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Employment Resource Hub What is it?
What will you Find?
Who will it Benefit?
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To meet the demands of veterans and military spouses and continuously inform the employer of the value they bring to the workforce, it is imperative that employers have a centralized location to explore current research, reports, and best practices on how to leverage and retain military talent in their organization.
As the employment market begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses remain an invaluable resource. Veterans and military spouses bring specialized training to the workforce. They bring distinctive capabilities, along with valuable skills developed through real world, high-pressure experience. Veterans are accountable, adaptable, team players, and experienced leaders. They are also resilient, resourceful, entrepreneurial, and engaged in the world around them. However, there are unique challenges for transitioning veterans as the skills they learned in combat do not always translate to private-sector jobs.
Moreover, there are several attributes and characteristics that military spouses have that are both salient and relevant to the business environment. Attributes such as being resilient, adaptable, educated, resourceful, team-oriented, entrepreneurial, and socially aware all complement performance in any competitive business environment. However, underemployment is one of the greatest issues faced by military spouses, who have limited access to career enhancing opportunities because of constant relocations. Military spouses, who are generally well-educated, frequently work in jobs that they are over-qualified for and identify underemployment as a top barrier to successful employment.[1] The consequences of unemployment and underemployment for the veteran and their family, immediately following the transition to civilian life, have also shown to have long-term financial health effects on the household.[2]
Recognizing the value veterans and military spouses bring to the workplace, many private-sector firms have mobilized at an unprecedented scale, to positively impact the employment situation for veteran and military spouse candidates and employees. High profile firms have developed veteran and military spouse employment programs and have also advanced the narrative that hiring veterans represents both good citizenship and business.[3]
However, while veteran employment has improved, it is still not at pre-pandemic levels as COVID-19 has presented additional barriers for a population already faced with challenges in the workforce.[4] In parallel, military spouses, who already encounter considerable barriers to employment due to the military lifestyle, often found themselves without jobs, throughout the pandemic, as employment opportunities shrank and responsibilities of managing their children’s education landed, and still does today, predominantly on their shoulders.[5] In addition, reports also show that military spouses are still not finding jobs at the same rate as their civilian counterparts.[6] These findings highlight the importance of having a place where veterans and military spouses can go to find a comprehensive source of information they need to best utilize their skills and talents in the workforce.
All things considered; this is the premise behind the Employment Resource Hub. A collaboration between USAA and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), the Hub is a collection of virtual data, research, and insights related to veteran and military spouse employment issues. The Hub is intended to serve a wide variety of information needs. It provides resources, research, best practices, and other tools customized to assist employers, human resource professionals, hiring managers, policy makers, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders interested in learning more about leveraging and retaining military talent. The Hub is also tailored to the veteran and/or military spouse looking to enter or stay competitive in the workforce.
The Hub continually evolves with new and updated resources to meet the ever-changing employment needs of the military community.
[1] Bradbard, D.A., Pitoniak, A., Maury, R., & Linsner, R. (2019, November). Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) Overseas: A Portability Roadmap for Military Spouses and their Employers (Force Behind the Force Series). Syracuse, NY: Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Syracuse University
[2] See Kline, Anna, Donald S. Ciccone, Maria Falca-Dodson, Christopher M. Black, and Miklos Losonczy. “Suicidal ideation among National Guard troops deployed to Iraq: The association with post-deployment readjustment problems.” The Journal of nervous and mental disease 199, no. 12 (2011): 914-920; Korpi, Tomas. “Accumulating disadvantage. Longitudinal analyses of unemployment and physical health in representative samples of the Swedish population.” European Sociological Review 17, no. 3 (2001): 255-273; and Riviere, Lyndon A., Athena Kendall-Robbins, Dennis McGurk, Carl A. Castro, and Charles W. Hoge. “Coming home may hurt risk factors for mental ill health in US reservists after deployment in Iraq.” The British Journal of Psychiatry 198, no. 2 (2011): 136-142.
[3] Haynie, J. M. (2016, April). Revisiting the Business Case for Hiring a Veteran: A Strategy for Cultivating Competitive Advantage (Workforce Readiness Briefs, Paper No. 2). Syracuse, NY: Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Syracuse University.
[4] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.nr0.htmv
[5] BSF_MFLS_CompReport_FULL.pdf (bluestarfam.org)
[6] https://www.ausa.org/news/military-spouse-unemployment-remains-sizable-issue#:~:text=A%20new%20report%20looking%20at,joblessness%20and%20help%20family%20finances.