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Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Retention To the Board of Trustees, Association of Graduates
Submitted by Randy Pais, the Chairman of the Committee
In October of 2000, Jack Hammack established an ad-hoc committee under
my chairmanship whose mission would be to build on the foundation of the
Active-Duty Support Program and make further attempts to discover ways
for the AOG to help with the problem of retaining graduates in the service.
The members of the Committee are:
During the months since the Committee's establishment, its members have met three times in teleconference and in addition have had side conversations with many others who are concerned about the problem. At the conclusion of this paper, the Committee presents the recommendations that have emerged from its discussions. But before turning to those recommendations, the Committee considers it important that the members of the Board review some relevant facts. Over recent years, numerous studies, surveys, and a substantial body of anecdotal evidence have made the primary reasons for the decline in retention rates well known. For the purposes of this paper, one good way to summarize those reasons is to create a fictional officer, a composite figure who has the opinions and perceptions most commonly voiced by those who have decided to leave the service. This officer, whom we will designate a male, has been on active duty for, say, four years. Neither by nature a complainer nor by inclination a challenger of authority, he nonetheless feels frustrated by the circumstances in which he finds himself and disheartened by what he regards as scant prospects for change. When he graduated from the Academy, he was excited about the challenges that he faced and was open to the possibility of serving a full career in the Army. However, over the years his original enthusiasm for commissioned service gradually eroded and, like the members of every generation of West Point graduates, he began to reconsider his life’s path. This talented and successful young officer’s doubts are caused by a number of factors. Above all, he doesn’t feel the job satisfaction he thought he would. After graduation, it took almost a year to finish a complement of basic officer courses that were adequate in content but short on inspiration. He saw many classmates fail Ranger School in what most sensed was an arbitrary filtering of entry-level lieutenants rather than hard-core leader training with an emphasis on development and success. Once in his unit, things got better, but nonetheless a variety of things added to his confusion about a lifetime of service in uniform. Training budgets were lean, deployments were many, and the unit seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in post-support cycles. While his leaders and sergeants were generally outstanding, too many of them seemed harried. Shortages of key personnel and the ubiquitous taskings for individual augmentees to fill deployed units depleted their ranks. He saw the battalion commander routinely, but seldom had the kind of quality mentoring from his senior rater for which he yearned. Officers in other positions, like company command and battalion S-3, seemed to be overworked and not to be having much fun. He wonders if they have the balance in their lives that he seeks. He does not like the thought that it will be roughly three more years before he himself will command a company. Away from the job other issues crowd his mind. He is married now
and has both additional responsibilities and perspectives to consider.
His wife is also a college graduate who had hoped to start a career of
her own. She has found part-time work in a wage-grade position whenever
she wanted it, but it wasn’t fulfilling. He knows that things are
expected of her as an Army spouse that she really hadn’t anticipated:
volunteering on post, assisting in unit family readiness groups, and others.
She isn’t overburdened, but the senior wives certainly appear to be.
He doubts that she wants to take on the load they carry without compensation
of any kind. Our officer dedicates enormous amounts of time and energy
to the work he does, but there is no predictability in his married life.
Instead, there are all too many missed suppers, birthdays, and anniversaries.
Additionally, there are deployments and lengthy field training exercises,
and his wife worries particularly about the prospect of his being sent
to Korea for a whole year.
