First in a Two-Part Series on Veteran’s Recruiting, Hiring and Engagement

An HR Director’s and Veteran’s Summary and Review of the SHRM Foundation Veteran’s at Work Certification Program

Submitted by: Brian Wolhaupter, Colonel U.S. Army (Retired) - MBA, MSS, SHRM-SCP, HR Director, Willy Street Co-op

“Thank you for your service!” I am not sure how many thousands of times in my 30-year military career, and even now as a retired service member I have heard this humbling and truly gracious statement. For those who serve or have served, that simple five-word statement is fulfilling and rewarding in a way that is impossible to explain. It always was and is now for those in uniform our privilege and honor to serve with or without the thanks.
 
The same simple five words for many transitioning service members, whether leaving service after a short period or a complete career can also take on a frightening air of finality and isolation from the rest of the working world. An effective understanding of veterans, their skills, strengths, needs, and tendencies in the development of well planned and well designed veteran’s hiring programs can mitigate a great deal of that feeling on both sides of the hiring process. The SHRM Foundation Veterans at Work Certification program represents an invaluable resource and starting point for anyone in this process, with only a few very small misses in its approach.
 
SHRM Foundation’s Veterans at Work Certification Program
This program provided by the SHRM Foundation hits almost every critical point for employers looking to build or improve veteran’s hiring programs and engagement of any veterans they already have within their organizations. The wholly online program is provided free for any who want to participate. It consists of four basic phases – enrollment and application; reading/review of the SHRM Recruiting, Retention and Hiring of Military Veterans guidebook; completion of a short exam on the guidebook materials; and completion of several video courses and a few quizzes at the PsychArmor Institute.
 
All of the materials are excellent. The guidebook alone provides all the materials for an organization that is passingly familiar with military service to frame and build a program to support all phases of veteran employment. The sections in the guidebook on building the business case to hire veterans is later mirrored and expanded upon in a number of the PsychArmor courses. Discussions and program recommendations in both the guidebook and the PyschArmor courses surrounding the business case tenants are filled with fantastic information and insights that are commonly overlooked by those with little or no exposure to military service and veterans.
 
Guidebook sections on engagement and retention are also particularly well done and touch on many of the reasons veteran hiring initiatives in part or whole do not work from both sides. Reading some of the retention and engagement recommendations you may get the sense that veterans can be needy in the same way we often incorrectly categorize “millennials.” For example, the similarity between the two groups in the desire for purpose and impact are truly much alike, but the propensity for intense loyalty, deep adaptability and broad skills are often much stronger in veterans than others. Both the guidebook and the PyschArmor course also deal directly with some of the common misperceptions that hamper adoption of veterans hiring programs including “all veterans have PTSD” (not true), veterans have less formal education (also not true), and many others.
 
After completion of the guidebook and exam, the extensive and curated set of video Pysch Armor Institute classes strengthen and complete the program. The PyschArmor Institute courses are well done and cover a wide variety of topics that both deepen and augment the first phase of the certification course. HR leaders or organizations having little experience with veterans should review all the PsychArmor military basics courses a couple of times. They provide acceptable descriptions of military norms and life, but do fall a little short on clear translation of military structure and terms to civilian matches. Some of the specific multi-part courses are very detailed reviews of previous major corporate initiatives (Hilton is one of the programs presented). These provide insight and relatable process steps, but may not be applicable to all organizations simply based on the scale of the programs they describe. Taken as a complete set the PsychArmor section of the program lays out some very useful and practical application examples and military cultural background that is not in the guidebook.
 
No program is perfect, and I found that there are areas where the program as a whole falls short and other areas that are just not very applicable to the GMA SHRM audience. Though these points are minor they are worth discussing:
 

• Like most programs provided by industry or the military itself to support transitioning veterans, this program is overly Active Military centric in its tone, materials, and approaches. As a lifelong solider, until very recently, who served in the Active Army as a Traditional Drilling National Guardsmen (Reserve Component) as well as a Full-Time National Guardsman, I can confidently state that the Reserve Component of the Army (and the other services) has members with the same valuable traits as transitioning Active Duty members who have full familiarity with and experience in the civilian business world. Yet, very little discussion of actively recruiting both traditional part-time and full-time transitioning reservists is discussed. In fact, the entire concept of Reserve members in the corporate world as veterans and valuable business leaders is significantly under-addressed.

• The accessibility to Active Duty transitioning veterans in the GMA-SHRM area, and the upper Midwest in general, is extremely restricted in comparison with many other parts of the country. There are many reasons for this including a lack of Active Military facilities, poor ongoing TRICARE medical support, and many others. This limitation is not clear in the program as the material is fairly general in nature. It is an important fact to understand for a local organizations sincere about working towards a veterans hiring and employment program. In this region the typical veteran candidate will more often be a reservist of some type who may or may not still be serving in a traditional weekend drilling role.

• Related to the previous point, the PsychArmor program section around veteran and service member spouse hiring programs is nearly irrelevant in the GMA-SHRM area, at least in the way the program presents it. . It is important to note that you may still have military spouses that will need support, care, and employment flexibility. This need is generally in response to reserve component deployments, and not the relocation issues directly addressed in the program section.

 
The program as a whole is a wonderfultool for HR leaders and organizations seeking to support veterans and enhance their teams with the skills they can provide. I highly recommend this as a part of every HR team’s toolbox. It is well worth the time invested, which is all it requires since the program is provided free to any who take it. Programs like this will definitely help reduce many of the struggles transitioning veterans and organizations have in connecting. To highlight some of these struggles and provide a bit of insight to the transition process, the April issue of GMA SHRM InTouch will include part two of this series, “A Tale of Two Transitions,” in which I share my viewpoint and experiences as a veteran transitioning to the civilian corporate sector twice – once in 1996 as a young leader in the rank of Captain, and this last fall as a senior Colonel.


