be the primary targeted market. Right. We also have a declining eligibility problem. Right. And so you can either physically or cognitively not able to meet the criteria to join the service. It goes without saying that COVID-19 had a significant impact here. Right. And then also some declining trust in institutions. Right. Is that declining trust? The Army essentially polices itself. Right. We put out in the media what’s going on within the Army. When there’s a bad news story, it gets it is out there. We are discussing the good and bad parts of what happens in our in our industry. Right. And so declining trust in institutions. And then, of course, a strong economy is a strong labor market. And so the competition is fierce to get out and target those folks. And so we’ve had to adapt, much like private and the private sector has had to adapt using tools, using different techniques to target a generation that is not like the generation that’s currently serving in senior leader roles in the Navy.
Tom Temin: We are speaking with Army Col. Christine Rice. She’s the lead officer in charge of workforce redesign and with Zenon Zacharj, a faculty and staff development chief of the Army Recruiting and Retention College, both part of the Army recruitment command. And in teaching people to become talent retention people, how much of it is psychology and understanding the lifestyle and being able to speak in the language of potential recruits? And how much of it is data analytics and understanding who should I be reaching out here? Should my appeal be depending on what characteristics I know about people. It seems like there’s a psychological and also a analytical side to this.
Christine Rice: Go ahead Zenon.
Zenon Zacharj: Sure. So that’s a good point, right. When you’re looking at let’s start from the top recruiting operations and retention operations. It’s complex. It’s 100% complex. There’s a service that we’re trying to teach and influence people to say, ‘Hey, this is something I want to be part of.’ Right. So back to your question, Tom, of like, ‘Hey, how much is a psychology? How much is it? Is it like a skill-based of, we’ll say, some sort of persuasion and influencing? Right.’ It’s really woven in. And Col. Rice had mentioned leaning into what it currently industry is doing and trying to pull some of those best practices into how do we train that Army recruiter or that retention person. That’s something that we’ve done critically with some specific tools to make sure we get that balance together. Right. This chief warrant officer that we’re speaking about today is neat because they’re at it at a mid-level to an executive role where they’re looking at recruiting operations, pulling into data analytics, some marketing, some recruiting operations and really compiling it so they could advise the commanders on how to make some so some real good decisions in that recruiting operation space. So again, back to what you’re saying is I bring in those specific requirements, psychology and some of those hard skills and bring them together so that person has the skills to do their job.
Tom Temin: And what has the demand been for people that want to become talent acquisition technicians? Because it’s not exactly the point of a bayonet, so to speak.
Christine Rice: So I was going to say on that point, we’ve actually seen a high number of applicants that are interested in becoming a talent acquisition technician both from the warrant officer community itself, which is where we started, right. Currently serving warrant officers that we know already possess extremely high technical capacity in their career fields. And we can go a little bit and expand into how we’ve assessed and selected when you’re ready to talk about that. But then also the noncommissioned officers that are both currently serving the 79 Romeo recruiter community. Right. Because as you know Tom, typically a warrant officer comes from its technical community on the noncommissioned officer side. And so we’ve seen a drive from that community. And then, of course, when we open that up to the greater army, we had a huge influx of applications. And so the demand signal in terms of how many positions that are to recruit right now, we’ve seen that at least in this first year it was fairly easy to get the necessary number that we needed in year one to get to school and target what we’re going to put in that workforce.
Tom Temin: I guess it’s good PR for the recruiting command to be able to get its share of recruiters in the first year?
Zenon Zacharj: And just to add to what Col. Rice was talking about, I spoke to some of those NCOs that just currently changed their branch to become a chief warrant officer, to be this talent acquisition technician. And I asked them that very question, like, hey, why did you change? And what they said was, ‘Hey, Z, I really want to be part of an organization having a larger impact than what I was currently doing.’ And the four areas that really bring into that talent acquisition recruiting operations, data analytics, marketing and public relations. They all said that they had like some intrinsic like connection to those tasks and they felt they impact the Army at a larger capacity. So I was pretty that was warming to me, right? That was that was something like, ‘OK, cool. We’re just we’re doing it for the bigger reason.’
Tom Temin: Sure. And as you create more of these folks to do this, what’s the measure of success? What are your metrics here?
Christine Rice: Yeah. So that data is going to be something that. So the Army Research Institute, who works very closely, obviously with the Army G-1 for personnel services and policy. That organization will do expanded studies on measures of performance and measures of effectiveness and what is right look like, because I think it’s very easy to say, ‘Hey, did you did you increase your mission right? Did you increase the number of recruits that you had in a given year?’ And that would be an easy measure of performance, right? You increase mission. It must be working. But I think there’s other areas in the organization that you could examine as what defines success for the organization. What’s the culture in the organization? That organization open and adaptable to changing for the environment? A changed operation. We are actually working with the Army Research Institute to establish what you’re talking about. Right. What are those metrics that are going to define success in the out years?
Zenon Zacharj: So I look at recruiting operations is there’s multiple sprints to be able to get a result, right, with maybe an enlistment or a series enlistment. You’re using the 420 Tango. The talent acquisition technician is really allowing that to be a more of an enduring activity for a longer duration where It’s not a bunch of quick sprints where now we’re using innovation, we’re using creative solutions to keep recruiting operations enduring for a longer period of time where there’s not a burnout and there’s not really exhaustive workforce trying to get after. Again, this really complex process of enlisting our soldiers to be part of our team.
Tom Temin: And if you have time, I want to go into the retention end of this a little bit. In the recruitment area you’re dealing with the world in the Army can’t change society in the way the trends about how heavy people are or whatever their interests are in American society when it comes to retention that is largely dependent on functions and trends within the Army. And you do have a little more control there, maybe. I mean, not anyone can change the Army that much very fast. But when you think about retention, what are some of the factors that need to be trained in the people such that they can influence retention?