He doesn’t understand or trust the Officer Personnel Management System. Claims that it supplies a sound framework for officers' lifetime professional development or that its "tracks" give officers different but equally valid ways to advance through their careers inspire something close to cynicism. In theory, the system is forgiving. It has the flexibility to accommodate the non-standard individual. Furthermore, it affords officers the latitude to learn by making mistakes. In practice, he believes, it is a zero-defects mechanism. One deviation from the career pattern that serves as the Platonic ideal for officers in his circumstances, and the windows of future opportunity slam shut. One small flaw in professional performance – for example, a “two block” OER or failing to get a Ranger tab -- and an officer's career is doomed. He believes that low morale, insufficient job satisfaction, and a tendency to risk aversion are widespread in the officer corps. And in confirmation of those beliefs, he sees great company commanders refusing second commands, and competent captains refusing first commands in favor of resignation. He even sees lieutenant colonels and colonels whom he respects refusing commands, actions that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The sea of media in which he swims further confirms his beliefs. The messages from classmates in his e-mailbox, The Army Times, the local newspaper, the features on television about the military: all of these tell him that he will probably be more fulfilled outside the Service. Finally, with the siren song of the corporate recruiter heard throughout the land, he resigns his commission. But he maintains that his responding to the music was an effect, and the music itself was not a cause. The Committee's point in presenting this composite portrait is to remind all of us that most of the reasons for the poor rates of retention are beyond our control. The conditions and perceptions that drive good men and women into the arms of the civil sector are the Army's problems. All the Association of Graduates can and should do is endorse and perhaps reinforce actions on the part of the Army that it believes will help solve these problems. Besides, we have a problem of our own. In 1998, with hopes of helping to raise retention rates in mind, the Association initiated action to create an Active-Duty Support Program, an array of activities and services aimed primarily to encourage graduates to remain in the service. In order to shape the nature of the array, it asked West-Point.Org to help it develop and field a survey meant to determine: · The extent to which AOG members would endorse and participate
in such a program.
Based on the results of the survey, which were published in May 1999, the Alumni Support Committee decided that an Active-Duty Support program was feasible, that the primary focal point of the Program's activities should be the West Point society, and that societies wishing to participate should concentrate on installing four components: · Older graduates serving as “mentors” for younger ones still
on active- duty.
As an incentive to establishing local active-duty support programs, the AOG enabled societies to earn Distinguished Society Points for doing so. Furthermore, the AOG's leaders took every available opportunity to offer societies encouragement. So far, however, the Active-Duty Support Program has not been a success. During 2000, the most recent complete year of Distinguished Society point submissions, only thirteen out of 125 societies reported that they were providing career-transition support to grads, only three had established mentorship programs, only three were offering community welcoming services, and only one was making efforts to help spouses and dependents find employment. In 1999, nearly 35% of those who returned the survey believed that their societies would back the Program. Yet the reality is that very few have done so. In bringing up this point, the Committee does not mean to suggest that the AOG will be unable to elicit more robust participation from societies in the future, but to make it clear that it will require a strong and sustained effort on our part. II. Recommendations and Commentary Well aware of the challenges facing an organization that has, on the one hand, no official connection to the Army and, on the other, a collection of "chapters" that are completely autonomous, the Committee respectfully submits the following recommendations: · When the forthcoming report of the Army's Blue Ribbon Panel on leader development is published, the AOG should examine the document and publicly endorse the recommendations that promise to help with retention of junior officers. Furthermore, the Active-Duty Support Program should be reviewed in the light of the report's content and adjusted where appropriate. Conceptually, the report might make ten key points, and the AOG would find, say, three of them where its activities could provide specific elements of support. · The AOG should focus more attention in Assembly magazine--more cover stories, more articles in general--on the service and successes of junior and mid-level graduates on active duty. It should also feature articles about the achievements of those serving in the reserve components. No matter what the Army or the AOG might do, the fact is that each year a certain number of junior and mid-level officers will be resigning their commissions, and we should encourage them in every possible way to join the Reserves or National Guard. · When it becomes economically feasible to do so, the AOG should create a medal that it awards to graduates when they reach their twentieth year of active-duty service. During the coming decade we anticipate that the number of such graduates will range from 200 to 300 per year, which translates into an annual outlay of between $6000 and $9000. If possible, a similar medal should be created and awarded to graduates who obtain a 20-year letter from the Reserves and National Guard. · While carefully maintaining its policy of doing nothing to encourage graduates to leave the Army, the AOG's Office of Alumni Services should continue to make career transition assistance available to those who do so. There is a principle