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Supercharged HR: Leveraging Behavioral Science and Big Data

Submitted by Submitted by March PDS Presenter, Steven Utech, CEO of Illumyx

It was November of 2018 and we were running an action planning session with a cross-functional group of employees for a utility company in the deep south.  The focus: aligning stakeholders on how to improve the workplace culture.  In walked Ted, a respected field technician.  One of the first things out of his mouth was this, “What’s this about again?  Ah man, is this more of that HR b&**%&t?”  We had to laugh at his honesty.  We hear comments like this a lot.  Despite the best of intentions, many corporate initiatives are diminished and minimized as being a “flavor of the month” or a pet project for a department (IT, HR, Finance, etc).  And once employee sentiment goes against an initiative it is an uphill climb to reach the tipping point required to make it a success.

The segmenting of corporate initiatives and programs is a necessary, but limiting approach to change.  When you look at things systemically in an organization, everything is an interconnected web of actions and responses.  Let’s take culture as an example.  When you view culture through a lens of behavioral science (i.e., culture as a set of ingrained behaviors that govern how work is accomplished), it broadens the importance of culture.  Culture is no longer this “soft” thing that HR focuses on.  In this context, culture can be used to improve organizational effectiveness, employee health and wellness, employee safety and more obvious things like employee retention.  Don’t believe us?  Let’s look at the data.

In 2018 we conducted a study for a mid-sized healthcare organization who wanted to understand how their workplace culture impacted employee wellness.  Looking beyond the HR-driven wellness program, we examined relationships between employee wellness and various aspects of their culture, such as role clarity and problem-solving.  We built a predictive model for them which measured employee perceptions of workplace culture and predicted employee wellness scores with 70% accuracy.  Within the model, four factors stood out as having the most predictive significance:

1. Relationship with leader – Those with an open, trusting relationship tended to have higher morale and higher wellness scores.
2. Working on a development plan – Employees who were actively engaged in professional development tended to be more committed to the organization and also had higher wellness scores.
3. Having input into decisions – Supervisors who sought input before making a decision tended to lead employees who were more engaged and also reported greater wellness.
4. Relationship with co-workers – Employees tended to have higher wellness scores when they experienced positive team dynamics, such as:
   • Feeling accepted by team
   • Troubleshooting problems, instead of blaming others
   • Openly addressing conflict, instead of gossiping with co-workers
   • Cross-department communication, instead of departmental silos

This data made sense to managers, but was still surprising.  When you think about it, the above-mentioned factors can all be a source of great joy and excitement when they are going well, but can also be a source of great frustration and disappointment when they’re not.  It startled the mangers because the data put them in a position of having to take greater responsibility for employee wellness.  They couldn’t pass it off as an “HR thing” anymore. Now, as they use this information to make better leadership decisions, they are able to calculate the return-on-investment for making improvements to workplace culture and employee wellness.

As we get into the data around key business challenges, we continually uncover findings such as these.  Data is here and its reshaping how we look at business problems.  Business problems are truly systemic in nature.  It’s an exciting time to be a part of HR.  The future of HR is not only data-driven, but is a future where HR initiatives no longer exist in isolation.  All “people challenges” become “company challenges” because people are still the unifying fabric that ties companies together.  Using data to understand organizational behavior is the key to unlocking your workforce’s potential.

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Education and Development

SHRM Certification Scholarships

Submitted by Clara Tavarez, Media Relations Committee Member GMA SHRM
Is one of your new year’s resolutions getting a SHRM certification? SHRM Foundation wants to help you reach this goal!

Every year, the SHRM Foundation awards scholarships in support of students seeking undergraduate, graduate, certification and professional development opportunities. Scholarship funds may be used for any combination of test preparation expenses, such as SHRM Certification Preparation tools and/or exam fees.

For eligibility information and to apply go to the SHRM Foundation Scholarship page.

Now accepting applications for the spring offering through April 15, 2019.

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Workforce Readiness

Boys’ & Girls’ Club of Dane County – Looking for internship opportunities with your company

Volunteer Opportunity – March 20, 2019; Dane County Regional Job Fair, Alliant Energy Center, Madison

GMA SHRM Member News

Spotlight:  Programming Committee

Submitted by: Brian P. Goodman, Vice President: Programming and Attorney at Boardman Clark

The Programming Committee is a lively group of people who love both HR and education.  We are fortunate to have many long-standing members on this committee, and new members join each year as well.  If you are interesting in volunteering with GMA SHRM, the Programming Committee is a great place to start.

The Programming Committee is responsible for organizing five professional development summits each year.  Each professional development summit is four hours long and completely free to GMA SHRM members.  That is over 20 free hours of educational programming each year.
 
The Committee works hard to ensure that this significant member benefit is of the highest quality and of greatest interest to our members. The Committee oversees the annual member survey, which it uses to obtain information on topics of interest to members.  In August, the Committee sends out a Call for Proposals to dozens of interested speakers.  The Committee vets these proposals and selects programming that addresses member interests, will be delivered by high-quality speakers, and qualifies for certification credits.  The Committee’s goal is to have an entire year of programming scheduled at the start of each year.

The Committee meets every couple of months, but more frequently in the fall when proposals are reviewed.    If you are interested in serving on the programming committee, contact Brian P. Goodman at bgoodman@boardmanclark.com or 608-283-1722. 

Hope to see you all at the March PDS on March 19!