Every year, nearly 250,000 service members permanently transition to civilian life. With such a large volume of veterans expanding the available talent pool every year, competitive businesses are quick to take advantage. Most modern organizations understand the tax benefits of having veteran workers on the payroll, and almost all understand the need to give back to those who have risked substantially on our collective behalf. However, in too many cases, veteran hiring efforts fall flat because employers continue to treat them as any other civilian worker. When competing for veteran talent over the long-term, you must tailor your hiring and onboarding processes accordingly.
Creating a Purpose-Built Onboarding Process for Veterans
Incoming veteran talent is vastly different from the civilian talent that might otherwise be identical in terms of work experience or academic knowledge. The biggest difference is that veteran talent has likely gone through intense training processes and field experiences. As such, they possess a set of highly refined traits that are rare among civilian employees. Years of serving in the armed forces have uniquely shaped their thought processes and emotional responses.
If you want to acquire and retain veteran workers concurrently, you will need to adapt your onboarding strategy or create an entirely new one. This can often be a challenge, especially for civilian employers who have little experience with former military servicemen and servicewomen. If that sounds familiar, the following steps are a good place to start revamping your veteran onboarding processes:
- Define Clear Goals and Trust Veterans to Get There
- Offer Ready Access to Manuals, Information Resources, and Training
- Monitor, Manage and Adjust Veteran Employee Performance
- Allow For Opportunities to Display and Demonstrate Leadership
- Be Transparent, Up Front, and Honest With Your Feedback
Let’s examine these in more detail below.
Define Clear Goals and Trust Veterans to Get There
Military life is all about missions and objectives, as well as the precise planning leading up to successful execution. Years of service instill this thought process among most service members, and it carries over into their civilian lives as well. Veteran employees are more goal-focused and results-oriented than your average civilian employee.
Detail orientation is simply a byproduct of years spent accomplishing mission-critical tasks and thinking outside the box to find innovative solutions to complex dilemmas. Instead of trying to micromanage your veteran workers, the best way to integrate them is to accentuate their strengths. You should assign them challenging objectives and trust their ability to compartmentalize difficult or challenging scenarios. Of course, you should monitor and correct their progress where necessary, but for the most part, they have everything they need to get the job done correctly. Use this to build trust and confidence between your veteran workforce and yourself.
Offer Ready Access to Manuals, Information Resources, and Training
Certainly, military service is an exciting experience, leading service members to new places, environments, and challenges. However, the scope of military life centers around combat or combat support for the most part. While veteran employees can use the skills and attitude they acquire from active service in most settings, they will still need help with certain aspects of civilian roles.
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One way to ensure that veterans have everything they need is to make company manuals, knowledge resources, and even training sessions easily accessible. With finely honed cognitive and problem-solving abilities, they quickly adapt to new tasks and adjust their trajectories. This is a small step that allows self-motivated veteran employees to bring themselves up to speed with as little time lost as possible, and with minimal heavy oversight.
Monitor, Manage, and Adjust Veteran Employee Performance
During active duty, there is no such thing as being too prepared. Very little is left to chance, and procrastination can spell disaster when it comes to preparing for critical missions. Veterans bring this same can-do mentality to the civilian workplace.
In the absence of rigorous protocols and regimens, veterans can often find it more challenging to adjust to a bustling, disorganized workplace. Without performance monitoring and adjustment, you may be putting your veteran workers at risk of early burnout. Managing the pace of their efforts will help you retain them longer while encouraging their professional development.
Allow For Opportunities to Display and Demonstrate Leadership
Life in the military is challenging and exciting. But rarely is it easy. Military service members often serve in some of the most hostile and inhospitable parts of the world. In such environments, situations can quickly escalate. As such, military service members are trained to show initiative and take up a leadership role immediately in dangerous and rapidly changing situations.
To deny a veteran employee sufficient opportunities to leverage his or her leadership skills is unfair to you and your business. Veteran employees will jump at the chance to show initiative; they are natural leaders. Allow them the opportunity to demonstrate the value they can add in leadership roles.
Be Transparent, Up Front, and Honest With Your Feedback
Perhaps the biggest difference between civilian and veteran employees lies in their respective abilities to handle criticism. Military service enables veterans to develop an appreciation for blunt honesty. Remember: transparency in service is extremely important. As such, veterans learn to expect clear and unambiguous feedback.
The absence of frequent feedback not only makes them uncomfortable, but it also makes them unsure of their performance. Whether you have positive or negative feedback for your veteran employees, keep it simple and straightforward. Touch base regularly, and be sure to offer prompt feedback.