involved here: the Association must always be willing to help all of its members in any way that it can. Furthermore, the Active-Duty Support Program Survey indicated that a solid majority of the members of the Long Gray Line (86%) are in favor of the AOG's providing such assistance. As in the past, the AOG's career- transition officers should continue to encourage grads leaving active duty to consider serving in the reserve components. · The AOG should explore the possibility of creating moderated list servers for the members of USMA cadet classes and the classes ten years senior to them. These electronic discussion forums would become operational as soon as possible during the cadets’ tenure at the Academy and would continue to operate after graduation. If all goes well, the list servers will enable the establishment of relationships, even if at a distance, that could serve to help the members of the junior classes deal with problems, find answers to questions, and receive encouragement. A further possibility would be to invite the members of “adopting” classes -- those 50 years senior to cadet classes -- to join the list. · As a first step toward revitalizing the Active-Duty Support Program, a letter from the Chairman of the AOG should be sent to all Society presidents, reminding them of the importance of the Program, soliciting their energetic backing, and urging them to designate an aggressive member as an Active-Duty Support Coordinator (ADSC). These individuals could eventually form a nation-wide network of people who, having “ownership” of the program, would push hard to make it succeed. · At the same time that he writes to society presidents, the Chairman also should publish a message on the Long Gray Line listserver -- which reaches all graduates with an e-mail address in the AOG’s database -- expressing the Association’s serious concern about retention and urging them to contact their local societies for information about active-duty support programs or to volunteer their help. · The number of Distinguished Society Points given for Active-Duty Support Program activities should be increased, including points based on the percentage of an active-duty population that a society identifies and contacts. · Next summer’s Leaders’ Conference should feature a session that highlights the retention problem and solicits input from societies on how to solve it. The Conference should also showcase successful and effective active-duty support activities already in existence. · The main focus for developing vigorous local active-duty support programs should be on societies that are adjacent to military installations. Some societies, such as the West Point Society of Fort Bragg, are energetically implementing their programs. Others, however, are doing little or nothing, and these should receive especially strong encouragement from the AOG to help solve the retention problem. · In the societies' programs, the Community Welcoming component should receive primary emphasis. It is an effective face-to-face way of offering support and establishing lines of communication that will allow other components to be successful. It provides a means to approach junior officers, who typically make up their minds early whether they will remain in the service, and literally “ask them to stay.” · When societies establish mentorship programs, the relationships that develop between society members and active-duty officers should aim more toward the provision of moral support and less toward advice on professional matters. “Sponsorship” is probably a better word than “mentorship.” The sponsor would give the young officer positive reinforcement, recognition of his or her efforts, accomplishments, and the sacrifices entailed in service to the nation. Paper, e-mail, or telephone communications from members of the AOG's leadership could be part of a “mix” of things used to encourage junior officers to stay in the service, but they will have far less force than person-to-person contacts. · All should recognize that establishment of an effective sponsorship program will be difficult. The senior officers in the Army work hard on it but all too often with limited success. Attempting to set up fruitful relationships between retired grads and active-duty officers will be even more difficult. One key to launching a sponsorship program is strong support from the top. Just as mentorship in the Army did relatively well when GEN Vuono was the Chief of Staff and actively pushed for senior officers to serve as mentors, so it will take a similar figure to give an AOG sponsorship program the impetus it needs. We believe we should have a retired four-star general take the lead in the effort to create sponsorship programs in societies, a person capable of putting into the project the considerable energy it will require and giving it the visibility it needs. At the same time, societies whose membership includes distinguished graduates should encourage them to serve as role models for others by volunteering to be sponsors. · Believing that a mentoring and support web site for active-duty officers is a good idea, this Committee endorses the conclusion that has been reached by the members of the Communications Committee's Online Junior Officer Mentorship Project, chaired by Ellen Houlihan. That group recommended that the AOG build links from its home page to companycommand.com and platoonleader.com and thereby reinforce the success of those two sites. We agree. · A team of people, including General Ohle and representatives from DCSPER has already given an information briefing on retention to the West Point Society of Greater Houston this past February. The object of the briefing was to establish a foundation of facts for the development of society active-duty support programs. The February presentation, which served as a pilot, was a success, and therefore, we recommend that the team make presentations to other societies and also give a presentation at the Leaders’ Conference in August. The Committee strongly believes that the Association of Graduates can have a positive effect on retention rates and hopes that the Board shares that belief. Hard work and concerted effort will allow the Long Gray Line to truly serve those who serve. END |