Strategies to Address Recruiting and Retention Issues in the Military (Strategies pour aborder les questions de recrutement et de fidelisation dans les armees)
Abstract
In many countries, achieving recruitment goals becomes increasingly challenging. At the same time, the Military is facing an important loss of often highly qualified personnel who choose to leave. This has become a major concern to military commanders as is illustrated by the fact that in some NATO countries, up to 50% of the recruits do not complete their first tour. The recruiting and retention (R&R) problem can be related to a variety of causes including: - The situation on the labour market (demographics, economics, ). - The correlation between prevailing values in society and in the Military organizational culture. - The content of the jobs (job content, wages, organizational climate, operations, geographical mobility, promotion system, ). - The management of the major processes of recruitment, selection and classification, turnover and retention. The difficulty in recruiting sufficient numbers is aggravated by the fact that many military personnel leave voluntarily. In addition, many military personnel choose to return to civilian life later in their careers, attracted by more appealing opportunities. This happens frequently in specific trades (pilots, ICT personnel, ) that are hard and expensive to recruit and train. Forces lacking the appropriate personnel because of R&R problems are no longer fully operational. In addition, some nations throughout Europe are in transition from a conscript to an all volunteer military force. These issues have consequences for R&R policies. This not only has an obvious quantitative dimension but also an important qualitative one. In order to meet recruitment goals, the pressure to lower entry standards will increase because retention problems do not affect different trades (Military Occupational Specialties) in the same way. Another reason to counter early turnover and retention problems is that they are extremely expensive for the Military. Furthermore, serving personnel frequently have to work harder to cover gaps potential
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA562470
Entities
People
- H. C. Sumer
- Jose M. Ontanilla
- Rob Morrow
- Tanja F. Blackstone
Organizations
- NATO Science and Technology Organization