Christine Rice: So, Tom, in what I would call like my day job, I imagine in general by trade. So I do work heavily in the HR community and in a lot of my previous roles, I’ve served as the HR director for organizations. And one of our primary functions right is to manage that retention capability and how to retain service members, whether it be officer or enlisted in the Army. And so I think a lot of the primary challenges that we see right now and we could go through them and I learned this every day, I think is, No. 1, like what’s the value proposition of staying in the Army and what’s the value proposition to moving outside of the Army in terms of, No. 1, stability for my family? What’s the pay differential? Am I actually more valuable to the private sector? What’s the tempo with which I have to work every day? Right. What’s my work-life balance? What does that look like? And so these are things that we have to measure across the spectrum. And then in back to kind of one of Zenon’s earlier points, what’s a person’s intrinsic value like what drives them to serve and to either serve in the Army, to serve the nation or to serve in a private sector capacity. And so there’s a lot of variables here, things that we’re working with retention on. And we know that retention as a future part of this. But our target is to start with recruiting and then expand into that retention area.
Tom Temin: And to what extent would you say, based on your experience, that the Army I mean, in corporate life, it’s “9 to 5” and you go home from it. If you’re in the Army as a uniformed service member, in some sense, you never go home from it.
Christine Rice: I mean, that’s correct. And so there’s a huge shift, especially when a lot of us work very closely with Department of the Army Civilians. Right. And then they are restricted by the number of hours that they work in a given day and they have union representation in the service if the mission requires you to work until 7 p.m. at night, then we’re going to do that. That tempo and I think right now, we are not a an army at war. We are not deployed all over the place fighting necessarily. But we are still out there rotating out to regions of the regions of the world. And so that creates kind of that atmosphere of a higher up-tempo. You don’t get away from it. You don’t work a 9 to 5 job because inherently, as much as we want to give that to service members, the mission may demand more. And so I think it’s our jobs as leaders to really focus on that work-life balance. So when they’re giving a lot, you’ve got to find some ways to give back to the service members and make sure they retain they maintain balance in their lives.
Tom Temin: Sure. And Zenon, the Army can’t give company cars and paid all expenses, sales trips and this kind of thing. Is there anything from the corporate or private sector, though, in the area of retention that could be adaptable in the military, do you think?
Zenon Zacharj: Sure. And I’m glad you brought that up. Right. So someone who’s joining the corporate base may not have to move or change location every three years. Right. So when it comes to retention, that retention person is really connecting with that person who could reenlist and really exploring some of those reasons. They joined the Army Corps. Remember, the Army recruiter connected with that person and really learned like, what were some of those needs which were possibly, ‘Hey, I need some training,’ ‘Hey, I want to go ahead and get some college knocked out or my degree. Maybe I need some money to buy a home service.’ The country’s a very popular one now. They want to serve their country. They want to be bigger part of something larger themselves. So that retention person connects with that soldier and really revisits some of those areas. And as those reasons may have changed or maybe develop more, that retention person can say, ‘Hey, maybe we can stabilize you in this location,’ or maybe, ‘Hey, you mentioned you ought to go to Hawaii.’ Maybe we can go ahead and offer that part of your reenlistment package. Right. And Col. Rice did mention the, ‘Hey, where are you at with what that leadership has done to help you transition to this Army experience?’ Right. And here at this school, we’re constantly looking at our leadership courses to make sure that they’re really feathered in with corporate ways of managing their staff to retain that talent, but also new innovative ways, right. To get that person to really in a position where they’re using their talents to really create some excellence.
Tom Temin: We should wind up. Col. Rice, what has been the attraction of the Army to you? Clearly, your career you’ve made, Colonel, and maybe who knows what’s beyond that?
Christine Rice: I’m not going to get too overzealous about what’s beyond that, Tom.
Tom Temin: No, no, you don’t.
Christine Rice: They’re what drives Christine Rice? I love America. I love serving my nation. I believe that there’s a bigger purpose in life. I would like to have a decent lifestyle, obviously, like I come from a family that didn’t have a lot, wasn’t didn’t have a lot of means, etc. And so I want to be able to maintain a good life for myself and my family, but ultimately, like giving back to the nation, when it’s all said and done, there are material things in life that really don’t matter. It’s what have you been able to accomplish and help like not only your fellow citizens with, but your nation with. And so that’s a big deal. And then the other part is I’m a person I like to move. Like it doesn’t bother me to keep moving. I’m a person that likes different experiences, that likes to meet new people, that likes new challenges. And so but that’s my personality. And so I think back to what Zenon was saying, Tom, It’s are we an army that’s willing to look at like different types of incentives? And I think we are we see it right with incentives for reenlistment bonuses. Right. And so you see it in terms of financial reenlisting to stay somewhere longer. So you and your family have that ability maybe for your children to finish school to a specific level or maybe there are specific jobs in that place that are more aligned to your capabilities as an officer, noncommissioned officer, soldier. So I think we’re looking at that. It’s not as cool as a company car but it’s how much is peace of mind worth for that person every single day? If the Army can give a point.
Tom Temin: Of course, you could get that new Northrop Grumman land vehicle or General Dynamics, whoever makes it. That’s kind of fun to drive.
Christine Rice: But you’d also have to maintain that vehicle.
Tom Temin: So, yeah, they don’t go to Jiffy Lube, do they?
Christine Rice: Exactly. Right. How tough is it to maintain the lifestyle that you’re seeking out? And that’s a question for everybody.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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